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Roberta Marianella, EPH Administrator, Celebrates a 25 Year Career at Yale and Prepares for a Retirement Replete with Family, Golf and Travel

“In 1976, I was walking down Elm Street to the HR personnel office and I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to work at Yale, with the beautiful buildings and with its traditions,’” Roberta Marianella, EPH Administrator, told the large crowd that gathered at her June 16 retirement party.

And work at Yale she did, beginning in January 1979 as a temp for the library (although she was offered a permanent position there, she declined it and instead took a position as an administrative assistant in the medical school’s Department of Pediatrics because someone had told her that the work was most interesting at the medical school). In the administrative assistant position, Marianella said, she learned to tackle all kinds of challenges, including how to get people to write reports and correspondence. “People hate starting with a blank piece of paper, so they put off doing what needs to be done. I started writing the scientific reports and correspondence myself, triple spaced, and put them in the faculty mailbox. The next morning they would be edited and back in my box…done!!” Before long, her C level clerical & technical position as Coordinator of the Children’s Clinical Research Center became a managerial & professional position. Her boss, Dr. Mike Genel, encouraged her to get a master’s degree, which she did, earning a master’s in hospital administration at night at Quinnipiac University in 1982. In late 1987, after working as both a personnel representative and a compensation specialist for the medical school’s Department of Human Resources, Marianella was encouraged to apply for the position of EPH Business Manager (now called Administrator) being vacated by Gary Mulligan, who is now Associate Chairman of Finance and Administration for the Department of Internal Medicine. Marianella began work at EPH in January 1988.

Her retirement party, attended by colleagues from across the university and by her husband, mother, children, stepchildren and one of her grandchildren, featured several speakers who have known Marianella as a colleague and as a friend. Their comments highlighted Marianella’s trademark sense of humor.

Kitty Matzkin, Director of Placement, Staff Relations and Compensation, who first met Marianella while writing a Yale Bulletin article on a clerical & technical employee who had utilized a wide range of benefits offered by Yale, said “Roberta is such a source of personal inspiration-- she can, in one or two sentences, tell you how to lead your life,” to which Marianella called out “whether you want to know or not!”.

Norman Brody, Associate Director of Buildings and Site Services at the medical school, explained the somewhat antagonistic ritual that facilities personnel and departmental administrators go through, each trying to get the other to pay for as much as possible from their own funds. Marianella was a skilled adversary, Brody said, who convinced the facilities staff that, because the enormous windows of the EPH building made its air conditioning system inadequate, “the Godzilla-style vertical blinds in this building are in fact building infrastructure and not a departmental expense.” Facilities paid to replace the blinds and for that achievement, Brody presented Marianella with the Facilities “Blind to Reason Award,” a miniature EPH window blind installed on a plaque.

Marianella’s dedication to excellence in her work and for the university, as well as her consideration of the people with whom she worked, were also emphasized. Stacy Ruwe, Executive Finance and Information Officer at the medical school, said that Marianella is a “leader of leaders and is known around the university for her nurturing of people.” She noted that many people who formerly worked for Marianella “are now out leading and doing other things… she nurtured them within their department to maximize their skills and also encouraged them to grow outside the department.” In an interview that took place after her retirement party, Marianella noted that she considers the biggest accomplishment of her career to be the fact that many people trained in her office are now administrators and assistant administrators in other departments. “They all,” she said, “have had a chance for upward mobility.”

Marianella will be missed at EPH. On behalf of EPH’s business office staff, Maureen Bogan, an Assistant Administrator at EPH, thanked Marianella and talked about all of the wonderful things to which she has to look forward. Michael Merson, Anna M.R. Lauder Professor and Dean of Public Health said “whatever the challenge, Roberta, you were ready for it, and in a way exited about it, and hoping that you could find a solution that would really both be fair and of a quality that everyone could be proud of. So for that I want to thank you on behalf of everyone here.”

The job requisition that Marianella submitted to human resources to post her position demonstrated her wit, and was read at the party by Clémence Palcso, Human Resources Representative for Placement and Staff Relations. It stated that “the position is on hard money because it is a hard job.” It is clearly one that Marianella has loved, as “nothing becomes routine.” She has seen much change in the field of public health and in the department in her years at EPH. She noted that “public health has increased in visibility on the campus, as well as as a discipline,” and cited numerous changes to the department, such as improved student services and financial aid for students, renovation and modernization of the department’s building, an increased sense of camaraderie among the faculty, and the increased professionalism of the business office staff. She told the guests at her retirement party that more than 25 years after first aspiring to work at Yale’s beautiful campus, she now knows that “the wonder of working at Yale is found in the lively minds, the cutting-edge ideas, the management challenges, and interesting people” found here.

Following Marianella’s remarks, in which she thanked the public health faculty and staff, Dean Merson, her colleagues around the university, and her family members, Marianella was presented with a golf bag and a wide array of golf accessories, an appropriate gift for someone who reported, in the job requisition to replace herself, that she had “decided to become a full-time athlete after 16 years of sitting” in her office at EPH. Upon retirement, Marianella will become her husband Paul’s golf partner, spending a portion of the year in Florida. In addition to golfing, Marianella looks forward to “being outside year round in Connecticut and Florida… traveling with my husband, reading books in the daytime, spending more time with my 9 grandchildren and playing Scrabble with my mother.”

The EPH community will miss Roberta, and wishes her a wonderful and exciting retirement!

- Story by Christy Gordon.