Monika Maya Wahi

Monika M. Wahi, MPH, CPH proudly hails from Minneapolis, Minnesota, gaining her bachelor's degree in costume design and her Master's in Public Health from the University of Minnesota. Rejecting the 1990s fashion industry as both climate-destroying and full of sweat shops, after achieving her undergraduate, Monika searched for a more humanitarian vocation. As she served as a temporary secretary, bouncing from position to position, she ended up at an epidemiology unit at the U of MN and found her calling. Moonlighting as a phone room supervisor at first Rockwood Research and then Angus Reid Group, Monika honed her data collection skills, and decided to enter the field of public health to chase the data. She served several roles at Hennepin County, including office manager of a mental health clinic in Juvenile Probation called Project Support, and data entry specialist updating an IDX Carecast implementation for the county health insurance plan. After achieving her MPH in 2003, she moved to the University of South Florida College of Public Health to study epi-informatics, and develop methods to apply epidemiologic study designs to production data coming in from what was then a new thing called "the World Wide Web". Monika was chased out of USF COPH by leadership and told she was not actually doing epidemiology, so she did not get a PhD. With no reason to stay in Florida, after leading the Byrd Institute Research Database and Information Infrastructure (BIRDII) project in Florida, Monika moved to Boston to work at the US Army and run the Total Army Injury and Health Outcomes Database (TAIHOD). She encountered a ceiling that was not of glass - it was actually armed with artillery. For her own safety, she left and became an necessity entrepreneur, expanding her consulting company, DethWench Professional Services (DPS). Now, she produces educational materials for public health and informatics, and teaches managers how to lead data science teams. She promotes compassionate and mindful management, and psychological resilience in the face of adversity.