Ashley Wiensch

Ashley really stepped up this year and demonstrated exceptional customer service as well as teamwork, and she made a significant impact to our Public Health Informatics Program. Before the pandemic, she initiated efforts to build a strong culture for our program. She helped bring our scientists and external collaborators together for exchanging ideas and setting strategies for the program. She also supported efforts to get the word out about our program, working with the PR team so organizations know who we are and what we do. This includes efforts to update the RI website. When the pandemic hit, she became the key connector in RI for making things happen. She coordinated efforts around the private dashboard which later became the public dashboard for COVID. She also helped us pull together several grants with many, many co-investigators for submission on projects related to COVID. She further supported new projects that were in motion well before COVID, making sure these projects actually moved forward given that many of us scientists were focused on COVID response / interviews / data / etc. This included helping to nudge and review/proof publications by our trainees and co-investigators. My success and the success of the program simply would not be possible without Ashley. She positively impacts RI and our research every day, and she remains focused on building a strong culture for our program despite the daily chaos and many fires we often have to deal with. For these many reasons, I believe she deserves a One Regenstrief Award.