Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate presented a National Association of Secretaries of State Medallion Award to Ambassador Kenneth Quinn at the state Capitol on Monday, the secretary’s office announced. The award recognizes Quinn’s years of service as a U.S. State Department official and as president of the World Food Prize Foundation. In the 1970s, Quinn was the first U.S. official to alert the State Department to the Khmer Rouge and genocide in Cambodia. Quinn later oversaw the Iowa SHARES program to deliver medicine, food and supplies to Cambodians. He helped secretly evacuate Vietnamese nationals during the fall of Saigon in 1975 and worked with Gov. Bob Ray to resettle Southeast Asian refugees in Iowa. Quinn led the World Food Prize Foundation for 20 years, retiring in 2019.