Please join us in congratulating Shakira Henderson on her acceptance of the Deanship of the College of Nursing at the University of Florida. She will be departing Carolina at the end of this month to assume her new responsibilities, which also include serving as Associate Vice President for nursing education, practice, and research — or System Chief Nurse Executive — for UF Health.
Henderson has served as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research since April of 2022. She held this joint appointment within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research in addition to serving as Vice President for Research with UNC Health and as the Clinical Research Integration Officer with the UNC School of Medicine (SOM). While she held these roles, she provided seamless integration of clinical research management across all three entities.
We will greatly miss her leadership. Henderson provided invaluable support to the campus community through spearheading the launch and Phase 1 development of the ONE UNC Clinical Research initiative, a joint effort between the University and UNC Health to transform the clinical research administrative processes to be more synergistic, efficient, and effective. Phase 1 of the initiative concluded in February, and working groups are actively making progress on Phase 2, which includes pilot proposal development. Phase I of the initiative concluded in February, and Phase II took place from May to August. We are currently in Phase III of the initiative, and our Design Teams are actively working to develop proposals to improve the clinical research processes between the University and UNC Health.
ONE UNC Clinical Research is an exciting opportunity that will accelerate our efforts to grow our clinical research across campus. As Henderson steps down, Laura Viera and Michael Sledge will transition into leading the initiative on an interim basis until a permanent replacement is named. Viera currently serves as the as co-director of SOM’s Clinical Research Support Office, and Sledge is Vice President and Chief Business Officer of the SOM’s Clinical Research Alliance. Both are very familiar with ONE UNC Clinical Research, having served on the steering task force for the effort.
Again, please join us in congratulating Shakira on her exciting new role and supporting Laura and Michael as they step into overseeing ONE UNC Clinical Research.
Warm Regards,
Ian Buchanon
Chief Care Innovation Officer
UNC Health
Andy Johns
Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
Blossom Damania
Boshamer Distinguished Professor, Vice Dean for Research
School of Medicine