About one year after I was recognized as an ASCP 40 Under Forty and Top Six awardee, I was recruited to a different organization for a new job opportunity in a new role to direct UCLA Health’s Laboratory Stewardship program. While I am still a clinical chemist by training, and I still practice and teach clinical chemistry, in my new role my focus has broadened to lead laboratory stewardship efforts across all areas of pathology and laboratory medicine. To be successful in this role, I have had to further develop my leadership skills, such as skills for strategic planning and for personnel management and project delegation. I am honing these skills in different ways, including through ASCP’s Leadership Institute and through the Association for Academic Pathology’s Pathology Leadership Fellows Program.

My 40 Under Forty recognition was acknowledged and publicized by my department and institution, bringing honor and visibility to our laboratory and to our profession. The award has also broadened my own professional network, as it has allowed me to be recognized by others at conferences and has been a conversation starter on several occasions (especially with others who have also been 40 Under Forty awardees). Additionally, since in my current role I am working closely with pathologists and other laboratory professionals outside of my own field of clinical chemistry, the 40 Under Forty award is an honor that has been broadly recognized and respected by my co-workers and colleagues, both within my institution and outside of it.

Since being recognized as an ASCP 40 Under Forty in 2021, I have been honored to be a part of two team awards related to my work in laboratory stewardship. Firstly, our laboratory stewardship program at UCLA Health was awarded the 2024 PLUGS (Patient-centered Laboratory Utilization Guidance Services) Member of the Year award. This award recognizes a PLUGS institutional member’s contributions to collaboration and leadership in lab test stewardship efforts locally and nationally. We were recognized for various contributions, including hosting the 2024 PLUGS Regional Summit in Los Angeles, participating on the PLUGS Ambassador Committee and Informatics Working Group, and for contributing articles to ADLM’s Clinical Laboratory News Quarterly Focus on Laboratory Stewardship. Later in 2024, I was recognized along with the PLUGS Informatics Committee as ASCP Choosing Wisely Champions. The committee was recognized for our work in developing practical benchmarking tools to compare laboratory utilization data across different institutions. Thus far we have published three benchmarking guides on vitamin D, thyroid testing, and iron deficiency workups. The guides include step-by-step instructions for retrieving data and calculating metrics, as well as suggestions for laboratory stewardship interventions to improve the metric at one’s own institution.