This Excellence Award for Bringing Out the Best goes to Lauren Pouchak, Director of Special Projects in the Office of the Vice Chancellor. Lauren’s colleagues have singled her out for this award because of how skillfully she advances complex initiatives.
Lauren has played a key role in strategic initiatives that will have lasting impacts across MIT. One example is the graduate student unionization effort, which impacts thousands of students, faculty, and administrators. Lauren served as the primary liaison to administrators and others across our 109 graduate programs, managing a major transformation in a way that brought accolades from our legal counsel.
In the words of another coworker: “Lauren is the kind of colleague you dream about. Super competent, easygoing, a true confidant, and—in the classic MIT way—eager to get stuff done. I always know the end result will promote the kind of institutional change that might have first seemed impossible.”