2026 Community Award Winners

Sami Barile

– from story by By John Gullion Tribune Managing Editor

It was during Barile’s single term as Morristown Mayor that the Task Force on Diversity was born. Barile and her husband Pete found their way to Morristown from Illinois. In Morristown Barile played a key role as Executive Director of the Morristown-Hamblen Chapter of the Keep America Beautiful organization.

In 2007, she was encouraged to run for mayor and won the position, serving a single term before choosing to step away from politics.

Barile said the seeds for the Task Force were founded when two women visited her at the City Center, suggesting the City host a fiesta to celebrate the Hispanic population.

Out of that conversation came the Celebration of Cultures, a multi-cultural event held two consecutive years at Fred Miller Park.

“That lasted for a couple of years and then we started talking about something else: A breakfast celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King,” she said. “We were told ‘Ya, you can do it this year but it’s not gonna last.’

“Well, we proved that naysayer wrong, didn’t we.”

Barile explained the breakfast grew over the years, necessitating moving to bigger venues over the years. She added that the planning group continued to meet until it reached a point that some self-identification was needed.

“Finally, somebody said ’What are we? What are we doing?’ Without thinking the words came out of my mouth, “You’re the Mayor’s Task Force on Diversity,’ and so you were born.”

Barile said the organization built its mission statement, “to put unity into the community” from there.

“That was very important to us,” she said.

Barile thanked and praised the Task Force both for the award and carrying the legacy of that mission statement forward.

“I want to thank all the members of the Task Force, past, present and future,” she said. “You’re doing great things in this community.”

Ryan Renee Smith

– from story by By John Gullion Tribune Managing Editor

For Ryan Renee Smith, being recognized inside the R. Jack Fishman Library at WSCC was a full circle moment. In the early days of her journey, she had been a homeless single mother trying to improve herself while studying inside the college’s classrooms.

She discussed the self-doubt of those days and the journey forward.

She worked as a DCS Family Service Worker, a Case Manager with Frontier Health, and later with Helen Ross McNabb’s Jail-to-Work Program, where she supported women through reentry, wellness, and restorative pathways.

She became an educator, as a Special Education teacher, Behavior Interventionist, and now an ELL/MLL educator at East High School, where she also coaches dance and continues to champion the power of movement and expression.

A former contestant of the Biggest Loser Realty TV show, she now owns Foxey Moxey Fitness, a thriving dance-fitness business that blends confidence, wellness, and community.

“(This) was an honor I could never imagine when I walked onto this campus,” she said calling Walters State the place where her foundation was laid. “When I was a student here … my life looked very different than it does today. I wasn’t just balancing classes and exams. I was balancing motherhood, poverty, homelessness, exhaustion and fear. Some days just showing up felt like a victory.”

She said what she did have was determination and faith.

She said she clung to her faith to help carry her through.

“There were many days I wanted to give up but God kept whispering, ‘keep going,’” she said. “This school became so much more to me. It became a place of refuge, growth and hope.”

She said the school’s teachers and administrators and her classmates and friend helped shape her.

“They all played a role in reminding me that my circumstances did not define my future,” she said.

She went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degree and is now an educator who works with students who, like me, often felt unseen, overwhelmed or unsure of their worth. I teach not just academics but resilience. Not just lessons but life.

“I see myself in my students. The ones who are tired. The ones who are fighting silent battles. The ones who need someone, just anyone, to believe in them.”

She said that community service isn’t about recognition. It’s about obedience.

“I serve because I was served,” she said. “I pour into others because someone once poured into me. I show up because I remember what it felt like when someone showed up for me at my very lowest.”

She said when she was younger, she couldn’t see God’s plan, she could only see the struggle.

“Now I understand that God was preparing me, refining me and positioning me to serve others with passion and credibility,” she said. “To anyone here today who is struggling … please hear this: Your current chapter is not your final chapter. Your setbacks do not cancel your calling.”

United States Army Capt. Treven Treece

– from story by By John Gullion Tribune Managing Editor

United States Army Capt. Treven Treece looking resplendent in his dress uniform, warned the crowd that he might not be able to look up during his speech as much as he usually would.

The room, he explained, was full of people who helped him along his path, including his mother Lisa Yolanda Treece, and he was worried the eye contact with someone important to him might lead overwhelming emotion – later shouting out Bobby Davis who helped teach him to tie a tie.

“I’m going to do my best to keep it together,” he said

Treece said he was supposed to be a statistic.

“I was born three months early – 2 lbs. 1 oz. – at the University of Tennessee Medical Center,” he said. “There are people in this room who were there when I was born. I think from that point forward, God had his hands on me. A lot of prayers in here that I have reached me and pulled me out of different circumstances and situations and it’s taken me into places I never would have imagined.”

From Hillcrest Elementary to Meadowview Middle to East High, Treece went on to receive a Bachelor of Science, Health Studies from the University of Memphis, a Master of Arts, Intelligence Studies from the American Military University and a Master of Science, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University.

While to Memphis, he enlisted in the Tennessee Army National Guard during his undergraduate studies.

He was commissioned into the active component of the U.S. Army in 2017 through the U of M Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.

Since then, he has held various tactical, operational, and strategic leadership roles. Most of his active-duty service has supported Army and Joint missions across the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility.

He is currently an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“I don’t get to come home often,” he said. “I’m a product of the lineage of Dr. King. A product of the lineage that sits in this room today. No matter what race you are, what color you are, there are people who invested in me who I will never know. … Boys & Girls Club, so many other people, the entire Hamblen County school system poured resources into me.

“So, my challenge to you all today is that when you find somebody who maybe comes from unique circumstances, who comes from a single parent home, maybe they speak a different language, maybe they have different aspirations, encourage those kids that they can do something.”

Treece – who is married to CPT Dajah Treece with whom he shares a son – said education was his way forward but it took support.

“There are multiple ways in which we can uplift ourselves and each other, but I couldn’t have made it here by myself. It took every single one of them to make it to this point.”