Dr. Susan Monarez

space, you had to use supercomputers because it was so complex to do those, those, that level of, you know, data integration and sort of algorithm development and computer modeling and everything like that.

But we were, we, you know, I had the mantra at the time, model, model anything, anywhere at any time.

And so we were modeling, you know, public health response to different disease outbreaks.

And we had, you know, global research labs all over the world looking at, you know, various biological pathogens and the potential impact.

And

So I did that for about three, four years.

And then I went up to the White House National Security Council during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

And it was such a unique experience trying to figure out how to both address an evolving crisis in a number of countries that did not have public health infrastructure and

commensurate with the need so how do you actually get the resource to them in the timely manner especially when you know misinformation was very prevalent at that time and distrust and you know the the support that we were trying to bring and that actually uh led to an extension of that outbreak i was working on the domestic side as well which is if we should have you know some individuals come back who were exposed what do we do about it and then of course we did we had oh yeah

come into the country.

And that really also shaped a lot of my thinking in terms of not just pandemic preparedness and response, but interestingly, wearables and telehealth, knowing that remote patient monitoring and access to clinical care capacity when

People are cut off from brick and mortar institutions because we saw a lot of that happening with just some of the fear that was, you know, when individuals were coming back and they were either exposed to Ebola or we thought that they may be.

And just, you know, the fear factor promulgating and also the need to monitor individuals who had actually been exposed.

And wearables were just at the earliest stages.

But, you know, having that level of exposure that early to something of that magnitude really helped shape my innovative thinking.

You know, so I was at the White House, was at Nestero Council, then Office of Science and Technology Policy, and then was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Strategy and Data Analytics for DHS, which was also, you know, fantastically interesting running a $70 billion strategic portfolio and looking at data analytics systems for

you know, you know, 23 different individual law enforcement components are trying to have integration across all of them.

And I mean, that was, that was also, you know, absolutely fascinating.

And then I went back to my roots in health and I was at the Health Resources and Services Administration, which is a $15 billion organization providing healthcare services to rural individuals living in rural environments or other small populations.

And I