McCarthy Award Past Honorees

The award is given bi-annually to an individual whose work makes a difference in the lives of people most affected by injustice. Recipients exemplify Leo McCarthy’s values of leadership for the common good. They show compassion for those less privileged and marginalized, and have a track record of service to make people’s lives better. Their lives illustrate high ethical standards.

This year’s award recipients, Janet and Clint Reilly, founded Bay Scholars, a nonprofit that creates educational equity for students from underserved communities through $7M in scholarships to successful Catholic high schools in the Bay Area. Janet Reilly is the co-founder and board president of Clinic by the Bay, a free, volunteer-powered health clinic for the working uninsured in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. Clint Reilly, serves on multiple Boards and most notably spearheaded Catholic Charities of San Francisco initiative to put the social services arm of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco on solid financial footing.

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Under the leadership of former university president Fr. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., USF moved into the vanguard of U.S. higher education by requiring all undergraduate students to engage in service learning. As one of the founders of the McCarthy Center, he helped establish an institution that continues to prepare USF students for community and political engagement and that leads in shaping the entire field of civic engagement in higher education with a vision of social justice.

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As mayor of San Francisco, Art Agnos pioneered welfare reform programs, worked to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and was among the first to address the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic by creating an HIV/AIDS task force and dramatically increasing the city’s AIDS budget. Later, as regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he championed affordable housing.