1. Professional Development

I earned my Bachelors of Science in Exercise Science and minor in Health from Ithaca College in 1992.  Further increasing my knowledge in the wellness field I have obtained Corporate Wellness Certification and am a member of the WELCOA Faculty. It is my certification as a Wellcoaches Health Coach that I am most proud of.  This certification has allowed me to work one-on-one with clients guiding them in making behavior changes and living a healthier lifestyle.  I wanted to work with people helping them to make healthy lifestyle choices and to guide them with the goals they had set for themselves.

2. Demonstrated Success

Ithaca College's Mind, Body, Me Wellness program is focused on total health and to develop a truly comprehensive and engaging wellness program, it was key to integrate and leverage several internal and external resources for program design.  Now moving into our 3rd year of the program we have seen a 32% cost saving in medical claims, 6% change in total health scores and a 5% decrease in BMI.  Utilization of the fitness center, wellness clinic and health coaching program has impacted total cholesterol 3 % and increased HDL 5 % and 246 individuals completed 1365 health coach calls (average of 5.5 calls per individual per year).   33% of benefit eligible employees along with the College President and additional administrative personnel have engaged in the wellness program. Ithaca College’s wellness initiative has met objectives set forth by the Wellness Planning Team producing true returns that have helped to mitigate costly health conditions and improve the overall physical and behavioral health of their employee population.  We leveraged the use of a data warehouse to analyze medical claims. Instead of adopting a standard wellness program for all employees, Ithaca elected to continue on a wellness journey with a purposeful, well-crafted plan to customize a solution that produced real results, helping them achieve their top priority, to thoroughly engage employees ensuring to never lose sight of their three main goals to educate, motivate and empower employees to take control of their health and wellbeing. We wanted to create a comprehensive program designed to meet people’s individuals health needs in a holistic manner.  Elements included health risk assessment, biometric screenings, fitness assessments, health coaching, monthly wellness presentations, group exercise classes and more.  The program was launched in sequential “Flights” of 50 participants and to ensure support and encouragement participants were provided with an orientation and welcome packet upon starting the program.  The program then communicated on a regular basis weekly wellness tips, monthly newsletters, frequent email blasts, and social media updates. We created a dashboard to measure program success.  To create the dashboard all strategic partners worked together to pull data points resulting in great data integration allowing for future program planning.

3. Leadership

I am involved in eni's in-house wellness program participating in wellness challenges, activites and presentations.  It is important to me that I follow our companies 11 core values allowing me to perform at the best of my ability within my job and community roles.

4.  Innovation

In 2013, I developed a mobile application that has provided our customers and clients easier access to information and program communication.  This mobile application is an extension of eni's personal assistant, counseling and wellness services all seamlessly integrated into an easy to use app.  Users can view their completed assessment results, use tools and trackers, receive health information and participate in their virtual fitness and nutrition programs.

5. Compelling Vision

We need to assist individuals in becoming better health care consumers and help them become more engaged in their health care.  We need better connectivity and a seamless connection to population health.  I think that technological advances in our industy will provide us with unique opportunities that we have not seen before.  My company is an early innovator of integrated benefit offering such as Wellness, Medical Plans, EAPs, Health Advocacy, etc.  We are providing holistic programs that can be customized for each individual.  This integrated benefit solution allows for increased knowledge of benefits, reduced sick time, increased productivity at work and a higher level of job satisfaction.  Instead of just offering a standard wellness program we need to be focused on aligining people and programming to drive culture and behavior change.