Rick Ziegler, chief financial officer, JoAnne Vaccaro, director of research operations, and Anca Freilinger, accountant II, were a part of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) team that won a 2026 UW–Madison Administrative Improvement Award.
The Administrative Improvement Awards recognize outstanding work at UW–Madison in process redesign/development or customer service that resulted in improved efficiency, increased revenue channels, cost savings or improved service delivery.
Rick, JoAnne and Anca worked collaboratively with other SMPH departments on the SMPH Fiscal KnowledgeBase Platform, which focused on reducing expense reimbursement timelines. Because of their work on this platform, their travel reimbursement pilot reduced average turnaround from 23.48 days to 7.03 days across over 23,000 reports.