Dr. Deytia Lima-Rojas enhances Gillings School operations and decision-making through data-driven strategies.
Deytia Lima-Rojas, PhD, is always in search of ways to make things better. As assistant dean for strategic analysis and business intelligence (SABI), she serves as chief data officer and leads the School’s SABI unit. Her team provides leadership with critical data to evaluate and improve the processes that help the Gillings School remain the number one public school of public health.
“If there is something to improve, I aim to improve it,” she said, “whether that be processes, visualizations, surveys, reports, quality, systems or even connections among School units. It’s best when people can work in teams where we each contribute our own expertise and connect the dots to influence change and improvement. Perfection is continuous improvement. Creating that culture is my ultimate goal.”
SABI’s mission is to serve as a key resource to support the School’s core mission and strategic initiatives. The team provides substantive, accurate and understandable data, information and services to all Gillings units and external stakeholders to support strategic planning, evaluation and decision-making across the school. Their data analysis is vital in continuous quality improvement: a process that involves understanding which questions leadership should be asking – and answering – in order to make processes or people within the School work together more efficiently. In addition, the SABI team has created and maintained more than 100 Tableau dashboards and administers the school wide surveys to help the people at Gillings to make data-driven decisions.
“When I was a child, I wanted to be a doctor to heal people,” she reflects. “But I later found I did not have the courage to deal with blood and human lives. In high school, I realized that math and science were my favorite subjects, and I fell in love with data. Now, with my data scientist skills and leadership, I contribute to health by helping our School to prepare future and current public health leaders.”
Lima-Rojas is convinced that people could have a better quality of life if they are informed and make the right decisions. “I always want to encourage people to live better, maybe acknowledging our flaws first and then motivating and reflecting to change our minds to help each other. And this is the same path we follow when analyzing data: identify issues and then propose solutions. The changes for good in our inner circles will impact public health.”
She joined the Gillings School in 2015 after earning her master’s degree in business analytics and her doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee. Her love of music rivals her love of quality improvement, and when she’s not at work, she can be found singing in the Duke University Chapel Choir or singing, teaching and leading different projects at her home church.
