Vice President Mike Pence To Be Honored With Inaugural Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Executive Leadership
September 2026
Mike Pence, 48th vice president of the United States, will receive the inaugural Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Executive Leadership at the September 2026 Yale CEO Caucus, which will take place in Washington, D.C. on September 15. The award will be presented by Elaine Chao, 18th US Secretary of Transportation and 24th US Secretary of Labor; Ralph Reed, Faith & Freedom Coalition founder and chairman; Marshall Cooper, Chief Executive Group CEO; Sylvia Mathews Burwell, 22nd U.S. secretary of health and human services and former president of American University; Robert S. “Steve” Miller, former chairman of AIG and former CEO of Delphi and Bethlehem Steel; and Dick Gephardt, former House majority leader and president and CEO of Gephardt Group.
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:
“Mike Pence has devoted his entire life to public service, and regardless of what you think of his political views, he has been widely respected for his character, his dedication to service, an unfailing civility, and his habit of treating opponents as fellow citizens rather than enemies.
“In Congress, Pence rose to chair the House Republican Conference, and yet he was known across the aisle less for partisanship than for decency: a man who could disagree without being disagreeable, whose word could be relied upon, and who never confused conviction with contempt. As the 50th governor of Indiana, he governed as a steward and a builder—his accomplishments included balanced budgets and a AAA credit rating, the state’s first state-funded pre-kindergarten program, and the Healthy Indiana Plan, a health coverage program for hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers that he negotiated across party lines with the federal government and that was approved by then-secretary of health and human services Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who presents this award to him today. That is what public service at its best looks like: two leaders of different parties finding a way to serve the same people.
“As vice president, Pence presided over the Senate with dignity, chaired the National Space Council that set the nation’s course back to the moon, and represented the United States in capitals around the world. On January 6, he discharged the duties of his office faithfully despite extraordinary pressure and personal cost. And since leaving office he has continued to serve in the way the founders would most readily have recognized: by teaching, because he believes, as we do, that a republic survives only if each generation learns how to keep it.
“What runs through all of it is an old-fashioned idea that has become rare: that public office is a trust, not a possession; that the institutions of self-government are worth more than any single election; and that the manner in which one serves matters as much as the causes one serves. Across four decades in public life, Mike Pence has never given his fellow citizens reason to doubt that he meant his oath.
“It is fitting that the award is presented by leaders of both parties and of the business community, because the qualities it honors belong to no party. Mike Pence is a worthy inaugural recipient.”
Mike Pence served as the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and as the 50th governor of the State of Indiana from 2013 to 2017. He represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives for six terms, from 2001 to 2013, chairing the House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2011. As vice president, he presided over the U.S. Senate, and chaired the National Space Council.
Since leaving office, Pence founded Advancing American Freedom, and published his memoir, So Help Me God, in 2022. He received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2025.
A native of Columbus, Indiana, Pence is a graduate of Hanover College and the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Before entering Congress, he hosted a statewide radio program, the Mike Pence Show, and served as president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. He and his wife, Karen, have three children.
Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Executive Leadership
The Yale Patriot Public Service Award for Executive 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 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.”
