HBA NY/NJ Region, HBA Central New Jersey, HBA New York and HBA Northern New Jersey Honored Volunteers and Spark Award Recipients for the First Half of 2019
The Honored Volunteer award recognizes an HBA volunteer who has demonstrated outstanding service to the chapter and/or region. Typically offered on a monthly or quarterly basis, this award recognizes volunteers who show a strong commitment to the HBA, make an outstanding volunteer contribution and have high energy and positive attitude.
The Spark award is a peer-to-peer recognition program which honors any HBA volunteer who has distinguished themselves through “little bursts of awesomeness” in areas such as attitude, collaboration, pitching in, consistency, leadership and building community by supporting others.
Honored Volunteer: Brooke Czapkowski, senior manager, portfolio and project management, Pfizer
Brooke is in a new role this year as the region’s deputy chair. She is very dedicated, reliable and consistently provides excellent quality of work. In addition, she is very proactive, working in so many areas of volunteering within the HBA, including running Lunch and Learn sessions, working with her corporate organization, Pfizer, to demonstrate the benefits and value of the HBA. Thank you, Brooke.
Honored Volunteer: Diana Galer, founder, Galer Coaching for Excellence, LLC
Diana conceived the idea of a Circle of Advisors initially and for the past seven years has ensured its success. She continues to keep this program front and center for the Executive Women's Outreach (EWO) Team and this program aligns with the needs of all of our corporate partners. Her efforts include recruiting individuals to participate, staying connected with those that have attended in the past, creation of materials and keeping the program current. Additionally, she participates in the EWO affinity group and helps place speakers for other programs and moderates or speaks as the need arises.
Honored Volunteer: Candice Hughes, CEO/founder, Hughes BioPharma Advisers LLC
Since stepping into the role of regional director for the Women in Transition affinity group in 2019, Candice has revamped and reinvigorated the regional affinity group through a variety of actions, such as recruiting chapter leads, preparing webinar materials and establishing a new offering - virtual “coteries.” She also leads many initiatives for the Women in Science affinity group.
Spark Award: Katie Merkel, manager, global health and patient access, Pfizer
Katie, along with Lauren, provides strong leadership and dedicated service on the HBA NY/NJ Regional finance team.
Spark Award: Dr. Lauren (Ji-Young) Lee, director, oncology pipeline and business development, Pfizer
Lauren, along with Katie, provides strong leadership and dedicated service on the HBA NY/NJ Regional finance team.
Spark Award: Casey Triano, marketing manager, women's health, Ferring Pharmaceuticals
Casey was a two time participant in the NJ/NY program as a mentee and wanted so much to give back that she reached out multiple times including via Facebook and Instagram to the regional director of the NY/NJ Region mentoring program in order to make sure that she was considered for a spot as a volunteer. Casey was a late entrant to the volunteer pool for this season's program and while she could have been demure when it seemed as if all the good jobs were taken; instead she remained engaged. The qualifications of this award suggest that the individual nominated shows "little bursts of awesomeness". Casey is fireworks of awesomeness. Throughout the regional mentoring program, she has been a consistent force for positive engagement, collaboration and consistent focus on how we could make the program just a little bit better for all those involved. She has been enthusiastic and positive and taken on tasks that were new to her. By doing so, she contributed a fresh perspective that helped us move the program forward in a most effective manner. She took it upon herself to ignite interest in the HBA mentoring program at Ferring and was able to augment our cohort with several good candidates. She joined every call and every meeting and contributed by picking up the jobs that others could no longer manage or hadn't been considered earlier. She became a key member of the team and is now well-positioned to take on greater responsibility for the 2020 program.
HBA Central New Jersey is proud to recognize the efforts that our volunteers have put into creating wonderful programming, without them, we would not be able to add the value we do to our members' lives.
Spark Award: Sumathi Madadi, digital capability manager, global regulatory and safety IT, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Sumathi has become a dependable team member over the last six months working on the HBA CNJ programming logistics team. She has a growth mindset towards improving her project management skills and strives for a consistent leadership approach to project managing our events. Her passion for learning and managing our meetings is contagious.
Spark Award: Stephanie Stevens, manager, training ops excellence, field force L&D, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Stephanie is dedicated, reliable and consistently provides excellent quality work. Her content coordination for the educational event at Sandoz was no exception. In addition, she moved the bar higher with creating a workbook and the exercise portion of the program for the participants to get engaged, use and take away the important information from the event. Stephanie has added value to our lives.
Honored Volunteer: Lisa Yates, global procurement-drug substance category manager, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Lisa has been a strong contributor to the HBA CNJ team. She has supported the 2019 HBA CNJ educational events by leading the programming logistics group to execute each program successfully. On top of this, she has trained and mentored volunteers to build the next generation of leaders. Her recent achievement was to coordinate as both the liaison for the sponsor and the HBA for the recent BMS event, doubling the scope of her volunteering. It’s a pleasure to work with Lisa and we are excited to see her grow her skills as a leader with the HBA.
HBA New York is proud to recognize our volunteers who helped make our events in the first half of this year welcoming, engaging and well-attended. We’ve enjoyed spending time with hundreds of our members and prospective members and offering them friendly forums to network, learn and develop professionally and personally. We can’t do that without our volunteers’ generosity of time and enthusiasm for planning, marketing and staffing these efforts and support.
Honored Volunteer: Ting Guo, head of operations, Penguin Pay
Ting embodies what it means to be a true partner to our corporate sponsors. She eagerly got involved with early-stage planning for our event hosted by W2O in June and worked with them as the main HBA contact for HBA NY. Her willingness and enthusiasm every step of the way contributed to that being the largest event attendance so far this year. Ting also volunteered in the registration area at another event two weeks later as well as our first happy hour event back in April. Ting’s investment of time and continued interest in making the most of being an HBA volunteer is noticed and appreciated by everyone who has the pleasure of working with her.
Spark Award: Marie Chang, pharmacist, The Floating Hospital
Marie is always willing to volunteer her time and has been raising her hand to lend her talent in both staffing and programming. She has run our registration area and was one of the first to put her name on our list to volunteer her support with our events and programs. We appreciate her enthusiasm for our chapter and her drive to offer educational and engaging events.
Spark Award: Sheena Thakkar, research associate, Tanezumab, Pfizer
Sheena recognized the importance of supporting our strong HBA communities within the companies who sponsor the HBA. She willingly created collateral for several HBA events that were internal to Pfizer, including the Lunch and Learn in collaboration with HBA Global membership. She also jumped in on short notice to ensure we had the best collateral for our 13 June event, which brought in 100 registered attendees.
Spark Award: Geraldine Massuh, research associate, patient and health impact, Pfizer
Geraldine was instrumental in helping create and update marketing materials for three of our very well-attended events this year. She demonstrated great leadership by stepping up to create and manage our marketing calendar and guided other volunteers through their assignments to create collateral as needed.
Spark Awards: Christine Kuang and Kathleen Mai
Talk about great first impressions. Christine and Kathleen were the first to raise their hands to help us welcome HBA members to our first 2019 HBA NY kickoff event. They managed the registration area with grace, patience and smiles, individually welcoming all 70 of our attendees. Their rockstar organizational skills and ability to move the crowd through efficiently ensured nobody missed a moment of networking. What a great way to kick off our program calendar.
HBA Northern New Jersey is pleased to recognize our volunteers who make every event and interaction special for attendees, members and volunteers alike. Our deepest appreciation for the hard work, passion and creativity that you share with our HBA community. The HBA is a welcoming tribe where all of us learn, engage and grow together. It could not happen without the tireless efforts of our volunteers like the two we celebrate now.
Honored Volunteer: Lorrie Albinson
Lorrie has been a key leader and mentor on the HBA NNJ chapter board. Recently she went well above the call of duty when she took on the programming, organization and coordination of the recent event at Ferring Pharma on Patient Centricity. Lorrie is the DAL for marketing for the chapter but took on responsibility for programming for the Ferring event when she raised her hand and stepped in to lead the charge when her fellow board members needed support. The complex logistics and coordination required many, many hours and intense commitment. She is an inspiration to her colleagues, the chapter and the HBA.
Spark Award: Micaela Teodorescu, director, market research, ConnectiveRx
Micaela has been an active, enthusiastic and energized member and volunteer for the HBA. She consistently attends and volunteers at chapter and region events. Recently, she was the key advocate for an HBA introduction to employees of ConnectiveRX, a new corporate sponsor, where she is employed. Micaela sparks energy and joy in those she interacts with. She recently accepted a role on the programming committee with HBA NNJ. She is a huge asset to the HBA and her community.