CIO Division May the Fourth Employee Recognitions

May 4, 2023
May the fourth - Celebration Header

The Employee Engagement Council (EEC) acknowledges that everyone in the CIO Division is doing outstanding work. Coordinating with managers, supervisors, and directors to use this opportunity to recognize individuals and teams for their efforts over the past year and set the stage for future recognition opportunities of this type next year. Thank you to everyone for attending in-person or via zoom. If you weren't able to attend or missed picking up your recognition certificate, please email us so we can get it to you.

Congratulations to all those recognized for their long term commitment and dedication to the University and to those who were recognized for their individual efforts and support of their department and/or team. 

Years of Service recipients

10 Years

  • Dawoud Alhaddad - Systems Services
  • Valerie Arzola - Systems Services
  • Adam Borders - Systems Services
  • Barry Brummund - Administration
  • Ami Buczek - Digital Experience Technologies
  • Youpeng Cai - UAIR
  • Jessica Calderwood - UAIR
  • Natalia Costea Ibanez - Administrative Technologies
  • Zuleima Cota - UAIR
  • Brian Edwards - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Jeffrey Jones - Student & Academics
  • Brian Kuper - UAIR
  • Susan Legg - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Evy Lizárraga - Student & Academics
  • Dustin Mouton - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Andy Orta - Administrative Technologies
  • Michael Pama - Support Services
  • Firoz Pathan - UAIR
  • Seth Pederson - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Paul Radek - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Rico Silva - UAIR
  • Anna Streight - Support Services

15 Years

  • Joseph Cate - Digital Experience Technologies
  • Chris Dickey - Support Services
  • Juan Godoy - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Brad Hensley - Student & Academics
  • Mark O'Dell - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Michael Urquidez - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies

20 Years

  • Fermin Garcia - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies
  • Angela Hopkins - Support Services
  • Nicolas Lopez - Support Services
  • Paul Scarce - Infrastructure & Foundational Technologies

25 Years

  • Brandon Howell - Support Services
  • Todd Merritt - Research & Discovery Technologies
  • Suzanne Mulligan - Support Services
  • Michael Verselle - Administrative Technologies

30 Years

  • Chris Corral - Student & Academics

Recognition Certificate recipients

  • IMPROVING THE UALERT PROCESS IN A COLLABORATIVE WAY
    Submitted by Tim Schwab

    Congratulations to this team who has taken responsibility for UALERT service ownership in order to provide standardized governance structure and support, and technical support.

    • Alexander Blandeburgo
    • Miguel Delgado
    • Amy Glicken
    • Marcos Guzman
    • Chris Kopach
    • Mario Leon
    • Teddy Lopez
    • Yvonne Lorch
    • Pilar Martinez
    • Carol Miller
    • Pam Scott
    • Bob Sommerfeld
    • Lane Spalla
    • Kendra Vossler
    • Sarah Wieland

  • MOVING DOCUWARE OFF HYPER V
    Submitted by Tim Schwab

    Congratulations for getting the DOCUWARE system moved onto aws and making the HIPAA privacy program system compliant with HPP security standards.

    • Alex Alvarez
    • Mark Koenig
    • Misty McCormick
    • Michael Verselle

  • OUTSTANDING COLLABORATIVE WORK ON A TEAM
    Submitted by Tim Schwab

    Congratulations for outstanding collaborative work on information security training getting the training in EDGE Learning.

    • Teresa Banks
    • Adam Borders
    • Vicki Emanuel
    • Mark Fischer
    • Ashley Kurtz
    • Teddy Lopez
    • Amelia Rosenberg
    • Charles Sandoval
    • Jessica Woodworth

  • OUTSTANDING WELLNESS AMBASSADORS
    Submitted by Teddy Lopez

    Matt Shimel and Grishma Chitrakar helped us all improve and find a good life/work balance. They are members of the uits employee engagement council and our life & work connections ambassadors. They keep us moving in move arizona and just make our department a better place to work.

    • Grishma Chitrakar
    • Matt Shimel

  • OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS
    Submitted by Laura Lukomski

    In recognition of your innovation in automating test scripts, Congratulations to Natalia Costea Ibanez, Rene Fimbres, and Tim Stafford. Your efforts have proactively identified vendor continuous delivery issues and prevented negative impacts to UARIZONA's production UACCESS research.

    • Natalia Costea Ibanez
    • Rene Fimbres
    • Tim Stafford

  • BEWARE THE FORCE OF OUR UITS SOFTWARE VENDOR MANAGEMENT EXPERT!
    Submitted by Susan Richards

    Congratulations to Emily Perry for strategically constructing rfps, relentless negotiations and successful contract implementations – Emily knows how to optimize software vendor interactions – and always with a winning smile!

    • Emily Perry

  • OPTIMIZATION SUPERHERO AWARD
    Submitted by Emily Geiges

    In less than 6 weeks, Melissa Dojaquez was able to learn our various systems, make order of our contractors, identify and convince multiple vendors to credit back over $61,000 in overpayments, and expedited the DCC process!

    • Melissa Dojaquez

  • OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP & TEAM COLLABORATION
    Submitted by Carol Corry

    AJ Romano has shown leadership by creating efficiencies in our monthly reporting processes. He presents his ideas collaboratively and is always receptive to feedback. Thank you AJ!

    • AJ Romano

  • OUTSTANDING CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL TEAM COLLABORATION
    Submitted by Emily Perry

    This cross-departmental team with procurement & contracting services has worked with grace under pressure; readily supporting one another and freely exchanging knowledge for the benefit of university beyond uits.

    • Zane Forier
    • Ernette Garcia
    • Celeste Kanzig
    • Sonya Lopez-Escamilla
    • Ted Nasser
    • Jill Rodgers-Hunt

  • TEAM PLAYER AWARD
    Submitted by Kelly South

    Congratulations to Lisa Stage, recipient of the team player award for doing a magnificent job providing communications and marketing to support services and campus it partnership, and other areas of the division, including the marcomm team.

    • Lisa Stage

  • TEAM PLAYER AWARD
    Submitted by Kelly South

    Congratulations to Memo Meraz. He is being recognized with the team player award for growing and expanding the it.arizona.edu website and giving creative marketing support for new and existing initiatives.

    • Guillermo Meraz

  • SHINING STAR AWARD
    Submitted by Kelly South

    Mary brings a creative energy to her work, helping the marcomm team explore new opportunities to increase its impact and effectiveness.

    • Mary Veres

  • OUTSTANDING TEAM COLLABORATION
    Submitted by Audrey Ashcraft

    Congratulations to the it service management team for embodying teamwork in every way they collaborate with uits units, it campus partners, and staff. Way to go!

    • Miguel Garza
    • Juan Godoy
    • Genevieve Lorenz
    • Patricia Moreno Vega
    • Jonathan Timmermann

  • OUTSTANDING PROJECT LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by David Gerlach

    Cecilia Gunn has been doing an awesome job leading the telco service management project and providing program support and direction for hosted telephony services.

    • Cecilia Gunn

  • OUTSTANDING PROGRAM LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by David Gerlach

    Paul Radek is new to the team but has already contributed much. He is taking on strategic portfolio management and co-directing efax implementation. All the while providing product leadership for Amazon Cloud contact center.

    • Paul Radek

  • OUTSTANDING TEAM LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by David Gerlach

    Audrey Ashcraft with her team of 4 developers and 4 analysts has led us through 3 iterations of the service catalog with several UI/UX improvements. She’s supporting ASITS, contributes greatly to the SLT process working group, and is about halfway through the MOR leadership program.

    • Audrey Ashcraft

  • OUTSTANDING PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
    Submitted by David Gerlach

    Jill Rodgers-Hunt is new to the team, but has already contributed much. She’s sourcing an atlassian licensing solution and her experience has been incredibly valuable for the efax project, as well as the atlassian transition project (server to cloud).

    • Jill Rodgers-Hunt

  • OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by Lanita Collette

    Jeff Albano and Tyson Korhonen have provided outstanding managerial and technical leadership in the rapid development and deployment of the tlc program. It was an ambitious, intense timeline and they delivered!

    • Jeff Albano
    • Tyson Korhonen

  • HOMETOWN TALENT AWARD
    Submitted by Cecilia Gunn

    Isabel Sha joined UITS as a student worker and now she plays an important role in transitioning 400+ depts (25k lines) to zoom phone.

    • Isabel Sha

  • ULTIMATE SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT AWARD
    Submitted by Cecilia Gunn

    Miriam Villalobos is an exceptional subject matter expert with her extensive knowledge of telco/netops financial daily operations, coupled with her positive attitude, she is a dream of any it project manager/business analyst.

    • Miriam Villalobos

  • SERVICENOW BRIGHT STAR AWARD
    Submitted by Cecilia Gunn

    Juan Godoy navigates the road less traveled with ease on the servicenow telecom service management project. He’s a calm troubleshooter and dedicated servicenow developer, making the impossible possible.

    • Juan Godoy

  • ATLAS AWARD
    Submitted by Rhonda Royse

    David Drozd has taken on the role of atlas. He has carried much of the access management technologies department on his back as we have searched for individuals to join the team. His “CAN DO” attitude and positive attitude has been amazing.

    • David Drozd

  • UTSTANDING PARTICIPATION IN UNIVERSITY LEVEL EVENT/WORKING GROUP
    Submitted by Ravneet Chadha

    Mark Ray has co-chaired the persistence and completion working group for the university for the past two years, serving as an important thought leader for this group of campus professionals and leading the development of several strategic tools that ultimately benefit all student success initiatives.

    • Mark Ray

  • OUTSTANDING PARTICIPATION IN UNIVERSITY LEVEL EVENT/WORKING GROUP
    Submitted by Ravneet Chadha

    Eddie Caratachea is leading the reporting and analytics aspect of the Financials Modernization project for the University. He has contributed a wealth of administrative data knowledge and played a key role in preparing for change management from a reporting perspective.

    • Eddie Caratachea

  • OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by Ravneet Chadha

    Ashley Hurand serves as a true champion for uair and has done a tremendous job leading efforts that tie together the work of the entire team for the benefit of our campus community. Her dedication towards enhancing institutional data literacy will leave a lasting impact.

    • Ashley Hurand

  • OUTSTANDING COLLABORATION
    Submitted by Ashley Hurand

    Ellie Wood is always willing to bring the right people to the table to solve a problem; collaborating effectively across the department and at all levels of leadership.

    • Ellie Wood

  • OUTSTANDING MENTORSHIP
    Submitted by Ashley Hurand

    Always with an eye towards the future, Ravneet Chadha consistently seeks out opportunities to support his entire team’s growth and development of skills necessary to achieve their goals. In addition, his guidance and support have been invaluable to my own professional growth during my tenure with uair.

    • Ravneet Chadha

  • OUTSTANDING COLLEAGUE
    Submitted by Ashley Hurand

    Never one to back down from a challenge or fail to step up to support his team, Mark Ray approaches his work with others with a high degree of professionalism, humor and humility. He is exceptional colleague to all.

    • Mark Ray

  • OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
    Submitted by Ashley Hurand

    With an exceptional eye for detail, commitment to continuous improvement and high degree of emotional intelligence, Wendy Fish has transformed her team since joining UAIR about a year ago.

    • Wendy Fish

  • COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE
    Submitted by Mark Ray

    Rico Silva has made an impact across the team and within the wider organization by ensuring that top quality work is our minimum expectation.

    • Rico Silva

  • OUTSTANDING TEAM COLLABORATION
    Submitted by Sanjana Nikolich-Singh

    Congratulations to the Campus Web Services sub-teams who have successfully migrated almost 300 websites. Along with new resources, the team enhanced the system, documentation, and collaboration to execute projects with client partnership.

    • Hayden Bac
    • Brian Berndt
    • Donna Bieg
    • Nate Byerley
    • Cameron Green
    • Chris Green
    • Dana Hertzberg
    • Markos Iordanopoulos
    • Joe Lutovsky
    • John Moore
    • Sanjana Nikolich-Singh
    • Joe Parsons
    • Curt Poff
    • Eric Samboy
    • Ashley Slay
    • Carris Toupin

  • HELPING HAND AWARD
    Submitted by Walter Ries

    Kevin Harper and Eugene Hart helped us tremendously with our custom app migration to AWS. They provided the continuity and connection to ensure we had the right people helping us. Kevin diligently worked hard to solve difficult technical problems, hooking all the programs, servers, databases, websites, etc. together.

    • Kevin Harper
    • Eugene Hart

  • DELIVERING THE GOODS
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Without question or complaint, Logan Keating has adopted the primary administrative role in mail delivery with incredible speed. His care for the service is truly remarkable.

    • Logan Keating

  • COVERING THE CUSTOMER
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Chelsea Benson’s passion for the customer shows in each incident she covers and in the many improvements she has brought to the team.

    • Chelsea Benson

  • SECURITY PRO
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Without hesitation, Jeffrey Jones has dived deep into securing all the services the teams cover. His passion and depth of knowledge have us all covered.

    • Jeffrey Jones

  • DEVELOPER EXTRAORDINAIRE
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Standing up end-to-end provisioning processes, automating common tasks, and providing efficiency applications are just a few ways Garrett Flora makes the University better.

    • Garrett Flora

  • PARTNERS IN CRIME!
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Identity Access Management team members Mark Fischer, Tim Darby, David Hoover, and Sam Gilbert have assisted us with crucial work! They consistently bring creative ideas, depth of knowledge and willingness to try new approaches!

    • Tim Darby
    • Mark Fischer
    • Sam Gilbert
    • David Hoover

  • PARTNERS IN SOLVING CRIME!
    Submitted by Adam Brokamp

    Working with the information security office team has not only been incredibly effective, it’s also been very fun. Chris Demetriou, Jayla Fry, Sonia Nazaroff, Steven Holt and Sergio Grajeda deserve 100 awards.

    • Chris Demetriou
    • Jayla Fry
    • Sergio Grajeda
    • Steven Holt
    • Sonia Nazaroff

  • CONTROLLED AND REGULATED PATIENCE, PERSISTENCE, AND PERSEVERANCE AWARD
    Submitted by Jeremy Frumkin

    In recognition of Ryan Duitman’s efforts, working in collaboration with the cyverse team and with the research technologies infrastructure team, as well as the HIPAA privacy office, to obtain an “authorization to operate” for cyverse health, as part of the soteria project.

    • Ryan Duitman

  • IF A SWISS ARMY KNIFE AND SUPERGLUE WERE COMBINED AND THEN MADE INTO A SUPERHERO AWARD
    Submitted by Jeremy Frumkin

    In recognition of Robbie McPherson’s amazing impact on so many disparate efforts, including UA vitae, our unit’s role in ASITS, our small but growing project management, business analysis, metrics, and marketing & communications work team.

    • Robbie McPherson

  • RESEARCH OPTICS AWARD
    Submitted by Jeremy Frumkin and Chris Reidy

    In recognition of Devin Bayly’s multitude of work with research data visualization, with particular note to his support of visualization for the wonderhouse at SXSW which raised the profile of our division and the university.

    • Devin Bayly

  • MOST VALUABLE ASITS CONTRIBUTOR
    Submitted by Maysoon Eshelman

    Tim Nitz has scheduled 100+ meetings with campus it units to review the asits transition planning toolkits.

    • Tim Nitz

  • CITP NAVIGATOR EXTRAORDINAIRE
    Submitted by Maysoon Eshelman

    Asya Roberts has been successfully navigating campus it partners into enterprise services before it was a mandate.

    • Asya Roberts

  • MOST VALUED PARTNER
    Submitted by Maysoon Eshelman

    Dan Mayhew of business affairs shared services has been a source of great support to uits as we implement asits. He has provided critical feedback and strong partnership.

    • Dan Mayhew

  • MVP of BLUECAT
    Submitted by Maysoon Eshelman

    Alex Alvarez has led the project and team to move over 75 file shares to sharepoint/teams and about 1800 workstations into bluecat.

    • Alex Alvarez
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