Celebrating Years of Dedication: 2022 THI Employee Service Awards

The Texas Heart Institute (THI) proudly recognized service anniversaries for its employees for 2022 in two ceremonies. During the events held on June 23 (Spring Awards) and September 29 (Fall Awards), employees were honored by their supervisors and THI leadership. The celebrations highlighted the individual contributions of each honoree to THI’s mission and culture.

Several employees celebrated 20 or more years of service at THI, with three employees from each event earning this distinction.

Honored at the Spring ceremony, LaTisa C. Johnson joined THI 20 years ago as the Departmental Secretary for the Texas Heart Institute Journal, eventually advancing to the role of Senior Editorial Assistant. She is now the Multimedia Services Coordinator for Visual Communication Services, where she uses her project management skills to facilitate multimedia and graphic design requests for customers across the Institute and the Texas Medical Center.

With 25 years of service, James Chen, RN, BSN, CCRC, is one of the longest-tenured employees within THI’s Center for Clinical Research (CCR). He has leveraged his strong background in cardiovascular patient care to support clinical trials at THI, from his initial role as a Clinical Research Nurse in the Stem Cell Center to his current role as CCR’s Regulatory Affairs Manager, through which he manages the regulatory and compliance issues that are a critical component of performing high-quality clinical research.

Joseph C. Brewton, a Videographer and Multimedia Specialist in Visual Communications Services, has been capturing THI’s historic moments and supporting the media needs of its medical, research, education, and communications staff for 35 years. His expertise in videography, editing, photography, and livestream-symposia technology has made him an integral contributor to THI’s professional education program, the communication of THI’s research breakthroughs, and each of THI’s celebrations.

Honored at the Fall ceremony, Brenda Jones has supported THI’s professional educational efforts as a 20-year member of the Office of Continuing Medical Education (CME). As a Senior Program Specialist, she develops and manages both in-person and virtual CME events and symposia, contributing to both THI’s accreditation as a CME provider and the clinical training of health care specialists.

When Qi Liu, PhD, joined THI 20 years ago, she assisted James T. Willerson, MD, with his cardiovascular gene-therapy research program; she has been contributing to THI’s basic and translational research efforts ever since and is now an Assistant Research Investigator in THI’s Molecular Cardiology Research Laboratories. She has worked extensively on the development of novel therapies for peripheral arterial disease (PAD), based on her expertise in a specialized preclinical model of that disease, and her study findings have been published in top-tier scientific journals. She has recently begun to use computational models to correlate disease phenotypes with the prediction of clinical outcomes to better inform treatment approaches.

Jeff Conger, pictured above with Joseph G. Rogers, MD, and Abdelmotagaly Mohamed Elgalad, MD, PhD, was honored at the Fall ceremony as the longest-serving THI employee, with 42 years of service in the THI Cardiovascular Surgical Research Laboratory (CVRL) and the Center for Preclinical Surgical and Interventional Research. As an expert in the preclinical testing of biomedical devices, he witnessed the development of nearly every device that has been tested and refined in THI’s CVRL, working closely with mechanical circulatory support device pioneer O.H. Frazier, MD, and now also Dr. Elgalad. Conger was originally trained as a Respiratory Therapy Technologist; he joined the CVRL as a Research Assistant in 1986 and eventually became its Lab Manager in 2005. In this important role, he has provided oversight of the lab’s day-to-day operations, been a key liaison with device-industry sponsors, and shared his valuable expertise, experience, and insights with his colleagues.

Dr. Rogers, THI President and CEO, closed the Fall event with an appreciation of the various employee roles and disciplines that form The Texas Heart Institute. He remarked, “This is one of my favorite days of the year, and I am inspired by you as I listen to the contributions that each of you has made to the success of The Heart Institute. It’s fun to listen to the variety of work that gets done—we have scientists, administrators, educators, and people that support clinical research done by our physicians—it is really inspiring to see how all of this comes together to create The Texas Heart Institute.”