Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi To Be Honored With Inaugural Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Legislative Leadership

September 2026

Nancy Pelosi, speaker emerita of the U.S. House of Representatives, will receive the inaugural Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Legislative Leadership at the 2026 September Yale CEO Caucus, which will take place in Washington, D.C. on September 15. The award will be presented by Donna Shalala, US Department of Health & Human Services 18th Secretary; Marc Benioff, Salesforce chair and CEO; Alan Patricof, Primetime Partners co-founder; Janet Yellen, 78th U.S. secretary of the treasury and former chair of the Federal Reserve; Roger Altman, Evercore founder and senior chairman; Kay Koplovitz, USA Networks founder and Springboard Enterprises co-founder and chairman; and Carla Hills, 10th U.S. trade representative and 5th U.S. secretary of housing and urban development.

Caucus organizer Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies and Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Leadership at the Yale School of Management, said:

“Nancy Pelosi has served in the House of Representatives for nearly 40 years, and for two decades of that time she led her party in the House, a tenure rivaled in her party’s history only by Sam Rayburn. In 2007, she became the 52nd Speaker of the House and the first woman ever to hold the office, breaking what she called the marble ceiling ‘for our daughters and our granddaughters.’ Whatever one’s politics, that is an American milestone, and it belongs to the whole country.

“What distinguishes Pelosi, beyond longevity and beyond firsts, is mastery of the institution itself. Speakers are often judged by whether the House works, and under Pelosi it worked—above all in the moments of national emergency when the country needed the House to act and she found the votes across the aisle. In the autumn of 2008, she partnered with a Republican president and treasury secretary to steady a collapsing financial system. In the spring of 2020, she negotiated the CARES Act with a Republican administration and passed it through the House by voice vote as the pandemic shut the nation down. She delivered the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Affordable Care Act, and many more instances of historic legislation.

“She is the daughter and the sister of mayors of Baltimore, raised in a household where public service was the family business and where neighbors came to the front door for help. She brought that ethic to the speaker’s chair: a legendary work ethic, an unrivaled discipline in counting votes, and a steadiness that four presidents of both parties came to reckon with.

“As she completes her final year in the House, the inaugural Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Legislative Leadership recognizes nearly four decades of service to her institution, and her country. In the republic’s 250th year, service of this length and this devotion belongs to no party. It belongs to all Americans, and that is why I am thrilled to recognize Nancy Pelosi today.”

Pelosi served as the 52nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2023, the first woman to hold the office, and led House Democrats for 20 years, from 2003 to 2023, after serving as House Democratic whip. First elected to Congress in a June 1987 special election, she has represented San Francisco for nearly four decades and has held the title of speaker emerita since January 2023. In November 2025, she announced that she would not seek reelection and will complete her term in January 2027.

Pelosi received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2024 and the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2019, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013. She served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1993 to 2003 and was, at the time, its longest-serving member.

She and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have five children and ten grandchildren.

Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Legislative Leadership

The Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Legislative Leadership is being inaugurated in 2026, the 250th year of American independence, to honor Americans of both parties who have devoted their lives to public service and rendered it with integrity, civility, and devotion to country above party.

The September 2026 Yale CEO Caucus theme is “Ensuring Corporate Visions Match Strategic Realities at 250: Tech Policy, the AI Promise, and U.S. Governance Past the Midterms.”