October Award of Excellence Winners

Molly Coombs (IT) and Laura Daroca (Emerson Los Angeles) are the October Award of Excellence winners.

Molly Coombs has been the assistant director of user services in IT since 2018. She is a 2011 graduate of Emerson and studied Print and Multimedia Journalism. She started working at the IT Help Desk as a student, one week after arriving on campus in 2007. The day after she graduated, she started her full-time career in IT as a lab support/systems specialist. She said of the award, “…I loved my time in undergrad at Emerson and consider it a privilege to be able to provide support to the Emerson students, faculty, and staff of today. We joke in IT support that if you’re doing your job really well, the systems you create and the spaces you support don’t need additional help, and, therefore, no one even knows you exist. So it is a real honor to be recognized, and I am very grateful for the kindness.”

Laura Daroca is the associate director of student and alumni transitional services. She will be celebrating her five-year anniversary at Emerson in March. Prior to her current role, she held the position of associate director of alumni engagement for two years. She said of the award, “Winning the Excellence Award was both affirming and humbling. It felt wonderful to be acknowledged for the work that I did to help ELA’s Academic Team during a time of staff transition, but also humbling because the entire team is awesome and works incredibly hard. I’m thankful to Mikhail Gershovich, Isabel Macomber, Thomas Potts, and Malika Fowler for welcoming me onto their team during that time….I’m also thankful to Tim Chang for his supervision and support.”

Nancy Howell (Communications and Marketing)