UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Richel A. Perretti, contracts manager in the Department of Risk Management, has been named the 2018 Staff Excellence Award winner.
Established in 1993, the award recognizes the consistently outstanding performance of a staff member who has demonstrated and practiced the philosophy of continuous quality improvement, team spirit, managerial excellence in the performance of assigned duties and leadership in establishing a quality service orientation, so as to benefit his or her unit and the University.
In her leadership role on the contracts team, colleagues said Perretti demonstrates a deep sensitivity to the needs of others both on her team and for University customers.
Perretti has designed and implemented several important process improvements to speed the workflow within the office including a contract tracker database that allows the team to more effectively distribute work and to know where every item is in the process and a decision tool for electronic software agreements so all University employees can know which software they may use independently versus those which require formal review. She also initiated and led an interdisciplinary team charged with developing the University’s minimum security standards and liability language to be used with software vendors, which host sensitive University data.
“Perretti’s commitment to quality improvement is demonstrated in the outreach education that she helps conduct each year and with the creation of the contract database,” a colleague said. “This is a huge accomplishment considering that before the database we used an Excel spreadsheet to log in and out of contracts our office received. Each year, we process between 4,100 and 4,500 contracts, so this web-based database was a significant improvement.”