Better Together: Wisconsin’s Evolving Strategy to Meet Public Health Needs During COVID-19

Olivia Butler is the Data Management Liaison for the Department of Health Services, and also serves as the Tableau site administrator at DHS. Olivia received her Masters from the La Follette School of Public Affairs prior to starting work for the State of Wisconsin, where she was able to apply her background in policy and econometrics and discover her love of Tableau. Olivia is a leader for the State of Wisconsin Tableau User Group and serves on the leadership team of the first Women in Technology group at DHS. Olivia enjoys supporting her data community and is always looking for new ways to improve data strategies to support modern analytics.

Chris Huard is our Tableau Project Manager. He holds his Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from UW-Madison with an emphasis on data collection methodology. Before joining the State Chris oversaw various data-related projects with a focus on longitudinal research and mixed mode techniques. Currently Chris coordinates a data visualization community where he optimizes data display design to best educate and inform audiences. In his spare time, Chris likes to spin vinyl, run outside, and conquer dimensions and parameters with his colleagues.

Kate Rifken has worked in a variety of different fields from mental health and substance use, brain and body interaction, mindfulness, as well as public health. While she enjoys analytics and visualization, her passion is translating data to consumable forms for decision making and exciting stakeholders around data. Kate received her Master of Science degree at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in Population Health Sciences. Kate currently works for the Department of Health Services, where she helped spearhead the initial rollout of Tableau at the Department. Over the last three years she has helped guide a dedicated group of Tableau users and build an organizational structure for Tableau. She understands that traditional metrics do not always tell the full story and enjoys the challenge of translating and visualizing tough data stories.