The 2025 ATHENA Leadership Award Banquet took place at the Huntingburg Event Center on Wednesday evening, where local female leaders were uplifted and publicly recognized by the community. This year’s finalists were Megan Durlauf, Diana Fischer, Clara Fromme, Laura Grammer, and Dr. Tara Rasche.
Hosted annually by the Rotary Club of Dubois County, five women are chosen to be recognized as a whole, while one woman is selected as the ATHENA Leadership Award Recipient for that year. This year, Laura Grammer was declared the 2025 ATHENA Leadership Award Recipient. She dedicated her decades of success in the Dubois County community to one thing: Family.
“It was always family. We worked all the time, and we started washing trucks when we were little kids… But that was a family thing. We worked all the time. But Sunday was the day for our family. We helped with turkey shoots with mom and dad. No matter what it was mom and dad were doing, we were doing it with them. So, having that feeling of family with my brother and sister, now with our kids. But honestly, all these people that were here, they are my family too.”
“You know, it’s all part of giving back and making the community strong because if we don’t have a strong community, we don’t have anything. Again, it is all the people.”
“It is all those 77 people over the years that have made the community. It is not just me tonight. It is not the 13 other women that have been recipients. It’s all 77 of them. And I am so proud just to be one of the 77.”
The keynote speaker for this year’s event was Olympic gold medalist and 18-time World Champion swimmer, Lilly King. King shared her sentiments on her journey to the Olympics, how strong women in her family helped shape her adolescence, and just how strong that inner voice is when it comes to the moments that count. We asked King how she found it in herself to strive to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics, while swimming at Indiana University:
“Going into my freshman year of college, my freshman year was leading up to the Olympics, so that college decision was going to be a really, really big one for me because going into my freshman year, I was the third fastest American in the 100 breast, which sounds great, but only top two make the team.”
“I had a really stellar freshman year and kind of after that, it was like, all right, just don’t screw up. You’re going to make it. So it is a pretty cool spot to be in… I think I kind of always had that self-belief somewhere.”
King also donated a hand-selection of her own personal items to the Rotary Club of Dubois County to auction off for the ATHENA Leadership Award Banquet.
A portion of the proceeds from the awards event are shared with the ATHENA recipient’s chosen charity, this year being Grammer’s choice of the “Rotary Club of Dubois County Endowment” with the Dubois County Community Foundation, and the remainder goes to the Rotary Club of Dubois County’s annual community grant program.
Congratulations to the 2025 ATHENA Leadership Award Recipient, Laura Grammer.
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