2025 HR Award Winners Announced

Every year, we recognize the talent, drive, and dedication of UPMC Enterprises’ employees with three major awards from our Human Resources department. Congratulations to this year’s three winners of the Better Award, Together Award, and the Heppenstall Leadership Award! Learn more about your colleagues and the talents and accomplishments that earned them this special recognition.

How long have you worked at UPMC Enterprises, and what are some of your duties in your current role?

My journey at UPMC Enterprises began in 2013 as an intern on the Client Services and Implementation team during the summer before my senior year of college. After graduating from Duquesne with a BS in Health Management Systems in 2014, Matt Grant took a chance on me and offered me a full-time position. In 2021, I left to work for AWS, but then returned to work on the Technology Services team in 2023.

As vice president of Technology Services Engineering, I lead the team in delivering the services we provide to our portfolio companies and partners. In addition to building up the capabilities of our services, I have had a big role in developing and delivering on Ahavi. I work closely with the Digital Solutions leadership team, and directly collaborate with the Tech Services Operations team, Cloud Infrastructure team, and Data Engineering and Software Engineering teams.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

I really enjoy the people I work with. In my role, I get to work with people in a variety of areas within the health care space. Interacting with teams with diverse perspectives and backgrounds helps us to better solve the biggest problems in health care tech. My favorite project that I’ve worked on is Ahavi. It is a very large problem to solve, combining both our health care technology and business expertise. Ahavi is unique in its success because all of the diverse teams are working together — it has taken a highly skilled village to drive this project forward.

What motivates you to go above and beyond at UPMC Enterprises?

To be at the forefront of innovation for the UPMC system and beyond is extremely motivating; UPMC Enterprises is doing such interesting and unique things that have a real impact on patient care. I am also motivated by the people I get to collaborate with and see how much they go above and beyond in their daily work.

How does it feel to win the 2025 Heppenstall Leadership Award?

I am extremely flattered, honored, and humbled to win this award. I’m lucky to have had such amazing mentors in my career, which is a testament to the strong culture of leadership here at UPMC Enterprises. I was able to learn from their mentorship and mold it into my own leadership style — I really don’t think I would be able to win something like this without them. To have started my career here as an intern who was supported by great mentors, to now be in a leadership position myself is very fulfilling. Not a day goes by where I am not learning; I hope to always continue growing as a leader.

I am honored to have earned such trust and support from my colleagues here at Enterprises. I’d especially like to thank my entire team for having the trust in me to lead and drive things forward — this combined with their passion and talent goes a long way. Thank you to my past leaders, including Jeff, Chris, and Brent, for believing in me and helping me further my career.

How long have you worked at UPMC Enterprises, and what are some of your duties in your current role?

I started at UPMC Enterprises in the summer of 2019 as an intern on the Machine Learning team. Following my graduation from Syracuse University’s graduate program in information management and data science, I began full-time in early 2020.

During my internship, I knew I wanted to be a part of the UPMC Enterprises team. The culture I experienced here inspired me to want to work for a place that isn’t just about financial value, but rather focused on the confluence of improving patient care and patient outcomes with a line of sight to financial value. Being a part of a team which so highly values those outcomes with a patient-first approach is a blessing.

As long as I have been here, I have worn many hats — I began as a data scientist embedded within the clinical analytics division, building cross-functional domain and operational knowledge, transitioned to a product-focused role supporting the development of eVisit (formerly Safar).

Currently, my responsibility is to apply my data and domain knowledge to support our internal partners, customers and portfolio companies in answering critical clinical, operational, and financial questions about the populations served at UPMC to drive investment theses and product development while delivering high fidelity, standardized clinical data across multiple modalities to our customers at Ahavi and Technology Services.

Some projects and initiatives I am most proud of include, supporting the development of eVisit (formerly Safar) while simultaneously evaluating the clinical efficacy of various service lines serving as a data product analyst and building out the Data Analytics and Informatics Team with Deepan Kamaraj at the helm, designing our vision, mission, processes, frameworks, and collective goals in alignment with Technology Services, Ahavi, Digital Solutions, and UPMC Enterprises, growing the team from two to eight members.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

My favorite thing about my job is uncovering hard to reach data elements and patterns and generating actionable insights that inform critical investment decisions. It’s like we are helping our partners to fish: we help our partners and collaborators first determine what we’re fishing for when performing diligence, then how to fish when translating business requirements to technical questions, and where to fish by acquiring and crunching data to answer key questions. This is something that requires a human in the loop, critical thinking, understanding limitations, assumptions and confounders; I like that it is something that even advanced technology cannot take away from you.

What motivates you to go above and beyond at UPMC Enterprises?

Ever since I joined the UPMC Enterprises team, everyone from the executive team to my fellow colleagues have inspired me with their strong work ethic and sense of purpose. The work we do here is not just creating revenue, we are moving the needle on health care innovation sitting on the cutting edge of digital health care innovation and data with the ability to really impact patients’ lives. I don’t think twice about going the extra mile to make sure things are done right for patients and our partners — that’s just the culture here. Everyone is so collaborative and always learning and challenging ourselves by asking tough questions to frame the right problem statements and get to the heart of a solution.

How does it feel to win the 2025 Better Award?

Seeing the past winners is very humbling, and I am very honored to have even been considered. I have never won anything like this before — only participation trophies in karate as a kid (Brown Belt)!

My main takeaway from winning this award is that it wouldn’t have been possible without my support system at UPMC Enterprises, both personally and professionally. Every manager or coworker has had an equal role in my success. I’d especially like to thank Jeff J., Deepan, Michael, Brent, Stacy, Rob, Jeff McKibben (Clinical Analytics), Michele, and Charlie for always being in my corner.

How long have you worked at UPMC Enterprises, and what are some of your duties in your current role? 

I’ve been with UPMC Enterprises for three years. As a member of the Technology Solutions Operations team, I help manage the movement of prospects and projects through our pipeline. I also built and maintain the Technology Services SharePoint Hub, develop automated workflows using Power Automate to improve efficiency, and designed a Power BI dashboard that communicates key pipeline insights to leadership. Additionally, I support the Technology Services division by creating user-facing materials like branded templates and service blueprints that help illustrate complex processes.

What is your favorite thing about your job? 

I enjoy solving problems in creative ways and having the support from my team and leadership to rethink how we work and deliver value.

What motivates you to go above and beyond at UPMC Enterprises? 

The people I work with motivate me every day. My team and colleagues are collaborative, driven, and genuinely care about the impact we make.

How does it feel to win the “Together Award”?

I’m honored and grateful. There are so many people here who deserve this recognition, so being nominated and selected means a lot. I’m proud to be part of a team that values collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. It’s exciting to contribute to work that makes a real difference.