Carin Cardella, MA, MS, thought nothing of impacting her own work-life balance to help support the well-being of the employees she works with as the public information officer (PIO) of University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) Police and Public Safety. 

Cardella has volunteered over the past year on UMB’s Future of Work Task Force, which is charged with developing recommendations to leadership related to work flexibility, employee value proposition (why people want to work and remain at UMB), and employee well-being. Cardella initially worked as a member of the Workplace Flexibility Committee because she wanted to be a voice for employees such as police officers, security officers, and police communications operators who don’t have the opportunity to telework but whose well-being should be considered in the recommendations. 

Because of her support of the committee, she was named its co-chair, working nights and weekends to consolidate its recommendations and support them with research and employee feedback. She read through hundreds of comments from the Future of Work listening sessions and survey, helping to give a voice to UMB employees in the report.

“Carin quickly became one of the most innovative and supportive members of our group,” said 
Liz Graham, MS, executive director, Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, who co-chaired the committee with Cardella. “Her ability to boil down a vast number of news articles, research, discussions, survey results, listening session feedback, and more — while also considering employee diversity, functional responsibilities, and equity for the essential on-campus employees she works with — showed her commitment to the well-being of our UMB community.”

On Nov. 28, about 50 of Cardella’s colleagues from Police and Public Safety, the Future of Work Task Force, and other offices joined UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, to surprise her with the news that she had been named the University’s November Employee of the Month. 

“Carin is amazing. She keeps me on the straight and narrow with all my communications across campus. We couldn’t do this without Carin,” said Thomas Leone, MSL, chief of police and assistant vice president for public safety. 

As PIO, Cardella manages all communications facets for police and emergency management, which includes social media, the website, media relations, and crisis communications. She also sends out UMB alerts and writes the UMB Police and Public Safety monthly newsletter. 

She said those skills were a benefit while working on the task force. 

“One of my gifts is the ability to consolidate information, so I took the lead on that aspect of it,” she said. “It almost became a 24/7 thing. I did most of the work outside of my work hours, and I would stay up until 2 in the morning working on the Future of Work report, because I felt it was so critical to the future of our university. I’m proud of the document we put together. We wanted it to be something people would want to read and was engaging and easy for people to understand.”

The task force’s 168-page document was presented in August to leadership, which formed a work group to review the recommendations. The next step will be to hold town halls with employees in early 2024.

“She showed a commitment to continuous improvement and collaboration. She advocated for UMB’s lowest-paid employees, who are often required to be on campus full time. She created recommendations to ensure work-life harmony and healthy behaviors for her fellow employees,” said Graham, who nominated Cardella for the award. “And most of all, Carin promoted open communication, empathy, and respect with everyone we spoke with. Her work will improve the human condition for our UMB employees for decades to come.”

Dawn M. Rhodes, DBA, chief business and finance officer and senior vice president, who oversees Police and Public Safety and is one of the executive sponsors of the Future of Work Task Force, praised Cardella for her willingness to help.

“You truly give and give and give. Your technical skills are beyond reproach. But what really sits with me is that you stretch yourself to help so many other people,” Rhodes told Cardella during the videoconference. “I am always amazed when I find out that you spent some time working on a project for this unit or that unit outside police and the Office of Emergency Management. And I have no idea with what time you’re able to do that. You truly are able as a sole unit to use multiple vehicles to effectively communicate.”

One way she has been willing to help her community has been during two tragedies that the Baltimore City Fire Department suffered in the past two years. Cardella has been deployed to the Maryland Incident Management Team as a PIO supporting the Linden Heights Avenue line of duty deaths this year and the Stricker Street line of duty deaths last year because of her extensive training and experience in crisis and emergency situations. She has helped to coordinate the response to ensure that the right information is disseminated to the public, the news media, and the fire department. 
 
“I’m glad that I could be there to play a very small role in this response, but it’s really about the firefighters who died and their families and the community that continues to grieve,” she said. “It’s the impact that we can have when we work together and bring all of our talents to support the larger community.”
As UMB’s Police and Public Safety PIO, Cardella said she thrives on her job being different every day.

“Even if I think I know how my day is going to go, it could completely be upended in the middle of the day,” she said. “I thrive in the chaos. I get the 2 a.m. wakeup calls, I get called back into work sometimes at 6 o'clock at night after I’ve already gotten home. But I think those moments are when you work your best. We all come together as a team. Everybody’s working together toward a common goal. And I just really love that.”

Cardella, who has worked at the University for more than four years, will receive a plaque, a letter of commendation, and an extra $250 in her next paycheck. She thanked Graham and the members of the Future of Work Task Force as well as Jarrell, Leone, Rhodes, Christopher Stanton, MS, acting executive director of emergency management, and Jonathan Bratt, MS, assistant vice president, Office of Enterprise Resilience, for their support and leadership.

She said she was grateful and overwhelmed to win the award. 

“That you’ve all taken time out of your day to be here for me is just really touching, so thank you all for making me better and for supporting me and lifting me up,” she told the colleagues who gathered from all over the University during the videoconference.

She said building those relationships is one of the things she is most proud of. 

“The Future of Work Task Force allows me to break out of some of those silos that we so often have here at UMB,” she said. “I’ve met so many incredible people that I would not have otherwise met. We can leverage those relationships into a better work product, but also I think it really speaks to the well-being aspect of our university when we’re all working together.”

— Jen Badie