Ashlee Fazzino-Smart
New Haven,CT
Summary
Dynamic professional with 17 years of diverse experience in operational management and team leadership. Proven ability to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics through active listening and problem-solving techniques, fostering a collaborative work environment. Achievements include driving operational excellence in sample management while leading a high-performing team. Committed to leveraging unique perspectives to guide others towards successful task completion.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Laboratory Manager
Evotec (US) Inc.
Branford, CT
04.2023 - Current
- Oversee operations within the laboratory – inventory management, order fulfillment, staffing, process improvement, scheduling, and training/cross-training.
- Worked with the site head to strategically reduce the staffing numbers from 13 laboratory personnel to 9, maintaining a lean, but efficient group, and reducing headcount costs.
- Worked with the laboratory operations team and quality specialist to author, review, and approve 70+ SOPs and WIs on our site's processes and workflows.
- Safety officer, first aid team member, floor sweeper – POC, ensure the safety of the employees on site and company assets for day-to-day activities, and in case of an emergency.
- Authored our site's emergency response plan by collaborating with our ESH representative, facilities manager, quality specialist, and site head.
- Hiring management: candidate screening based on business need and candidate competency.
- Selected, interviewed, and recommended top candidates for multiple positions from large pools of resumes.
- Manage direct reports – Use my coaching skills to develop direct reports, one of which resulted in a promotion.
- Getting employees to see how they fit into the larger picture, and how to match the business need with their skill sets and long-term goals.
- Use quarterly reviews to showcase employees' accomplishments, or display trends of shortcomings to improve on.
- Documentation management for direct reports helps build a picture of them as employees for promotion, performance improvement plans, or termination.
- Social Committee Founder – responsible for collaborating with the team on celebrations, event planning, team building, employee engagement, and motivation.
- Assist with and oversee software upgrades: review release notes, create UAT, establish standards, test, educate staff, and mitigate any effects to the customer.
- I partook in a testing matrix and was able to finalize our testing a day early due to taking a lead role.
- Responsible for identifying gaps within processes, documents, and services.
- Used problem solving and strategic thinking to forecast and prevent potential issues.
- Ensure the delivery of quality products by using the Eisenhower matrix on a need basis to ensure operational excellence.
- Resolved customer inquiries and complaints requiring management-level escalation.
- Planned and led team meetings to review business results and communicate new and ongoing priorities.
- Delegated work to staff, setting priorities and goals.
Research Associate
Evotec (US) Inc.
05.2021 - 04.2023
- Lead staff training and development
- Cross-function liaison working closely with the lab ops team, project management team, automation specialist, and group leader
- Worked with the PM group and site head to optimize their invoicing procedure in conjunction with efforts to capture laboratory metrics
- Worked with the automation engineer to optimize our QC process and bring it online
- Manage direct reports with a primary focus on professional development and collaboration
- Maintained mostly normal operations through a cyber-attack ensuring clients were happy and business remained as uninterrupted as possible despite difficult working conditions
Sr. Laboratory Technician
Evotec (US) Inc.
12.2019 - 05.2021
- Process neat and liquid samples for order fulfillment using a weigh station or a liquid handler (Hamilton star, Tecan Evo, Bravo, BenchCel and Tecan Fluent)
- Routine client plating
- Sample receiving and registration
Laboratory Technician
Spectrix (contracted at Pfizer)
05.2017 - 12.2019
- Provide support for compound management & distribution for assay sample handling services
- Responsible for data curation and inventorying of samples in long term storage
- Responsible for training other contingent staff
- Experience with Tecan, Biomek FX, Velocity 11 Bravo, Echo 555 and Bohdan Automator systems – software as well as hardware on all instruments
- Responsible for the creation of plates from the yearly file equity rebuild of 63k compounds
- Successfully integrated compounds from receipt to being orderable by scientists within 6 months
Laboratory Technician
Summit Womens Clinic
09.2017 - 11.2017
Education
Some College (No Degree) - Biomedical Engineering
Gateway Community College
New Haven, CTSkills
- Operations Management
- People Management
- Operational Excellence
- Process Improvement
- Project Management
- Data Analytics
- Collaborative Problem-solving
- Workflow Management
- Customer Service
- Risk Management
- Technical Literacy
Certification
- Lean Six Sigma – Yellow Belt Certification, 12/01/24
- Veeva Vault, 01/01/24
- First Aid/CPR/AED, 01/01/25
Accomplishments
Evo Recognition Award 12/2024 - "Ashlee took a leading role from the lab operations side, collaborating closely with the PM team to register samples and begin processing before the year-end deadline. By commencing the work in 2024, Evotec Branford will be able to recognize significant revenue before the end of the year."
Evo Recognition Award 9/2024 - "Ashlee and a few other colleagues, who would not typically be involved with this client, worked above and beyond to make sure deadlines were met despite having to maintain their normal workloads."
Evo Recognition Award 11/2021 - "In recognition of the outstanding work involved with managing the process and team in order to empty and move the entire contents of freezer 2"
Timeline
Laboratory Manager
Evotec (US) Inc.
04.2023 - Current
Research Associate
Evotec (US) Inc.
05.2021 - 04.2023
Sr. Laboratory Technician
Evotec (US) Inc.
12.2019 - 05.2021
Laboratory Technician
Summit Womens Clinic
09.2017 - 11.2017
Laboratory Technician
Spectrix (contracted at Pfizer)
05.2017 - 12.2019
Some College (No Degree) - Biomedical Engineering
Gateway Community College