Celebrating Tina Micale’s 40 years at Pitt

For four decades, Tina Micale has known everything happening in her department, sometimes before it even happens. In early September, friends, family and colleagues finally got something past her as they celebrated her 40 years at Pitt with a surprise party.

Micale joined the Department of Health Services Administration (a precursor to HPM) in 1986 as senior secretary and quickly rose through the ranks, being named Department Administrator in 2002.

Very little gets by Tina, but through careful planning organizers pulled off a surprise

“That’s four decades of institutional memory walking around in one person, which is incredible,” said Jen Palaski, Pitt Public Health Associate Dean for Finance and Administration who worked alongside Micale as Department Administrator for the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science before her current role. “When you look at the progression of Tina’s career, each one was a sign of people around her saying, ‘Give her more; she can handle it.”

Micale started her career by supporting faculty, and as many of her colleagues can attest, “supporting” is often a generous way of saying “keeping their entire professional life from falling apart.” Few in Public Health have seen that more than HPM Professor Howard Degenholtz, PhD, who says he’s been with the department “about 75 percent as long as Tina has.”

In a speech he called “I’ve Been Everywhere, and Tina Has Too,” Degenholtz recalled countless office relocations and shifts, saying that without Micale, morale could have dropped, things could have slipped through the cracks or gotten lost, but they didn’t. He also commended her leadership and compassion, noting that she stood up for her staff and younger faculty members when they needed a champion.

“Tina clearly acts as the soul of this department,” said Professor Emeritus Mark Roberts. “She defends her people from the most senior tenured faculty member to the brand-new staff. We should all learn from the resilience, strength, and work ethic that Tina exhibits”

Micale’s time at Pitt spans not just decades, but multiple generations of families. For many years, she worked alongside Mary Kastner and got to know her family, including her daughter Keri, who is now a project coordinator in HPM.

“Tina recommended me to Howard, and while he did put me through an actual interview, I always had a feeling Tina’s recommendation had more weight than my answers did,” said Keri Kastner. “Because she put her name behind mine, I always felt an extra responsibility to do well, work hard and make her proud.”

Being a department administrator is a thankless job; if you’re doing it well, all the long hours and extra effort can go unnoticed because everything is running smoothly. Faculty, staff and students have come and gone, some here longer than others, and through it all, Micale has worked tirelessly to help them succeed at both work and in life, offering help, guidance, advice or a place to let off some steam.

Roberts, who chaired HPM for several years, credits Micale’s guidance for his success.

“When I became chair of the department, I had no idea how to be a chair. I had not done that before. It turned out not to matter. Because Tina taught me everything I needed to know,” he said. “I'm a decision scientist. I study decision-making and how to make optimal decisions, and all these fancy mathematical models to do that. But when it came to making decisions in the department, I found a simple, non-mathematical solution. Just ask Tina. It always worked.”

“There’s a reason ‘Ask Tina’ is a department policy,” added Kastner. “She doesn’t just know the answers; she’s spent 40 years sharing what she knows, mentoring staff and faculty and solving problems.”

The average tenure that an American employee has with an employer is four years. “That means that Tina is 10 times as dedicated, 10 times as knowledgeable, 10 times as committed to the people that she works with and the mission of the organization,” said HPM Professor and Chair Julie Donohue, PhD. “I am happy every single day that I get to work with Tina. She is my sounding board. She's my trusted confidant. I always know that she's going to give me the right perspective on a problem.”

It’s not all about work for Micale, who’s also found time to be a confidant and sounding board for friends all over campus. Elly Bresz, who, before her current role as a Research Administration Manager at the School of Computing and Information, worked as a research administrator in HPM, recalled a lunch group Micale started that grew over time.

“That's the thing about Tina, even when you're a coworker, or even work for her, she's still your friend,” said Bresz. “She has such a rare abundance of kindness that she would always be asking more people. And our lunch group got bigger, and we ended up with 10 or 12 people. We would laugh so much. We probably bothered the people in the offices next to us, I'm sure, because we were laughing so loudly and talking and learning sometimes.”

While there’s probably a lot more everyone who’s met and worked with Micale could say about how she’s impacted their lives both personally and professionally, it’s best summed up with this:

Thank you Tina, for everything. Congratulations on 40 incredible years.

-Mike Friend