Show Notes
URMIA Member Directory [member login required]
Strategic Plan - Connections
Resource Guide
URMIA Core Comptencies
Guest
Ronna Papesh- Director of Information Technology, URMIA
Host
Julie Groves-Director, Risk Services, Wake Forest University
Transcript
[00:00:12] Julie Groves: Hi everyone. Welcome to URMIA Matters. I'm Julie Groves, the Director of Risk Services at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And I'm also the current URMIA President.
Today I'm talking with Ronna Papesh, who is URMIA’s Director of Information Technology about our brand new online resource guide. So thank you for being here today, Ronna. It's great to see you.
Ronna Papesh: Yes, it's good to be here.
Julie Groves: And just for those of you at home who do not know Ronna or don't know much about our home office, I have said it many times before, we could not do everything we do in our association if it weren't for all the people at the URMIA home office, they do a lot of work and I will say Ronna is an unsung hero because she does a lot of things that [00:01:00] nobody knows she does, but they are very important things that keep our association running. So thank you so much for that Ronna. So we're glad you're here today.
So before we dive into our conversation about the resource guide, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and sort of your experience.
[00:01:18] Ronna Papesh: Well, I've served in many different IT roles over my career. I've been a network administrator, web developer, a programmer, database administrator, that sort of thing. And I came to URMIA coming on eight years, pretty close and…
Julie Groves: Wow.
Ronna Papesh: …have been able to, Do all of those things with URMIA, since we're such a small staff, it's a very varied job and, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.
[00:01:47] Julie Groves: Well, good. So tell our listeners an interest, any kind of interesting fact about you that, you know, they may not know.
[00:01:52] Ronna Papesh: Well, my degree is in education and I like to keep my hand in on that, so every summer, I spend a week teaching at a reading camp, that is always just rejuvenating for me. So that's one of my favorite pastimes.
[00:02:08] Julie Groves: That's great. What age kids are you working with?
Ronna Papesh: Third through sixth grade.
Julie Groves: Okay, great. Great. Well that sounds great. It's always fun to do something that's putting on a different hat exactly than you do every day, so it helps you to kind of feel refreshed, I think. Okay, so we are gonna chat a little bit about our resource guide.
And it was, it's an, you know, it's an completely overhauled version. So if anybody has seen it and remember what it looks like in the past, it is what it looks like now is fantastic. So I wanna just give you a real kudos for your overhaul of that. So, Tell me what gave you the inspiration to take on this project and update this resource?
[00:02:46] Ronna Papesh: Well, it was the association's strategic plan. Actually, URMIA leadership formed a task force of member volunteers, and they reviewed the previous resource guide, the Resource Guide website. And the task force checked out those individual resources that were highlighted and also made suggestions for improvement of the whole site.
And also the staff recognized this as an opportunity to better tie together two of URMIA’s most powerful tools. That would be our core competencies for higher education risk managers and our website that was designed those new to risk management in higher education.
[00:03:27] Julie Groves: Hmm. So it sounds, I mean, it sounds like it was a huge undertaking.
Ronna Papesh: It was big, huge undertaking. I admit it.
Julie Groves: Yes. So when you think back on it, was there something that you would say was your favorite part of the project?
[00:03:40] Ronna Papesh: Yes. I really enjoyed re-imagining how a risk manager would use the site. For example, I chose a calming color palette because I know risk managers have a lot of responsibilities, and I imagine those new to the profession could perhaps feel overwhelmed at times. So I wanted to offer a place of guidance and reassurance so that our members know URMIA has their back.
[00:04:06] Julie Groves: Well, your color palette, like I said, it is beautiful. So if you all have not seen it, please go out and check it out. You will immediate. Feel calmed. I think it is. It's such a contrast to the old resource guide.
So I think you did a, an excellent job working on the visual aspects of that. I think I recall you saying when we met earlier that one of the, one of the challenges of this was, you used the analogy of rebuilding a car as you were driving down the highway, and so it sounded to me like it was just a much larger undertaking than I ever would have imagined doing, and I don't, obviously wouldn't know what how to do that.
So thank you for taking on the car maintenance as it's driving down the highway. And I would also just tell our listeners that I think one thing that I always appreciate about Ronna is because Ronna isn't a risk manager, she asks questions about things that she doesn't, because she's not a risk manager she will say, okay, I have to ask about this question because I wanna make sure everyone understands it. And I'm not a risk manager, so I know that I'm not supposed to understand it. But if I were a new risk manager, would I know what this term meant or you know? So I really appreciate the fact that Ronna can really look at things from a different set of eyes, because those of us who work in risk management just take things for granted, like acronyms and things like that.
So Ronna has been really helpful to think through things to make sure that everything is accessible by everyone, regardless of how long they've, you know, they’ve been a risk manager. So thank you for helping us with that too.
Ronna Papesh: It has been really fun.
Julie Groves: Well, I'm glad because it seems so, it seems like a huge undertaking and it seems overwhelming and you seem like you have handle.
Very well, so we appreciate that. So, is there anything that, when you were going through this process, did you, was there anything that you found that you didn't expect?
[00:06:01] Ronna Papesh: Yeah, I was surprised to find out how few of our members actually knew about the resource guide and you know, even from our task force members who volunteered to review the site and that sort of thing, we had to tell 'em where it was and how to get there and it, I was like, oh, this is, it can be an unsung hero here.
[00:06:22] Julie Groves: Mm-hmm. Well, again, we'll put a link to the resource guide in the bottom of the show notes for everyone to check out after they listen to this. So how would you imagine that someone is, who is new to risk management and insurance you, how would you imagine they would use this resource guide?
[00:06:40] Ronna Papesh: Hmm. Well, I would encourage newcomers to use the menu like they would a table of contents.
You can move through the content sequentially or skip to the areas that you need to brush up on. Another thing that I don't think we've thought about before was I encourage those who are adding to their risk management team to have new hires use the risk guide as part of their onboarding.
[00:07:09] Julie Groves: Mm, that's a great suggestion. There's a lot in there that, you know, news new risk managers can take advantage of. So to your point, you know, onboarding would be, you know, it's a great thing to just give someone on an onboarding checklist and say, you know, Be sure to look at this as part of your, you know, first, you know, few weeks here and your job
What do you think people need to know about [00:08:00] it?
[00:08:00] Ronna Papesh: Well, The most important difference I think people will find is that we've reorganized the content to follow the core competencies, especially the first one for risk management technical skills, and also this educational guide offers many different kinds of media and content that support different learning styles.
And so that was very intentional that we. More variety in the way we present the information.
[00:08:33] Julie Groves: Mm, okay. And where on the, if a member goes to our homepage, where is the, where would they find this?
[00:08:38] Ronna Papesh: The URMIA Resource Guide can be found under the professional development menu on www.urmia.org.
[00:08:46] Julie Groves: Great. And again, we will put a link in the show notes for that, but it is helpful.
Sometimes people like to be given, you know, verbal instruction on how to do things. So what other kinds of projects have you been working on for URMIA. I know they keep you pretty busy
[00:08:58] Ronna Papesh: Yeah. Well, my next big project revolves around member data. Things like what staff needs to know to best serve our membership, where we're gonna securely store it and access it, and how to keep it up to date. These are big things on my mind.
[00:09:15] Julie Groves: Right, right. Well, they're very important things too, so we really appreciate, you know, putting those at the top of your priority list.
What advice would you give to someone who is not an URMIA member, but might potentially be listening to our conversation?
[00:09:31] Ronna Papesh: Well, join URMIA. We have unbelievably powerful tools, resources, and networking designed to make professionals in higher education, risk management and insurance the best they can be.
[00:09:44] Julie Groves: Right. And I would just second that and say, that you know, if you join URMIA you will make some really great friends. So that is a guarantee. Is there anything we haven't covered today that you wanted to chat about?
[00:09:56] Ronna Papesh: Uh, just that I am really excited to have been part of this project that ties together so many different concepts and types of content to offer support to those new to the profession. I can't wait to hear how our members use it.
[00:10:11] Julie Groves: I can't either. And I, I know that people, when they see it, especially if they were familiar with the old one, they are just gonna be blown away. So again, thank you so much for all of your hard work. I know it was not an easy process and, but we all will be better for your work to, you know, reimagine and reorganize the resource guide.
So, Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Ronna. We do appreciate everything you do.
[00:10:36] Ronna Papesh: Thank you. And I really wanna hear from our members. Let me know
[00:10:40] Julie Groves:. Yes. So you all, as you are out there, and if you look at the resource guide, any suggestions to Ronna, kudos, or. Any suggestions or anything, please reach out to her because when she says she wants to know, she really means that she really would like to get feedback on it.
Because you know, I think, as we all know, when you work really hard on something and then it's just out there and then you never hear anything about it, you wonder if what you've done has mattered. And so we need to make sure Ronna knows that all the hard work matter, it matters to everyone.
So, and speaking of matters, this wraps another episode of URMIA Matters.
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