IEEE Computer Society Individual Staff Awards
Each year, the Computer Society recognizes staff members that have performed above and beyond to aid the mission of the society. These dedicated professionals are recognized during quarterly staff meetings and are presented with certificates in recognition of their contributions.
2023 Individual Awards
June Leach-Barnaby
Conferences & Events
She has worked tirelessly to bridge the relationship between the conference volunteers and the IEEE Computer Society. She has shown patience and determination to build important relationship with this community which has translated into additional partnership opportunities with the conference and the CS.
Jihyun Lee
Conferences & Events
In addition to quickly learning the NextGen (PPM) system that stores the conference financial data, she also stepped in to help clean up the conference data from the past two years to help complete the Smartsheet tracking sheet. She has also worked with the governance team to build out and update the reinvestment tracking sheet within Smartsheet so that we do not have to rely on tableau or ICX to create reports. She has also taken on the management of all fiscal agent MOU’s, CB accounts, conference sponsorship invoicing and coding, and most recently has also added the collection of all compliance documents for all the conference closings. This is all in addition to her core job duties.
Joshua Roller
Sales & Marketing
Josh has done a great job overhauling the type of content being shared on Tech News to better serve our customers. He’s moved away from the sales-heavy content commonly provided by content writers and worked with them to make the content more relevant to the audience we’re seeking like Early Career Professionals and CS professionals. Our popular content is no longer focused on video formats. Instead, it’s focused on our Top Conferences, AI Security, blockchain, Cloud Computing, and more.
His efforts extend further by being able to successfully manage community members and paid content writers to write reports like “How to Make the Most of your Computer Science Degree” “What Makes a Great Cybersecurity Consultant”, and “Bioinformatics: At the Intersection of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Biology”.
Josh went above and beyond to recognize and increase awareness of the LGBTQ+ community within Computing. He worked with volunteers to conduct 9 career-focused interviews, provided tips for making conferences more LGBTQ+ inclusive, increased awareness for the IEEE Diversity & Inclusion Fund and highlighted great insights from CSDL publications dealing with the LGBTQ+ community.
Jason Hellwig
Publications
As we have continued to expand the Virtual Conference Services offerings, we have needed additional tools and enhancements of existing applications and systems to support the organizers. In recent times, a significant need arose for a web-based video upload tool. Jason Hellwig added that to the CPIR system used by our Conference Publishing Services team, and we rolled it out for conferences to begin using.
As usage has increased, new requirements have arisen for the live use cases, including the ability to quickly identify duplicate file submissions and eliminate them, as well as extensions to the metadata we export for use in the virtual conference sites and in submitting the videos to the CS Digital Library.
In many cases, the limitations of the existing tool were clear only once we have received hundreds, or even more than a thousand videos for a single conference and were faced with the need to manually clean the data, remove duplicates, and so on. Jason provided exceptional service in response to these requests, making multiple deployments on very short turnaround times to help ensure that we could deliver on our promises to the virtual and hybrid conferences without losing our minds manually addressing issues.
Amir Drqauez
Sales & Marketing
Amir’s presence at QCE 2022 was very much appreciated. He was responsive, knowledgeable, and able to provide the support needed to ensure the exhibitors had a successful experience. He also played a pivotal role in ensuring the success of the virtual conference sessions, assisting in room set-up and troubleshooting.
He is a valuable member of the IEEE Computer Society team.
Tricia Yamaguchi
Conferences & Events
Tricia has stepped up to handle day to day operations of the conference registration services business while Marie Lee is on leave. This is in addition to her usual duties. She is also training new staff on registration workflows, from setup, to customer service, to back-end processing. She has also acted as onsite support for conferences that require additional assistance. Her work is keeping this program moving forward during Marie’s absence.
Carmen Saliba
Conferences & Events
Carmen has worked with her side by side on several conferences this year and she has been a joy to work with. She is always willing to help and has provided solutions when I needed something at the last minute. Not only is she fantastic with logistics but she is also great at strategizing and seeing the big picture. She is a top-notch meeting professional and I look forward to working with her in 2023!
Carmen was able to accommodate some last minute exhibit/program changes at the QCE22 conference without any complaints. For example, the newly launched QCE End User Session needed to have a different setup/layout at the last minute and Carmen handled the change seamlessly and professionally. Our attendees and sponsors were pleased with the program and never knew what was happening in the background to make it come off so well.
Mylene Nunez
Office Operations
Mylene has done an outstanding job handling the day-to-day office operations while we have been short-staffed. So far this year, her accomplishments included:
  • Addressing findings from a recent surprise fire inspection
  • Arranging for hazardous materials in the warehouse to be properly disposed
  • Interviewing and securing a handyman for 2023
  • Coding and processing office ops invoices
  • Interviewing candidates for the office temp position
  • Responding to facility requests
  • Assisting me with the painting project
Mylene also contributed to prepping the warehouse for the clean out – a huge project this year!
I have appreciated her positive attitude and attention to detail. She has ensured that all office operation activities and requests are handled in a timely manner.
Mylene has also helped make SE Radio more accessible by creating episode transcriptions using the Transcribe 5000. Mylene has completed 37 transcriptions, with a total of 50 planned for the year. Because of this work, The Computer Society has been able to keep the transcription work in-house, keeping costs down. This support helps the marketing and sales team focus resources on other priorities.
2022 Individual Awards
Kerry Cosby
Membership
Kerry Cosby was instrumental in launching the 2021 IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor Recognition Program. He created a unique submission program in open water using the requirements submitted by the program chair and without complaint continued to modify the application to satisfy the committee as they changed their requirements. He provided weekly updates to the committee on applications submitted and completed, he wrote a program to validate the membership length requirement, provided access to all reviewers and assisted them when problems arose. Created a unique program to recognize members for the contributions to the society in addition to working to improve engagement of CS members.
Scott Lavine
Membership
Scott Lavine worked on the CS Webinar Series consisting of DVP/DLS, BYC and SAB talks and his efforts to coordinate the activities across the 3 programs. Being that the program is relatively new and developed from a need of the society due to a changing situation with the Covid 19 pandemic, the program has always been in flux, needing to change with the environment created by the unprecedented situation. Scott was able to adapt to these changes and help us adapt too. In addition, his previous experience with webinars and his research on them provided the CS with a firm foundation for the development and expansion of the program. By working on these webinars, Scott improved lead generation, content development, and member and volunteer engagement.
Steve Woods
Sales & Marketing
Steve has provided guidance and support to our conference organizers that go above and beyond our usual services. He is readily available to answer questions and to reassure our organizers that all is on track for a successful virtual event. Our organizers have recognized that he is the virtual platform expert and will seek his guidance and recommendations on how to move forward for their event. He has also been a fantastic resource to our conferences for all GDPR compliance questions. We have been able to expand our services to our conference portfolio to now include virtual and hybrid conference services. This has translated into savings for our conferences and a better experience for our conference attendees. Because of his work with Quantum he was able to develop a great relationship with the conference committee members which translated to developing a partnership with the SC conference community. These are two very important communities for the Computer Society and Steve has been integral in moving these relationships in a positive direction.
Kimberly Sperka
Publications
In support of her EICs, Kim regularly contributes to preparing reports for the IEEE Periodical Review and Advisory Committee meetings that occur during each IEEE meeting series. In any given meeting series, she works on two to four reports. She also attends the PRAC meetings with her EICs and provides clarifications and/or answers any questions the EICs need help with. These reports provide a comprehensive view of publications from the previous five years covering the following areas: scope statements, editorial policies and procedures, diversity of AEs/authors compared to IEEE membership, quality, timeliness, competitor publications, financials, recommendations from the previous periodical review, notable features of a publication, future plans, and the EIC’s self-assessment of the pub. In November 2021, IEEE introduced a new online tool to create these reports, which in many ways has made this project more difficult to execute from a staff perspective. Kim used this new tool for the first time for the reports for the recent February meeting series. Although there was a lot to learn in navigating the new process and format, she did an excellent job in providing top notch customer support to her EICs. Kim’s work on the PRAC reports has resulted in accurate and complete assessments of the publications she supports. This ensures that IEEE CS publications are well represented within this IEEE committee.
Carrie Clark
Publications
In support of her EICs, Carrie regularly contributes to preparing reports for the IEEE Periodical Review and Advisory Committee meetings that occur during each IEEE meeting series. In any given meeting series, she works on two to four reports. She also attends the PRAC meetings with her EICs and provides clarifications and/or answers any questions the EICs need help with. These reports provide a comprehensive view of publications from the previous five years covering the following areas: scope statements, editorial policies and procedures, diversity of AEs/authors compared to IEEE membership, quality, timeliness, competitor publications, financials, recommendations from the previous periodical review, notable features of a publication, future plans, and the EIC’s self-assessment of the pub. In November 2021, IEEE introduced a new online tool to create these reports, which in many ways has made this project more difficult to execute from a staff perspective. Carrie had the good luck to be involved in two PRAC reports with the new tool and uncovered many opportunities for improvement that she provided to IEEE. The lessons she learned from the November meetings carried forward for the February meetings. She did an excellent job in providing top notch customer support to her EICs. Carrie’s work on the PRAC reports has resulted in accurate and complete assessments of the publications she supports. This ensures that IEEE CS publications are well represented within this IEEE committee.
Deborah Sims
Sales & Marketing
Debbie successfully supported a large new advertising sale that required unique handling and special consideration during the RFP process. Initially, the client selected the Computer Society, but shortly after informed us they were going to post with a competitor instead. However, expert intervention by Debbie allowed the sale to be saved. Due to Debbie’s involvement, the Computer Society was able to save the sale, generating an additional $100,000 in revenue for the society.
Brookes Little
Communities & Technical Activities
Brookes is being nominated for her contributions to developing the Computer Society’s diversity and inclusion activities. Her efforts started in 2020 with the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Task Force, but last year she supported the inaugural year of the D&I Committee. The committee chair deferred many committee tasks to Brookes, including developing/presenting biweekly reports to the committee, coordinating D&I efforts to expand the Women in STEM interview series to include underrepresented minorities, recruiting interviewees and publishing interviews, developing a new D&I website, organizing a women's panel, and collecting needed demographic information. Brookes kept the committee chair and sometimes committee members on track to achieve the committee’s stated goals. Brookes ensured the success of the roll-out of the new D&I fund proposals. She drafted the first call for proposals, coordinated the roll out with the support of our marketing team, and organized proposal reviews. Brookes responded to queries for this first-time effort and developed lessons learned from the experience that she applied to the Emerging Tech proposals. The timeline for the CFP launch and proposal reviews would have been delayed without Brookes' skill, drive, and perseverance to move the project forward. The Computer Society was late to organizing D&I activities compared with other professional organizations. Thanks to Brookes’ contributions, the Computer Society now has an engaged committee with a portfolio of activities. On behalf of the Computer Society, the committee initiated new outreach to underrepresented communities in computing. I believe the Computer Society’s public image has benefited from our D&I activities.
2021 Individual Awards
Jennifer Salazar
Sales & Marketing
Jen played a crucial role in improving M & S processes and operations. She has a get-it-done attitude and turns things around very quickly. She regularly comes up with new ideas of improvement and juggles multiple assignments at any given time. Furthermore, she has provided a great amount of support to the 75th anniversary activities and manages the monthly trivia contest. There has been a tremendous improvement in the website maintenance and operations. The website is going through continuous improvement process to add new content and features. Jen is also very knowledgeable about Salesforce platform and has led several improvement releases for the Salesforce process. Jen has also been vigilant about implementing new process improvement to improve email deliverability.
Taylor Collins
Sales & Marketing
Taylor has made great strides since joining the Computer Society and stepped up after Cassie’s departure by proactively taking on new assignments and responsibilities. Notably, she has changed the style and tone of social media postings and has created several 75th anniversary videos from clips submitted by volunteers. She successfully transitioned pubs alerts back to BDRS. The new video content has increased engagement on our social media channels and has contributed to the 75th anniversary activities. New projects she took saved the society from having to outsource specific projects and maintain operations while we were short on staff. The transition of pubs alerts to BDRS has enabled her to take on more projects that have more impact on the society, including video projects and new campaigns.
Kathie Mansfield
Sales & Marketing
Kathie has taken on new projects this year, most notably organizing a special panel for CVPR and providing exceptional promotional support for the Task Force on Rebooting Computing and the IRDS. These projects have helped the society gain additional visibility within our volunteer community, by demonstrating additional support above and beyond the norm. Furthermore, the CVPR panel demonstrated served as a way to strengthen our relationship with ANT, a potential corporate partner, while also providing visibility for the society within the rapidly growing computer vision community.
Tricia Yamaguchi
Conferences & Events
Tricia has been crucial to the continuation of the registration service business for the Computer Society. In a short period of time, she was able to learn the CVENT platform and the IEEE systems to build sites, run reports and process payments. She has been the main contact point for our conferences using internal registration services, problem solving for multiple aspects of the registration business. Because of her support we have been able to continue to offer this service with no interruptions while key staff is out on leave. We have also increased the number of contracts and have received positive feedback from our organizers.
Lisa O’Conner
Conferences & Events
Lisa has taken on additional responsibilities and maintained her own portfolio to support the CPS business during a period where the department has been short-staffed. Without her help, we would not have been able to meet our delivery deadlines during one of the busiest times of year for conferences. Her efforts ensured CPS business continued uninterrupted. We have been able to continue the proceeding production without interruption. This allows us to maintain our high level of customer service and push content to Xplore in a timely manner.
2020 Individual Awards
Kerry Cosby
Membership
Kerry spent several hours helping the TC finance portion of the KPI dashboard work appropriately. He met with the team several times throughout the year to make sure that the formulae links properly as well as demonstrating a great deal of patience in explaining and teaching me how to set it up correctly.
Marie Trinh Lee
Conferences & Events
Marie has gone above and beyond in 2020. Due to COVID-19 almost all of our conferences were required to pivot to a virtual format, requiring a change in how Conference Registration Services worked with our portfolio. As many of these conferences had already opened registration the entire fee structure had to be changed on the fly. Marie was able to pivot to an entirely virtual model, changing and rebuilding multiple registration sites, processing over 1100 partial or full refunds for conferences, and ensuring the proper messaging was being sent to attendees so that they were aware of these changes. Of particular note is her work with VIS, ICDE, SERVICES, and ITC, all of which offered unique challenges that required equally high levels of customer service.
Kathy Park
Conferences & Events
Kathy Park, in her first year with IEEE, has shown herself to be an exemplary employee. She handled a non- traditional year with COVID-19 AND a learning curve of starting at a new company with competence and a wonderful attitude. Her ability to reach out and connect with volunteers and organizers of her conferences as well as her fellow team members has been a wonderful thing to see.
Michelle Ocampo
Conferences & Events
Michelle has been invaluable to the Conference Team in 2020. This was primarily demonstrated in her determination and willingness to go above and beyond, and her ability to think and act strategically for her conference organizers - even more so during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Michelle was the first planner to successfully enact Force Majeure with Hotel Contracts (some even more than 10 months out), as well as work with hotel partners in 2021 to reduce blocks and space with no penalties - thus alone has saved the Computer Society hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidated damages. She is respected and sought out as a subject matter expert by the team, volunteers, and conference organizers.
Laura Perry
Conferences & Events
Laura joined the Computer Society in December 2019 and just a few months into her tenure, was faced with the challenges presented by Covid-19. In the face of immense challenges, Laura was able utilize her organizational skills to establish a process with guidelines and structure that enabled the Computer Society to convert the originally planned in-person 2020 conferences to virtual conferences. With Laura’s incredible support and leadership, the conference team was able to navigate all the 2020 challenges in a positive and transparent manner.
Carmen Saliba
Conferences & Events
Carmen was the first event planner to tackle enforcing force majeure for a city-wide conference in the wake of Covid-19. She successfully eliminated all liquidated damages, saving the conference over a million dollars
Cassie Stevenson
Sales & Marketing
Cassie was instrumental in launching the Women in STEM interviews, which are a new initiative launched by the CS Diversity & Inclusion Task Force. The interviews have been a priority for the organization. Throughout the process, Cassie was extremely helpful and responsive to changes. She has been patient with requests from volunteers, which are sometimes sent at the last minute. She always has a great attitude and we could not have executed the project without her.
Steve Woods
Sales & Marketing
Steve provided a huge amount of support for CS conferences in 2020. He met with dozens of conferences, provided advice on virtual platforms, training on how to run a virtual event, and support during the actual conferences themselves. He has created documentation on running a live session that is not only being used by CS and IEEE conferences but those outside the IEEE. He has been deeply involved with some of our highest profile conferences. An example was his work on QCE 2020. He was a driving force on the technical side, learning the back-end of the chosen platform, acting as an advocate for the organizers, pushing the vendor to deliver on their promised functionality, and handling last second changes during the actual virtual event. His contributions to CS conferences have allowed them to survive and, in some cases, flourish during a year when other events, both within and outside the IEEE, have struggled to even get off the ground.