Anniversary Spotlight: Jonathan Fortier Celebrates 16 Years at UPMC

The Anniversary Spotlight highlights an employee celebrating a significant work anniversary at UPMC every month.

When he was wrapping up his high school career back in 1997, Jonathan Fortier knew he wanted to be in the health care industry. Specifically, he was applying for colleges to become a physician assistant. Back then, he thought he had it all figured out – that is until a summer course changed everything.

“I took a computer-focused tech course at Duquesne University, and I enjoyed it so much that I switched my college application from physician assistant to information technology,” he said. “But my heart was still in health care.”

This passion stuck with him over time, and eventually, he found himself at UPMC where he was able to perfectly meld his two passions of tech and health care together. Today, Jonathan is celebrating 16 years with the company.

Jonathan’s journey at UPMC started at UPMC Children’s Hospital, where he began as an analyst in the cardiology department.

“That role was life-changing,” Jonathan said. “I was able to work inside of a hospital and contribute to things that were directly affecting patient care.”

At that time, UPMC Children’s Hospital was planning to open a new hospital in Lawrenceville and there was an opportunity for Jonathan to move into a project management planning role that would assist with that transition. He said he has many interesting work memories from this time in his life.

“I remember working with a consultant who helped us develop a simulation model and we were able to change some variables to see how the patient move would look depending on different routes that were taken or how many ambulances were used,” he said. “We were able to come up with the best model that we thought would make the transfer process go as smoothly as possible. That was a really unique experience.”

Once the new hospital was built, Jonathan’s planning-based role was no longer needed. That was when he began looking for his next opportunity and found it within UPMC’s IT group.

Eventually, Jonathan said he left the corporate side of things for an interesting-sounding job opening at a UPMC facility in Bakery Square – known at the time as the Technology Development Center, which would later become UPMC Enterprises.

“It was crazy to leave the kind of traditional UPMC IT realm for Bakery Square,” he said. “The role I interviewed for there seemed like it was really exciting and the projects I’d be working on would affect the future of health care.”

Jonathan started out as an Associate Product Manager in 2014 and has been here ever since. Today, he’s working as a Business Analyst on the Digital Solutions team. However, things are a bit different now that he’s working part-time to pursue his dream job: fatherhood.

“Being a dad is my proudest accomplishment of life,” he said. “I love it. I am so family-focused, and I always knew that I wanted to be with my children as much as I could.”

Despite being part-time, Jonathan still gets to use his experience and skillsets to support his team and make a difference within health care. He said he is grateful for the support he receives from his team at UPMC Enterprises – especially while embracing a work/life balance that makes sense for his lifestyle.

“Being part of a team that’s driven to try and help make things better and do things better is what has kept me excited about working for UPMC Enterprises,” he said.

While reflecting on his history at UPMC, Jonathan said he couldn’t believe that 16 years have already flown by. This feeling was echoed by the advice he gave to anyone who might be just starting out in their career:

“Don’t blink,” he said. “It goes by way too fast.”

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