Five information technology professionals received IT Leadership Awards at the 2021 Tech Forum, an honor sponsored by University of Iowa CIO Steve Fleagle, University of Iowa Health Care CIO Lee Carmen, and the IT Leadership Development Team (ITLDT).
This year, for the first time, multiple leadership awards were presented in different categories, an effort to recognize individuals at different levels of the organization for a variety of leadership activities.
Rising Star Leadership Award: Jacob Ricke
Ricke works as a senior IT support consultant in ITS-Enterprise Services. He works hard to keep the ITS Help Desk connected to the other teams in ITS, and has especially made an effort in the past year to ensure that his team remained connected throughout the pandemic, purposefully carving out time to meet with individuals to check in.
Ricke cares about his staff as employees and people and contributes to their resilience and effectiveness, helping them to achieve their goals. His nominator says, “his favorite thing is to see his staff succeed and excel” and that he is their biggest cheerleader. Ricke is also known for listening for ways a service or system could be better and willingness to carry those ideas forward.
Transformational Achievement Leadership Award: Alison Pauley
Pauley works as director of clinical informatics in Health Care Information Systems. She is very engaged and has a large network, which promotes her working relationship with peers. Pauley was critical during the pandemic, leading the informatics team with grace and without hesitation.
Gathering feedback and buy-in from stakeholders before optimizing their workflows is among Pauley’s talents, and she does an amazing job facilitating meetings and being inclusive. Another strength is her willingness to take initiative when an idea comes up and then run with it.
Pauley attended the last MOR professional development course and has shared her knowledge with others. Her nominator describes her as “definitely someone others respect and look up to.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Award: José Jiménez
Jiménez has been actively advancing DEI in the OneIT community for many years, and is an exceptional thought leader and collaborator.
He was one of a team of six who developed the OneIT DEI Strategic Plan, and has continued his commitment into the execution phase. He was instrumental in establishing the OneIT DEI committee, which he co-chairs. Jiménez is sought out by many as a subject matter expert, confidant, and advocate for issues related to DEI and has earned this through effort, empathy and trust.
Some of the efforts José has championed have had campus-wide impact, including leading the effort to use inclusive language on external-facing websites, as well as in code. He has served on the UI Latinx council.
During one of the most challenging periods many of us has experienced, the pandemic, José continued to thoughtfully and intentionally engage and promote DEI initiatives within the organization.
Community Engagement Leadership Award: Em Domingues
Domingues was nominated for their work in pronoun and name options; this has a campus-wide impact as anyone has the ability to declare name and pronouns in MyUI.
They were instrumental in making this project operate and leveraged relationships to make it a priority and see it through execution. Domingues coordinated with groups such as the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Diversity Councils, and ITS to advocate the need for and drive the delivery of the feature.
Beyond that, Domingues has been engaged with the IT community across different dimensions: in terms of their daily activities, they are on the IAM team that is integral throughout IT operations, including developing and supporting applications used by IT staff. They also coordinate the OneIT Holiday Family initiative and are currently serving as the ITS organizational representative on Staff Council.
Lifetime Achievement Leadership Award: Mike Noel
Noel prioritizes and cultivates close working relationships with peers within ITS and across IT and functional units. He is sincere and personable, and constantly engaged with IT and functional leaders at all levels across the UI campus and at UI Health Care.
Noel is keenly aware of his peers’ priorities and concerns, and leverages relationships to drive deep collaborations and shared initiatives. He provides steady, welcome guidance to everyone in his proximity and is perpetually conscious of where he can contribute most meaningfully. He understands his impact and influence and strives to make every effort count to advance the UI and IT community.
Noel contributes at a high level to all aspects of projects, such as politics, budget, personnel, planning, functional and technical details, implementation, change management, deployment, and support. He encourages individual development and positive outcomes, recognizes others’ strengths, and finds ways for them to stretch their skills and discover their potential. His patient, steady approach has advanced a strong culture of proactivity, pragmatism, customer focus, and integrity within his department, and his mentorship influence is evident throughout the OneIT Leadership community, ITS, and AIS.