Katie Portier honored with Athena Award

Local community volunteer Katie Portier was honored Thursday evening with the 2023 Athena Award by the Women’s Business Alliance of the Bayou Region.

The award, underwritten by Barker Buick GMC Hummer, recognizes an individual who strives toward the highest levels of personal and professional accomplishment, excels in his or her chosen field, provides a valuable service to improve quality of life in the community and forges a path of leadership for women to follow.

At Synergy Bank where Portier manages a team of women, she encourages staff to look for good deeds for recognition and was instrumental in reestablishing the bank’s core values. Portier also has helped with the advancement or creation of several projects such as Bank at School, which provides financial literacy to children in classrooms, and leads employee volunteer efforts which led to the bank volunteering at 39 nonprofit events in 2023.

Portier is a five-year member, four-year board member and past president of Junior Auxiliary of Houma which works to meet needs of women and children in the community and serves on the board of Rotary Club of Houma where she has served as chair of the group’s community benefit Cast Iron Cookoff since its inception five years ago. She also served as an advocate for temporary housing after Hurricane Ida and raised $5,000 in the Relay for Life’s Lip-Sync Battle.