Sonia has more than 16 years of experience assisting academic medical centers, universities, and hospitals with strategic planning, the organizational alignment of research functions, operational effectiveness, and integrations between institutions to achieve strategic and financial goals.
About Sonia
Sonia assesses an institution’s research enterprise and associated organizational structures to enable research growth, adapt to evolving industry and institutional changes, and strengthen the administrative infrastructure. She also leads mergers, integrations, or affiliations between universities and hospitals to optimize research portfolio alignment, build upon existing research focus strengths, and devise organizational models to address the unique aspects of each partnership.
Throughout her career, Sonia has:
- Facilitated the strategic design and planning efforts for the establishment of a joint health science center between a tier-one research (R1) university and a leading hospital. Sonia directed the research committee responsible for assessing and developing a plan for the partnership, supporting the institutional chairs in achieving aggressive milestones.
- Worked with multiple R1 and R2 institutions to develop a research growth strategy plan, which led to a boost in research rankings, the prioritization of research investments, and improved researcher collaboration.
- Led service delivery improvement projects to help institutions identify the optimal model for the alignment of shared resources and department administrators to support research administration through the analysis of existing full-time equivalents (FTEs), the comparison to industry benchmarks, the evaluation of roles and responsibilities, and the determination of the requisite research expertise.
- Led over 25 assessments of research enterprises, including central and local administrative functions, research compliance, innovation, and technology, resulting in improved operational efficiency and customer service to researchers along with reduced financial and compliance risk.
Sonia earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan.