ERSO Staff

Individual Staff Salutes
September Salute Nominations

Nominee's Name: Judy Tam
Nominee's Unit: Research
Criteria: Team Player

Customer Service Example:

Judy Tam stepped in to help a colleague who was overwhelmed with proposals and who is also new to proposal preparation, while her supervisor was away. She spent a lot of time mentoring, helping, and reassuring her colleague. I am so grateful for Judy's generosity of time and knowledge sharing. She deserves a salute!

August Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Sarah Gaugler
Nominee's Unit: Research
Criteria: Above & Beyond

Customer Service Example:

Sarah is always so gracious with her time in helping answer colleague questions, set up training meetings and continuously ensuring our Hub is up to date and full of valuable and vital information! There are so many reasons why Sarah deserves recognition and appreciation but specifically she has been incredibly helpful with onboarding for one on our new RAs that started on my team. Sarah also has a new RA on her team and has been kind enough to set up various training documents, folders, files and meetings for the RA on my team. Sarah saw this as helping in not duplicating efforts which clearly demonstrates just how much being a team player and going above and beyond is apart of who Sarah is. This is one of the reasons why Sarah is an amazing colleague and supervisor! Thank YOU so much Sarah for all your hard work and valuable contributions you make to each of us RAs and ERSO at large!

July Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Veronika Blair
Nominee's Unit: Research
Criteria: Problem Solver

Customer Service Example:

Veronika embodies so many of these attributes, but this is really for 'problem solver' and 'above & beyond' for this nomination. She has taken the lead on the new CF1 system-wide updates for ITS. It's a massive undertaking, and she has spent a LOT of time delving into the data, capturing all the various components to ensure we have all the necessary pieces, and presenting actionable items to the leadership team, CGA, and the ERSO RAs while being transparent and fielding questions from various stakeholders. Not to mention that she is doing all of this on top of managing her portfolio, team, and onboarding a new RA3. I don't know what ERSO would do without her or where she finds the time, so THANK YOU, Veronika, for all you do for ERSO and for the RA team.

June Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Dan Matsuoka
Nominee's Unit: Other
Criteria: Demonstrates Commitment

Customer Service Example:

I'm nominating Dan for his responsiveness and ultra fast turnaround in fulfilling our IT requests. Sometimes it feels as if he gets the job done before the email "send" button is clicked. We're consistently in good hands and know that things will get done with the added bonus of a quick turnaround. Thank you, Dan!

May Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Alice Wong
Nominee's Unit: Purchasing
Criteria: Above & Beyond

Customer Service Example:

When our BPIE (Berkeley Physics International Exchange) program coordinator came to me late last week requesting help for a field trip to Tahoe for her students on 5/20, I got very nervous. The department is relying on the program as a major source of revenue, and I really didn't want to tell her it wasn't possible, but I was extremely worried about liability issues. I brought my concerns to Alice, and she did an incredible job researching everything, considering all the angles, and called me to go over all that we'd need to do. She followed up with an email that had all the resources and answers I needed, and I'm delighted to say that the field trip is now set to happen as intended. Thanks for saving the day, Alice!

Nominee's Name: Alice Wong
Nominee's Unit: Purchasing
Criteria: Above & Beyond

Customer Service Example:

We would like to thank Alice Wong for going above and beyond on all of our bear buy orders and questions. Without Alice's help and support, we will not be able to complete a lot of our research project on time. Thank you again and we appreciate your service.

April Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Eboni Wilson
Nominee's Unit: Human Resources
Criteria: Above & Beyond

Customer Service Example:

Eboni was kind enough to make time in her very busy schedule to meet with Cathy, Leslie, and Sarah to discuss various scenarios of postdoc funding. We understand that HR has been inundated with the UAW contract implementation and nuances, and she still was able to meet with us, discuss the various possibilities, and provide additional clarifications/insights. It really shows her going above and beyond and being a problem solver as we all work together to understand and ensure compliance. Thanks so to much to Eboni and her entire team for working tirelessly and constantly answering all the incoming questions everyone has.

March Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Kasandra Casillas
Nominee's Unit: Reimbursement Services
Criteria: Above & Beyond

Customer Service Example:

Kasandra is a MACHINE! It feels like no sooner have I seen a reimbursement request come through then the next thing I see is an email from Kasandra saying that the same request is ready for review and approval. I'm constantly astonished, and I am SO appreciative of her and her outstanding speed. She really goes above and beyond in processing these requests quickly and correctly. So glad she's a part of the ERSO Organization. Thanks so much again, Kasandra!

February Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: Julie Tan
Nominee's Unit: Human Resources
Criteria: Demonstrates Commitment

Customer Service Example:

Julie Tan is most deserving of recognition of this Staff Salute for all that she has contributed to ERSO in her short tenure with ERSO. Julie has stepped right in to expand our employee engagement efforts. She has successfully implemented various engagement events, deployed our monthly newsletter, manages various important tracking documents and many other actions all focused on creating engagement in our new remote world. This is only 50% of her role since she is actively managing a heavy recruitment load as well. I am very grateful for the care, creativity and attention that Julie has dedicated to employee engagement. THANK YOU, Julie!

January Salute Winner

Nominee's Name: TK Chen
Nominee's Unit: Other
Criteria: Anticipates Customer Needs

Customer Service Example:

TK jumped into action when there was access issues with our Intranet. We had a soft rollout of our Student Assistant Requirement application and new users to the Intranet were not able to submit a request (using a direct link to the form) because they did not have a profile in the Intranet. Our vendor leading this project implemented a fix, but it did not redirect the user back to the form after they established their profile. Users continued to have frustrations and there was concern that the integrity of our system would be questioned. Without hesitation, TK took the initiative to implement a fix within a day. This fix will allow an improved user experience and bring credibility to our system. Thank you TK for going above and beyond to anticipate our customer's needs. Well done!

Team High Fives
2nd Quarter Nominations

Names of People on the Team: Julie Aquino, Sandra (Sam) Guiton, Daniel Morgan, Swati Shah
Team Unit: Payroll
Which Operating Principle did this team embody? We focus on services

ERSO-Payroll staff transact pay requests diligently with focus on accuracy to fix soup-to-nuts issues of the clients we support. A very special and HUGE thank you to Julie, Sam, Daniel and Swati for recent particularly, lengthy and/or complex cases involving over 50+ transactions per employee in some cases. Their steadfastness and commitment is deserves recognition and is critical to employees' pay. The notable highlights : Sam --- with 108 transactions for one employee: multiple timesheets submitted at the same time for an (almost) entire semester's work. Daniel --- for the most complex and highest value (faculty) overpayment case, $ 30K + Swati and Julie --- for 67 and 63, respectively for missed pay transactions for a single employee.