Serves as the expert in Zoonotic and Vector borne diseases and provides guidance surrounding prevention and control of these diseases to public health partners and the public. Tracks and monitors infectious diseases using EpiTrax disease surveillance system. Analyzes and interprets data and provides recommendations to stakeholders and leadership. Prepares disease related reports, grant applications, narratives and progress reports. Provides back up support to other epidemiologists within Epidemiology program. Supports emergent infectious disease response. Committee leader for annual Utah One Health Symposium.Key Accomplishments:• Lead UDOH coordinator and project manager for the large, multi-agency, One Health outbreak response efforts to the novel COVID-19 mink farm outbreaks in Utah• Designed, organized, and implemented state-wide gap analysis and needs assessment of rabies resources in the state to improve the timeliness, effectiveness, and organization of rabies response in Utah

Over the past two years, I have built my consulting business from the ground up. It began with me sharing stories about my fitness journey online and one person reaching out to ask me to help them. My mentorship business evolved from fitness, into life coaching, and eventually business coaching where I helped my clients take their ideas and turn them into reality. One of my highlights was helping a client who was on the verge of shutting down her nutrition coaching business she had been working on for over 3 years, making on average $100-200 per month from her coaching, to growing her business and deepening her impact by selling out her mentorship programs and achieving several $10k months during our time working together. The impact she had on her clients deepened, she found joy again in her work, and she revived her business into something she was proud of. The core of my coaching philosophy was to guide the client to finding their own unique voice, keep service at the center of their "why", and help them to take the most impactful steps to move their ideas forward and make true progress on their goals. I help them build their own personal brands that highlighted what they are able to offer in the most honest, authentic, and impactful way. My entire business was built on sharing my own personal story and fostering authentic connections with those who resonated with what I shared. My business was run entirely on Instagram and Facebook, utilizing the features built within those platforms to create and build relationships and community. Relationship building was the key to the success of my business, and fostering honest, genuine relationships is a skill I have been able to strengthen significantly throughout this experience.

I had the opportunity to be one of the Health and Wellness coach for 25 schools within the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). I was responsible for visiting each school to offer 1:1 and group support to the faculty and staff at each location. I worked with over 100 TUSD staff to set achievable health goals, take concrete action to move forward, and was there to support them along the way when they hit a challenge. The core of my coaching was focused on nutrition, fitness, stress management, and sleep hygiene. One of my favorite memories was helping an individual dealing with significant stress in her job adopt a practice of gratitude journaling into her morning routine and watching how much this new habit positively changed her perspective. I worked closely with the team of other wellness coaches to plan fitness challenges, a district-wide wellness fair, and come up with creative incentives for staff to take advantage of our services.

In my role as an Epidemiologist II, I was the liaison between the Office of Surveillance and the Foodborne/Enteric program. I worked closely with the Foodborne/Enteric program directors to understand their day-to-day business needs and processes, as well as fix any bugs, or build any new reports or workflows they needed built to enhance their impact using the MAVEN electronic disease surveillance system. I brought this information back to my team of software developers so that we could build, test and then implement these updates or new features. In this position, I was the manager for a small team of research analysts responsible for the timely and accurate entry of paper reports we received into our office. I helped them to prioritize data entry of thousands of paper reports and kept the programs within the bureau informed of data entry progress if there were ever backlogs. I also had the incredible opportunity to be a part of outbreak investigation and assist in using the data collected in MAVEN to help inform and investigate a Foodborne outbreak. (Caution: this kind of work may significantly reduce your interest in going out to eat...).

As the Epidemiologist I, my primary role was to operate as the liaison between the Office of Surveillance and Informatics and the HIV Program. I worked within the office responsible for building and maintaining the state-wide electronic disease surveillance system, MAVEN, that captured and relayed important information to mitigate the spread of infectious disease in the state. I was the lead project manager for a federally funded grant initiative to enhance the interoperability of different siloed electronic health records in the state to "speak" to one another, and one of my main priorities was to incorporate the HIV data into the larger disease surveillance system.When I came into this position, the HIV Program was just beginning the process of integrating their HIV electronic health record and reporting system (eHARS) into MAVEN. I worked closely with the HIV Program to understand their business needs and processes, as well as what kinds of workflows, reports, and enhancements they may need to make their jobs flow easier and more efficiently. I brought this information back to my team of software developers so that we could build, test and then implement these updates or new features. In this role I learned how to speak different "languages" to translate what the program needed and work with the developers to make it come to life. This was an entirely new system and processes were going to change significantly for the HIV team, and I lead the change management initiative throughout this process. Over the 2 year project, I played a key role in managing the successful incorporation of HIV data into MAVEN, and was able to see the process from the beginning to a functioning HIV module that was able to support and enhance health interventions faster and more efficiently than before.

As the Manager of Medical products, I was the main contact point for any current or prospective customers interested in the WHO Pre-Qualified solar powered medical vaccine refrigerator product line. These refrigerators served as the solution to the vaccine cold-chain challenge of getting life-saving vaccine to remote areas around the world that did not have access to electricity. I had the opportunity of building relationships with large international relief and aid organizations like UNICEF, WHO, World Vision, and many more to help them with the process of receiving, installing and using these refrigerators. I updated training materials and other documentation to aid the installation process, as well as marketing materials to help prospective customers understand and gain interest in our product. During my time in this role, I was the lead project manager to facilitate an on-site visit by one of our engineers who helped with a country-wide installation and training of technicians in Cameroon. I was also given the opportunity to coordinate and attend an international medical conference in Nigeria where we were able to market our products and engage with current and prospective clients. This role gave me extensive experience in relationship building, understanding of manufacturing and quality assurance in a warehouse, as well as exposure to large scale international project management.

During my time at STC, I was trained in multiple roles and worked in several different areas of the company, gaining a balanced and diverse collection of skills and experiences. I was originally hired on as a Public Health intern where I carried out a qualitative research project to highlight the powerful impact of the electronic health record suite of tools our customers used. This experience introduced me to the world of health information technology, and was my first exposure to electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR). I was hired on full time as a Communication Specialist where I produced written and video training documentation both for our customers as well as in-house staff. When a new feature was added into our disease surveillance system, for example, I would create a written report of the new feature, as well as a video documentation using Camtasia to show how the new feature worked. I was then given the opportunity to work within the Quality Assurance team as a QA specialist to help with finding bugs, testing updates, and moving bugs and new features through the process of change using JIRA to track progress. This experience gave me first hand understanding and respect for the "back-end" side of a dynamic electronic database, as well as the work the developers put in to make these changes. I was then promoted to the Public Health Associate role where I worked closely with our state health department customers to understand their business needs and day to day workflow so that their disease surveillance systems and immunization registries were working optimally. In this role I was also given the chance to help with the marketing materials for a new consumer facing electronic health record tool, as well as contribute to the data analysis and interpretation for a research project analyzing the impact of health clinic missions in Guatemala.

In my role as a medical record abstractor, I pulled important and timely skin cancer data from Epic and entered it into a database where the clinicians would be able to use it to make informed health care decisions. This experience was a great exposure to how health information technology and electronic medical records impacts and informs health care interventions. After 5 months in this role, I was given the opportunity to train new employees in the process.

As the Public Relations intern, I was given the opportunity to develop, organize and coordinate a community outreach book reading event for new refugee families. I also created conducted research and created an outline for an open house event intended to educate prospective donors. Perhaps my favorite experience was assisting in job readiness/vocational training for refugees preparing to apply for a job.