2022 DOM Star Achievement Awardees

Melissa has developed into an exceptional supervisor, working beyond her assigned tasks to essentially become the team's HR manager. This role became especially important during the COVID pandemic when team functions rapidly changed, morale was low and burnout high, and the team workload skyrocketed. She has been exemplary in her capacity to maintain UCSF PRIDE values, particularly of professionalism, respect, and excellence, during this stressful time. She has also taken on independent projects and is broadly recognized across the U.S. as an expert in the implementation and dissemination of produce prescription programs.

Zahra puts study participants first and continually comes up with new ideas for supporting their study involvement. She goes out of her way to accommodate participants however she can and includes their ideas as she modifies study methods. She guides participants through the MRI imaging process so they know what to expect, ask more informed questions, and decide whether they can realistically participate. She also instituted a new LYFT ride program that takes participants to and from study visits. This has allowed people who are vulnerable to COVID infection stay off of public transportation, where they are at higher risk for exposure, but still participate in research.

Josh brought expertise in machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as biomedical science, to simultaneously support multiple projects for the lab and the division. Josh played a key role in developing AI-based models that perform very accurately at diagnosing specific disease conditions such pulmonary hypertension from electrocardiograms (ECG). This work was presented at the AHA Scientific sessions and is now under review by a top tier journal. His project-based work over the past year supports the Chancellor’s Priorities in precision medicine, continuous learning, transformative partnerships, and inclusivity.

Doug Black has led the organization and logistics for the Unidos en Salud (United in Health) mass COVID testing for our community (Latino Task Force), DPH, CZ Biohub, and UCSF collaboration. From the first testing back in April 2020 when the city was in shutdown, Doug figured out how to get all the supplies, locations, and so many other logistical items (including specimens to CZ Biohub). He is compassionate for the hardships of the community we serve and is very mission driven. In addition, he stays on top of the cost components to make sure that we stay within our budget. He is truly a beloved member of our team and a wonderful role model for UCSF staff.  

Cissie runs the EatSF food voucher program and put in herculean effort over the previous two years to expand the reach of our infrastructure to better support people in need in our community. While recreating a substantial number of the workflows we had in place to allow staff members to stay at home where possible, Cissie has overseen the distribution of over $1M in vouchers. These activities have truly lived up to our PRIDE values, maximizing our capacity to support the community as a program within UCSF with consistent professionalism and commitment to excellence, showing respect for our partners, honoring the diversity of people experiencing food insecurity in San Francisco (as well as honoring the diversity of people on our staff through her excellent leadership during a very difficult time), and the highest integrity.

Erin improved the clinical trials activation process, plagued by many years of systemic delays and backlog with central campus offices in processing requests for new clinical trials. During her first 12 months, Erin diagnosed several sources of delay within the processes owned by the OCR. Using novel workflows designed by Erin, the team achieved a median of 59 days from submission to completion of budget negotiations compared to a median of 133 days for other Cancer Center studies that did not go through Erin's team. She is highly regarded and trusted as an objective partner and innovative thinker whose goal is to help open trials faster for Cancer Center patients. 

Where Michelle really shines is in the excellence of her work. In her role as a Quality Improvement Analyst, she has risen above-and-beyond and embodied a true spirit of excellence by taking on countless roles to support the division's pandemic response. In the early days of the pandemic response, she was incredibly proactive and enthusiastic about getting involved in various efforts to improve the quality of care we deliver to COVID patients. On top of her work commitment, she enrolled in the UCSF Master of Science Health Administration and Interprofessional Leadership program to further develop her leadership and quality improvement skills.

Michael provides the glue that holds our service together at St Mary’s Medical Center and helps the strengthen the partnership between UCSF and Dignity Health. As the sole administrative support, he is responsible for everything, including scheduling, finances, clinical operations support, technical support, and building relationships with St Mary’s staff. Michael is a great team player and is very committed to achieve the goals of any project he works on. Michael always gets the job done and has a knack for bringing people together to do so. 

As a quantitative specialist, Jennifer has been crucial to the success of her collaborations. She has the ability to explain and facilitate discussions of highly technical methodological terms to colleagues with strong clinical knowledge but often a varied range of statistical backgrounds. Her commitment to quality is shown daily in Jennifer’s work which often translates to rerunning analysis again and again as new information comes to light. She proactively contributes to the integrity of the research, engaging in multiple ways to analyze data to confirm the robustness of her findings. 

Debbie is the "go-to" person in the office and has been complimented by faculty members for being the person they go to who can help them or find out who can help them. Debbie was instrumental in coordinating and supervising a massive relocation of the Nephrology Division offices to Milberry Union in the middle of a pandemic and without working elevators in Milberry Union. This required an extraordinary level of planning, organization, and attention to detail so that everything could be complete in time before the elevators were shut down. Debbie took on many tasks that facilities would have normally done so we could save some funds on our expensive move. Upon reconciliation of expenses after the move, we were within a few hundred dollars of the budgeted cost. 

Nancy is incredibly knowledgeable about the highly complex budget and organizational structure and policies of our group, including our unique approach to clinical service value and calculating protected time. With 150 faculty in our group, each with a different job description and balance sheet, she is the expert in this exceptionally complex system and customizes each individual faculty’s balance sheet according to their evolving needs. There have been many changes and challenges in the past year, and Nancy has risen to the challenge. This includes the transition to UC Path, expertise with DOMBO and the new approach to creating balance sheets for our group, managing a variety of small and large grants, and an upcoming shift to PLUS. 

Kris is a true team player and always steps up to help. During a year when we were extremely short staffed, on top of taking on additional responsibilities, Kris spent time training, helping new staff ramp up, and increasing the overall productivity of the group. Kris initiated and implemented operational process improvements. Kris created a master lookup to streamline the UCPath one-time payment form for faculty incentive payments. The tool reduced errors during HR upload which could otherwise delay payments. Kris also realigned all the budget files to minimize update errors, making the files more user friendly for other analysts and division users. All this was self-initiated because of Kris’s commitment to excellence, based on his experience with user issues in previous budget cycles. 

Gayle is widely recognized by those she works with as one of the best administrators at UCSF. She is conscientious, committed to quality improvement, and often asked to help others do their jobs. She is currently the program manager for the MERI Center in Palliative Care Education at UCSF, Practice-PC: Interprofessional Continuing Education in Palliative Care for Practicing Clinicians, and Palliative Care Leadership Center. Gayle manages the MERI budget (more than $1.3 million) with the utmost integrity. She is also the co-chair of the DPM Anti-Racist Taskforce.

One of Christine’s primary roles is to serve as the scheduler for the UCSF Health DHM, a division that has grown exponentially in the last several years. When she started the job with the division, there were only three to four services and fewer than 50 faculty. The DHM has since grown to over 200 members, and our clinical enterprise has expanded and grown in complexity as well. We now cover four campuses and house 14 distinct clinical services. Christine oversees this extremely complex puzzle with countless moving pieces – and fastidiously maintains records of all requests, agreements and communication exchanges with all members of the division. 

Rosemary’s work is absolutely vital to our division’s success. She supports all of our quality improvement efforts and all of our practice-based research efforts through pulling and cleaning data from the APeX electronic health record. This is a complex task which requires collaboration with multiple teams to ensure that the data pulled is accurate and that data shared is in compliance with regulations. She is able to pull the necessary preliminary data for our proposals, track data for recruitment, and deliver outcomes data for our observational studies and clinical trials. Even when times are challenging and the task may be difficult or unfamiliar, Rosemary maintains a positive can-do attitude.

While Matthew’s scope of work is larger than office and laboratory moves and renovations, this is one of the areas where his success is most clearly visible. He takes the extra time to meet with faculty, lab members, and staff to understand their day-to-day work, research, operations, and equipment. He builds trusts and works closely with everyone to ensure the move or construction does not disrupt or jeopardize their work or research. Matthew learns the layout of all the labs to know where equipment is located, how they are used, who or which lab owns it. Therefore, he is able to negotiate and discuss with the Principal Investigators (PI) to efficiently relocate and store equipment when needed. His professionalism, patient/calm/respectful demeanor, and knowledge/expertise has made him very effective in handling this resulting in win/win situations. 

Tiffany directs several large and complex projects, including a multicenter study of diagnostic errors involving 30 sites and more than 100 collaborators, a related COVID-19 quality improvement and education collaborative involving more than 50 hospitals and 500 collaborators (HOMERuN), and our local startup ADviCE Health, which includes oversight of informatics fellows, students, technical contributors, as well as relationships with external collaborators and regulatory agencies. Additionally, Tiffany catalyzed innovation in the space of digital health through her work bringing apps, companies, and academic centers together in a single collaborative space. Tiffany oversees all these projects with calmness, collegiality, humor, intelligence, and poise. 

Connie is someone who consistently goes above and beyond in her role and takes the initiative to problem solve when new things arise. There is never a task too small that Connie will not expertly handle to support both UCSF providers and patients. In all of her work, she embodies all elements of UCSF PRIDE values. Connie is also extremely innovative in her work, which often requires in the moment problem solving. One of the most consistent pieces of feedback about Connie is how much she has helped with connecting underserved patients with care which has been a huge asset to patients hospitalized at UCSF. 

Natalia managed all the administrative needs for 50 new hires, the largest cohort in the history of UCSF DHM. She managed important logistics for patient care, such as setting up badge access and pagers, with excellent organization and communication skills. She credentialed new hires at two different campuses – UCSF Health Parnassus and St. Mary's Medical Center – with two completely different systems, IT, and external vendors. Natalia is the first staff member to interact closely with new hires, and professionalism is vital when welcoming our incoming faculty and fellows. She has a positive attitude and is kind, approachable, and happy to help anyone.

Lena is exceptional in all domains – she is hardworking, detail-oriented, forward thinking, and works incredibly well with others. She is an excellent problem solver, always asking thoughtful questions and thinking about what problems we are trying to solve instead of jumping to solutions. In her role as the Clinical Scheduler, she receives tons of scheduling requests, some last minute and after hours. Lena consistently goes out of her way to accommodate everyone’s submission and prioritize taking care of the scheduling holes so it doesn’t fall on the Service Directors. Lena is the representative of DHM as she is the first in contact with applicants, which is an imperative task in the recruitment process. Lena has brought in a total of 13 excellent clinical hires for FY23. 

Raeni directly manages a team of five research financial analysts, provides indirect support to an additional six research financial analysts, and has oversight of ~$106.1M in annual sponsored project revenue. She has created a supportive environment for her staff, one that fosters elevated levels of motivation, collaboration, productivity, and quality services. She has developed strong loyalty from her team and can identify individual strengths and areas for growth for each individual. In addition, Raeni has temporarily covered the research administration responsibilities of a division manager. The proficiency and stamina she demonstrated, which she continues to do for the vacant division manager position, allowed the divisions to have a level of operational continuity that would not have existed in her absence. 

Adrienne (Rain) began as a data manager for a project in Brazil. Rain quickly exceeded her scope in data management, as she jumped into the intricacies of data base architecture, helping to ensure that our international partners in Brazil had access to a user-friendly system that met all of their data tracking needs. She kept the team up to date on recruitment and retention; she programmed all of the surveys; she quality checked every form; and she has now jumped into learning new methods for data analysis. In fact, she has been learning new skills and tools independently as well as seeking courses to shore up her knowledge base. She has demonstrated a deep desire to learn whatever is needed to ensure the success of our project and to support her teammates in the U.S. and globally. Our teams across the globe have universally let me know how much they appreciate her patience, her contributions, and her warmth.

Sandra is an absolutely integral part of the research infrastructure of our division and displays utmost professionalism in all that she does. Sandra is committed to ensuring that our researchers are compliant with all regulations when it comes to data security and human subjects review and has taken the responsibility very seriously – she corresponds regularly with anyone conducting human subjects research to confirm that their documentation is up-to-date and compliant. In addition, Sandra has been working on improving our division’s project management approaches, updating the fields in the DHM Project Tracker to ensure that the most relevant and useful information is tracked for each project our division undertakes. Sandra is a highly organized person, and this commitment to organization has been absolutely critical to the successful completion of these research infrastructure tasks.

Kenny plays an instrumental role in BHHI as the project manager for a suite of studies that use linked cross-sector data to understand homelessness. He is the founding manager of the UCSF/SFDPH Center of Excellence on Homelessness. This past year, Kenny helped two research teams develop quantitative research surveys for data collection. The project managers were not adept with REDCap, the interview software, and were unable to troubleshoot entering the complex survey into REDCap. Kenny stepped in to get the projects started successfully. Doing so allowed two critical projects (including the Statewide Survey on Homelessness) to launch successfully. Without Kenny’s expertise and willingness to help, this would not have happened. Kenny’s willingness to step in to work with his colleagues demonstrates his can-do attitude, his incredible teamwork, and his mentorship. 

​Francine continuously demonstrates exceptional organizational skills that have generated greater community partnerships, extra grants to expand the LCOE’s work, and research collaborations that inform and keep our communities healthy and safe. Francine also brings her signature positive attitude to all her proposal writing. She is thorough with the research needed to understand the problems presented and how to ameliorate them with specific programmatic interventions. Her deep understanding of data analysis puts her in a unique position to help with program evaluations and report writing that is essential to garnering future grants. She is always open to collaboration and values input from everyone – staff, faculty, and community leaders. Francine’s ideas and conversations are always inclusive and grounded in equity, ensuring that everyone has a voice at the table. Her efforts to ensure everyone’s voice is heard is commendable.

​ Cherie stepped into managing a division with an inexperienced interim chief and no transition overlap with the prior DM. She had to learn an entirely new division (its people, structure, focus areas, and quirks) without the benefit of a reliable source of institutional memory and not being able to meet her new division members in person. Cherie has approached these challenges with a degree of grace and positivity that exemplifies UCSF’s PRIDE values. Cherie has proven to be extraordinarily skilled and competent in all domains required for a division manager, including HR, grants management, supervision, and fiscal responsibility. While she maintains and extends the highest levels of competence in the technical aspects of her new position, she has also shown great empathy, compassion, and concern for those around her.

​ Sarah is critical to developing and implementing the Center’s communication plan, managing research projects, and managing as well as implementing the campus-wide Digital Collaborative initiative which enables UCSF faculty and staff to more rapidly and efficiently discover, develop, validate, deploy, and scale digital innovation across UCSF. Sarah took the initiative to re-frame and re-organize our website according to our Center’s foundational principles and established a process for consistently managing all of our communications channels including our Twitter account, website, and content for various newsletters. She is consistently professional in her communication with colleagues and with project teams as well as accountable and reliable. With Sarah, we never have to worry about her missing a deadline. She’s dedicated, organized, and a hard worker, and she always strives for excellence. She pushes the rest of us to do our best. 

​ Sam wears many hats, and her duties encompass a variety of administrative tasks and complex projects. She is considered the primary point of contact for all troubleshooting and customer-service related questions due to her professionalism and efficiency. As the pandemic continued to have multiple surges, Sam had to juggle the many media outlet requests that would come in to interview the chair of the Department of Medicine. Sam seamlessly coordinated each interview. Sam also led project support for the ICU care model workgroup as well as the DOM Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey. Her involvement in the ICU care workgroup allowed the department to see how the stakeholders perceive the current ICU model of care as well as analyze the actual quality of care and education. Her involvement in the NPS Survey allowed the department to evaluate the work experience among our physicians and providers. Through these projects, Sam fostered innovation and showed professionalism and respect for her peers as well as patients.

​ Paula is talented at doing so many things well that she has helped the vast majority of faculty and staff in Geriatrics overcome at least one problem to facilitate the tremendous success of the Division. She steps in when needed to get projects done quickly and with excellence. She also took on the Division’s very successful social media forums (Facebook, Twitter, and our weekly email newsletter, “GeriNews”) which helps everyone keep in touch with the happenings in the Division and with each other. This has been especially important during the pandemic when we are more isolated from each other. She is prompt, professional in her email communications, and has a great way of helping people feel valued and heard.

​ Over the past year, Aaron completed the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute program, becoming a certified executive coach to increase his own skill and the value he brings to the table as our director of staff experience. While this commitment took over six months of time, it benefited our leaders and staff inside and outside the department. Aaron went above and beyond what was required and recruited graduates from his Berkeley cohort to offer pro-bono executive coaching to our staff leaders. He collaborated with other program graduates – incredible leaders in their own disciplines and professional backgrounds – and offered to match them with DOM staff leaders. The initial coaching package was offered at no charge to them or the DOM. Leaders who took advantage of this opportunity were able to benefit from highly skilled leaders in a way that we would not have been able to easily access or offer otherwise.

​ Alyssa has led the production team lead for Grand Rounds for the last two years and has done an incredible job of planning, developing contingency plans, and executing the program flawlessly every week. Attendance skyrocketed to 500-1000 people watching live and often 100,000 people viewing it on YouTube afterwards. It is because of her dedication to excellence that the production is so polished and effortless for the speakers. Alyssa’s commitment also extends to the UCSF community via her participation on several committees, all above and beyond her regular scope of work. She has served on the IT Customer Service Advisory Board, the Collaboration Tools Subcommittee, and the IS-3 Advisory Group, and has advocated for people who risk being overlooked. Alyssa’s organizational skills are top notch, enabling any team she leads to work together efficiently while having fun.

​ Robert is a natural leader and people person. He has helped transform our relatively new Center and the impact of the work we do, coalescing our entire analytic team around him. Because of his ability to so adeptly balance integrity and excellence, he is increasingly being asked to serve in campus-wide efforts to improve how we share and protect our data assets, notably playing a lead role in working with CTSI to develop its honest broker program for Clarity access. Robert’s specific role is critical because he is developing the policies that will comprise the program and also testing them in the context of his own work. Our success as a new and growing research center is due in large part to his efforts. Equally important, he is working to address really challenging problems at the campus level that will transform research data access.

​ Sarina is instrumental in the management of the Performance Evaluation Portal and stepped up immensely in 2021, as we added new features and units onto the system. Sarina has gone above and beyond to transition into fully managing the PE Portal and is an integral part to the success of all the tool. As the volume of users continues to increase for the Performance Evaluation Portal, Sarina, without a doubt, demonstrates PRIDE values in her work every day. Not only does she manage the system, she also works closely with users and programmers to add new feature and improve the tool. She cares deeply about improving the user experience and loves hearing honest feedback from users. Sarina takes the feedback and works with the programming to try and implement new features. 

​ Aiesha has consistently exceeded expectations in all of their job tasks, duties, and UCSF PRIDE values. Aiesha’s achievements will result in helping tens of thousands of people across the country engage in advance care planning and have their end-of-life wishes honored. Their achievement involves going above and beyond to take on the coordination of several new projects for other team members who were on leave over the COVID 19 pandemic, in addition to their ongoing stellar work performance. In addition, Aiesha has helped our team learn, adopt, and execute new Kanban program management techniques over the past two years. This has greatly streamlined our efficiency and effective work together as a team over several years.

​ This past year, Rosemary was the administrative leader for multiple projects. In particular, she partnered with Director of Recruitment and Hiring and Director of the Diversity Recruitment. In this role, she streamlined the process from the day an applicant submitted their application to the day they received their offer letter with a level of attention to detail that is required for the process to go smoothly. Prospective applicants commended us for an interview day that leaves them feeling cared for, welcomed, and well shepherded – this is in large part due to Rosemary’s outstanding organizational and interpersonal skills. In addition, Rosemary has taken extra initiative to support our staff, fellow, and faculty well-being. She preemptively sought out resources and efforts to help us cope with the impact of COVID-19, offering child care solutions, self-care resources, and community-building events. Rosemary has gone above and beyond to make these resources available and our divisional surveys show that everyone feels supported.

​ Kara has the complex job of cultivating and managing relationships of BHHI stakeholders locally, across the state, and nationally. In the span of a few months on the job, Kara was tasked with building and nurturing these relationships to help inform the initiation and implementation of a first-of-its-kind California State Survey of People Experiencing Homelessness conducted by the BHHI. A key component of the study is extensive input from three separate stakeholder groups. Kara has ably managed these groups, as well as relationships with each County’s partners and our funders. Kara’s expertise has been critical to ensuring stakeholder involvement and buy-in. In addition, Kara has taken on a major role in staff development and support for the State Survey and the BHHI. For example, to support staff in their work, Kara developed a secondary trauma circle where she meets with the staff on a weekly basis to process and decompress their experiences. The staff members have reported that these circles are critical to their mental health and their ability to process together and move on. Kara’s creative, thoughtful and kind approach to finding solutions and supporting our staff have been critical to the success of this massive project.