The New Mexico State Land Office has received the 2025 Fall Culture Excellence Awards, including the Top Workplaces 2025 Culture Excellence Award and the Top Workplaces 2025 Women-Led award. These awards are presented by Energage and are based on anonymous employee feedback measuring key aspects of workplace culture such as alignment, execution, and connection. This marks the third consecutive year that the agency has been recognized in these categories.
Innovation Women named 191 employers nationally as Woman-Led Top Workplaces for 2025, with the New Mexico State Land Office being one of only three organizations in New Mexico to receive this distinction. The Woman-Led Top Workplaces award highlights organizations led by women who have built strong, people-first cultures.
The agency also earned recognition in Employee Appreciation, Employee Well-Being, and Professional Development. According to results from employee surveys, the State Land Office ranked within the top 1% among public sector agencies for work-life flexibility and employees’ willingness to recommend their workplace to others. Additionally, it finished in the top 5% for work-life balance, company direction, employee appreciation, innovation, leadership awareness, meaningful work experiences, strong values, and openness to different viewpoints.
“We never get tired of winning these awards because they are proof that this is an amazing place to work,” said Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard. “It wouldn’t be possible to keep winning awards for our workplace culture if we didn’t have some truly incredible people working here, including a diverse team of leaders who bring a wide range of perspectives. I call this staff the ‘Dream Team’ because they are so dedicated to doing great work on behalf of their fellow New Mexicans. We have made deliberate efforts to bring more fairness to the agency, rightsizing employee salaries and benefits and ensuring that every team member is valued for the important work they do. Those investments have paid off in a huge way for the workplace culture at the State Land Office.”
Earlier in 2025, the Albuquerque Journal ranked the State Land Office third among midsize employers in its Top Workplaces list; previously it had ranked first in 2023. In March 2025, USA Today awarded it a Top Workplaces USA Award following participation from over two thousand organizations nationwide.
Commissioner Garcia Richard has introduced policies aimed at investing in employees and promoting fairness throughout her tenure since 2019. These include addressing pay equity issues, increasing diversity among leadership positions, offering remote work options up to three days per week among other measures.
The mission of the New Mexico State Land Office is to generate revenue for schools and public institutions through responsible leasing of state lands for energy production as well as commercial development and agriculture. Last year alone it generated $2.56 billion—part of about $14 billion raised since Garcia Richard took office—for public schools, hospitals and universities across New Mexico by managing over thirteen million acres leased out for various purposes such as ranching or renewable energy projects while maintaining stewardship responsibilities over state trust land.
