Originally from the Midwest, USF College of Public Health (COPH) alum Michelle Pizarro and her family moved to Largo, Fla., when she was an infant.

After graduating with her bachelors in humanities and religious studies from USF in 2007, Pizarro said she wanted to learn more in a different field.   

“My sister was a pharmacist and came across someone with an masters in health administration (MHA) and thought it was something I would be interested in,” Pizarro said. “I wanted to work within hospitals and make a difference, but not be a physician. I did some research and saw USF had a great MHA program. It allowed me to stay local and work nearby, so I applied and haven’t looked back since!”

While earning her MHA, Pizarro’s first experience working in public health was as a student intern for James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, Fla.

“I worked within various departments for a couple months at a time to learn what they did—scheduling, oncology clinic, operations and more,” she said. “It was great to see the inner workings of a hospital, but especially a veteran’s hospital which is incredibly unique. Certainly the clientele is unique, but also the staff, many of whom are veterans themselves. It was great to see how the VA system itself operates.”

VA medical centers provide a wide range of services, including traditional hospital-based services such as surgery, critical care, mental health, orthopedics, pharmacy, radiology and physical therapy.

“I think it’s important for anyone in a health care career to understand how different each type of hospital functions,” Pizarro said. “One methodology may work wonderfully at one institute, but that doesn’t mean it will work at another—and there are usually important reasons for that. That experience broadened my viewpoint of health care.”

Pizarro reflects fondly on her days as a Bull. She was an MHA student when the program earned its first accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education. The process and ultimate reward was exciting to witness firsthand.

“I am very proud of this accomplishment for the COPH, and it is a highlight of my time in the college,” Pizarro said. “Since I was a student during that time, our work was submitted to the accrediting party. There was a lot of communication with the students during the process and we were kept updated on progress which made us feel very involved and connected with the process.”

The MHA program just recently earned reaccreditation for the next seven years.

Pizarro was also a member of the Healthcare Management Student Association (HMSA), which provides its members with real-world skills to create competent health administration professionals.

In addition, Pizarro was able to travel to Chicago and attend the American College of Health Care Executives Annual Congress (ACHE) as a student member.

“Being a part of HMSA and ‘student’ ACHE was so helpful in making connections and hearing from others in the field,” Pizarro said. “Even if I wasn’t ready to network in the formal sense, just hearing from various workers out in the community was great.”

After graduating with her MHA in health policy and management in 2011, Pizarro went on to be ACHE’s Post-Graduate Fellow in Chicago.

“That introduced me to the medical association world and my career was officially started,” she said.

Pizarro started work as a consultant at PerfectServe, a clinical communication company in Chicago.

“I had multiple roles there from meeting directly with physicians across the country, being a team lead and managing the intake of new contracts and assigning teams to their various implementations,” she said.

Then, Pizarro moved on to be a project manager at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. Northwestern Medicine is the collaboration between Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine that encompasses the research, teaching and patient care activities of the academic medical center.

“My largest project was assisting in the roll out of EPIC to our various hospitals—specifically the specialties preferences,” Pizarro said.

“EPIC is an electronic health record system that is user friendly and has a high level of customization,” Pizarro said. “My job was to get the leaders of each specialty across the system together, along with the EPIC analysts, to decide how they wanted EPIC to work for them. For example, all the orthopedic surgeons met multiple times to determine how their screens would look, what prompts they wanted, etc. Given that everyone has their own workflow, it was a great lesson in gaining consensus.”

Today, Pizarro is director of executive projects and operations at the American Academy of Dermatology, located in Rosemont, Ill.

“This is my second role in the company. I started as a senior manager within practice management, with a focus on health IT,” she said. “I then moved into my current role as director, working directly with our CEO on operations. I am essentially chief of staff. I work directly with the CEO and my focus is on the organization’s operation plan and ensuring initiatives are moving forward. I report to the board of directors on our progress.”

This role is one that Pizarro says did not previously exist and it required someone who was detail-oriented and had experience working with various teams to accomplish tasks and manage large projects.

“I oversee the program we use to monitor initiatives and progress throughout the year. I report out on the organization’s progress throughout the year to our various leadership teams and then prepare our executive director to report to the board on a quarterly basis,” she said. “When changes are needed to the plan, I bring that to the executive team to discuss. This role allows me to work with every department and multiple levels of staff.”

In 2023, Pizarro earned her certificate in nonprofit management from the Executive Education program at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. This tool will support her continuing journey in impacting public health.

“Public health affects everyone,” Pizarro said. “Any role you have within public health makes a difference. I think it’s important to remember your personal connection to the mission you are working toward to stay driven, innovate and make some positive changes.”

As for the future, Pizarro said she’d love to stay in operations. “I’m hesitant to speak too much of the future as opportunities have a funny way of coming about that you would never have expected,” she noted. “My career path has not been a straight line and I think there is something really gratifying in that.”

Fast Five:

What did you dream of becoming when you were young?

A teacher or college professor

Where would we find you on the weekend?

On the couch, reading a book

What is the last book you read?

“The Inmate,” by Freida McFadden

What superpower would you like to have?

Time travel

What’s your all-time favorite movie?

“Dirty Dancing”

Story by Liz Bannon, USF College of Public Health