BLOOMINGTON - Kira Hudson Banks has lived in the Twin Cities only for a couple of years, but she's already making a big difference.

Banks, 27, an assistant professor of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University, received the Athena Award on Thursday at the DoubleTree Hotel and Conference Center.

In brief remarks, she promised to keep up her work and thanked McLean County for its openness.

The award recognizes high levels of professional excellence, efforts to open leadership to other women and commitment of time and energy to the community.

The keynote speaker was Martha Mertz, founder of Athena International.

She urged the women in the audience to "take up the mantle of leadership. We see the imbalance around us, especially at the highest levels."

Cultivating such female leadership in math and science is a goal of Banks' work.

Banks partnered with the McLean County Urban League to bring a pilot math and science program for middle-school girls to the Twin Cities. She said the early teenage years are when girls really begin to lose interest in those fields.

"Middle school, that's really when we begin to lose them," she said after the ceremony. "They feel like they have to be cute or smart. They can't be both."

Her husband, Aaron, jumped up and threw his arms in the air when her name was called.

"I'm elated about it," he said after the ceremony, noting she also was chosen to be one of the "20 Under 40" in the Sept. 20 edition of the Pantagraph.

Mertz, who owns a real estate company, founded Athena International in 1980 in Lansing, Mich. Drawing on the ancient goddess of wisdom, she found an organization to promote what she called "invaluable relationships." Women would work together to identify and train leaders.

The award is sponsored by the McLean County Chamber of Commerce Women's Division.

Other nominees were Ruth Ann Miller, Jackie Newman, Cheri L. Raymond, Colleen Bennett, Barbara J. Nathan, Melissa Mercier-Ash, Deb Smith, Stephanie Calahan, Cynthia O'Connor, Paula Mitchell and Teri Lucie Thompson.