2022 Internet2 Inclusivity Award Winners

Emily Chahar

Emily Chahar has 10 years of professional experience in the education, nonprofit, and defense industries. She currently serves as an IT project manager at the University of Delaware. She works in the University’s IT Project Management Office, which partners with campus departments to ensure successful project management of the University’s IT projects. She has managed enterprise-wide projects related to branding, websites, email marketing, user migration, content migration, secure data storage, data warehousing/reporting, and data integration. Emily graduated from The College of New Jersey with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and professional writing.

Allison (Ally) Hepp

Allison is a systems engineer for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Maryland. Her role at UMBC involves system design, programming, installation, and project management for audiovisual upgrades at UMBC. In addition to her work with the audiovisual team, she works closely with the network engineering team at UMBC as more of the audiovisual industry moves into the networking world. Allison is always looking to learn and gain new knowledge, inspiring her to delve more into the networking world and start a master’s degree during the pandemic. She is nearly finished with her master’s degree in technical management and is quite active within UMBC’s staff-shared governance organization. In addition to her work, Ally serves on the board of Swim Across America Baltimore, a nonprofit raising money for cancer research, and is an avid trail runner.

Steffanie Johnson

Steffanie is an IT security risk analyst and team lead with the Office of Cybersecurity at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She specializes in cybersecurity risk management and compliance to guide campus partners in implementing security controls necessary for reducing risk to safeguard systems and data. In prior roles, she has worked for private global corporations providing expertise in IT security with a key focus on auditing and compliance. Some of her responsibilities have been to assist companies with technology acquisitions and divestitures, ERP security administration, policy writing, cloud security, and the continual implementation of the risk management framework at UW–Madison. Steffanie is an ISACA Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nicole Klueber

Nicole Klueber is a systems integration engineer for Penn State University’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS). ICDS operates and maintains a high-performance computing system known as Roar. Roar provides resources that enable researchers to develop and apply high-performance computational methods. Nicole manages Roar’s systems engineering lifecycle and provides engineering expertise to support the design, deployment, and launch of the cyberinfrastructure iterations. Nicole also participates in the evaluation, selection, and implementation of hardware and software products for various cyberinfrastructure projects. She also manages and advances ICDS internal documentation such as test plans, requirement specifications, engineering drawing packages, concept of operations, and project management plans. Nicole always had a passion for technology and building an internal knowledge base and technical skillset for herself. She is eager to interact with other professionals and gain insight from their experiences. Nicole is also enthusiastic about promoting diversity and inclusion in technology. She is involved in various working groups and organizations that strive to achieve those goals.