George Washington Carver was an agricultural chemist, experimenter, and inventor whose development of new products derived from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. For much of his career, Mr. Carver taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Alabama.

When Rubicon established its annual George Washington Carver Award in honor of a man who dedicated his life’s work to innovating and challenging the norms of our society, we did so under the premise that at Rubicon, we not only encourage innovation and creative thinking in all of its forms, but we also challenge team members to set the bar, and their personal goals, high. It could be said that Mr. Carver was one of the early adopters of Rubicon’s mission to end waste by taking a peanut and creating more than 100 different repurposed or reinvented ways to leverage that peanut—from using fibers from the peanut plant to make paper, to the creation of some early plastics and dyes. With this mission of inventing, exploring, and inspiring, it is with great honor that Rubicon annually recognizes one employee through the process of peer nomination and selection to be named the recipient of the George Washington Carver Innovation Award.