The importance of peer recognition cannot be underestimated. From the very early days of StarFish, employees have given Kudos to their peers at monthly all hands meetings. This blog is a selection of Peer Kudos from the past year or two that say a lot about our company culture and values.
 

What is a Peer Kudos?

Kudos provide an opportunity for employees to recognize a colleague for something they did that wowed them. Or perhaps they heard positive feedback from a client about someone and want to share that with the broader team. Kudos give everyone a chance to recognize individuals and actions that make a difference.

As the company grew and sharing verbal Kudos took more time out of the monthly meeting, so we added a channel to Teams to collect Kudos throughout the month. We hope you enjoy learning more about our culture and incredible group of employees.

Project Heroes

Kudos for a successful 3-day intense client visit in Toronto. From the client’s follow-up email, “I am impressed that your team continues to meet the high bar, despite its continuing climb higher as we uncover the potential of this project.” Great work everyone! (Sandy Gill, Morna Gamblin, Mike Loveless, Rodolfo Prata, Sanjay Bala Balasubramanian, Scott Parsons, Ammar Al-Dojaily, Khaled Youssef, Rawa Al-Saigh, Brent Bailey, Neven Nikolic, Dhruvitha Krishna, Diego Sorrentino, Kori Herlein and Danika Wotten)

Kudos for pulling some heroics to make sure our client received prototypes just in time for a pre-clinical study. In a great example of what we stand for, the team pulled out all the stops to ensure the client’s success in a critical part of the program. (Brooklynn Taylor-Clark, Levi Puckett, Martin Kellinghusen, and Bhavyashree Parmar)

Kudos to the Ventilator Design Team for their International Design Awards (IDA) Gold award. (Paul Charlebois, Hannah Rusak-Gillrie, Tim Park, and Christian McMechan)

Kudos for incredible results improving device performance. A special mention to Aram who only a couple weeks after joining the EE Team is making significant contributions to the quality of our designs. (Aram Radnia and Christian McMechan)

Kudos for great work on GUI wireframes. The client has a large clinical team that likes providing their input and feedback. He skillfully listened to them to produce a result that effectively balances their opinions and recommendations with usability heuristics and UX guiding principles. (Mike Loveless)

Kudos for always being on top of managing project change requests in time tracking and generally keeping a tight ship. Project management analysts are unsung heroes! (Michelle Braun)

For your great work setting up the build server and making the unit scripts work, which resulted in us earning a rating of 10 on the client survey. (Alex Newcomb and James Sease)

Kudos for dedication and creativity instrumental in supporting our client to a successful business case presentation at a client governance board meeting. Their collaborative and innovative approach made a significant impact, great teamwork! (Rawa Al-Saigh, Sandy Gill and Scott Parsons)

Kudos for jumping through a ton of hoops today getting 2 consoles working, updated, tested and released to the client all on 1 day’s notice. (Taimoor Khan, Raza Haider, Neven Nikolic & John Turner)

People and Culture

Kudos for helping with QA recruiting and providing great input in picking our next QA. They are busy people with many other commitments. (Sandy Gill, Scott Parsons, Mike Rowley and Jordan Haas)

For creativity and expertise leading our entire social committee in a team building workshop using the “Series Play” modality (she is certified in c/o Lego).  Kudos also to each member for taking the time out of their busy schedules for ‘forming, storming, norming, and performing’.  (Sarah Wilson, Rodolfo, Charu, Sanjay, Konstantin, Kori, Vladimir, Joshua, Dustin, Jennifer, Joan, and Ariana)

Kudos for making “Take your grade 9 child to work day” such a success. I was impressed by the program that was put together so quickly.  You all made it super fun and interactive. (Scott Parsons, Alen Isaac, Trevor Haebe, Michaela Di Cristofaro, Mike Loveless, Sunghyun Lee, Danika Wotten, Tina Sokhanvar, Lorenzo Gutierrez, Ryan Field, Maria Gonzalez, Vanessa De Sousa, Kevin Meric, Emily Hayhurst)

Kudos for using your Superpowers of Pioneer and Innovator to help me in my P&C role. My nominee helped me create processes like onboarding, offboarding and contract requests easier and more efficient. She collaborated with multiple stakeholders to get the process started in a short span of time. (Masako Hegge)

A huge thank you for StarFish support in getting my Permanent Residency Status in Canada. I would like to give a sincere and heartfelt kudos for their direct support in this process! (Swetha Renya Natarajan, Jess Hickman, Russell Haley and John Turner)

Kudos for helping us grow our Teams and serve us all in the myriad ways. For me personally, that looks like being managed in a compassionate and progressive manner, which makes working here a joy and a positive experience!  (Pamela Potts and Jess Hickman)

BIG THANKS for putting on a cooking masterclass for all of us amateur chefs!!! From the camera angles to the recipe variations, everything was awesome and SOOO entertaining! When is the next one?!?  (Vladimir Valastiak)

Kudos for creating a very positive onboarding experience as I have learned my role, I know how hard that can be being the trainer in the past, and just want to extend my appreciation. Thank you guys!  (Beatriz Staffen, Semina Choi, Betsy Stoodley and Michelle Braun}

Metrics and Accounting

A big and special kudos to the entire accounting team for being engaged and very supportive with the working papers for the annual SF audit. This was a wonderful teamwork, and I am very proud of it.

Kudos for supporting and quickly adapting to the new processes implemented for Accounts Payable to support and facilitate the payroll process. (Joan Johnston and Alaine Polinsky)

Kudos for creating the software budget and hour tracker. It has been very helpful to keep the project on track and flag us when we are over budget. (Beatriz Staffen)

For persistence in collecting payment for a sizable 2.5 yr outstanding invoice that 6 people before him tried several times to collect over that period. He was the only one that succeeded. (Chris Gale)

Kudos for creating a great, practical short-term cash flow template. This will help us manage cash more effectively. I’m sure we can all relate to enjoying a good excel cash flow projection! (Jennifer Sallows)

Manufacturing

Kudos for developing the Incoming Inspection metric. (Brian Ives)

Thanks for great support and excellent work to create and load all the Calibrated Equipment on Syspro, improving and automate a manual job. (Joseph Bogner)

Huge kudos for hard work getting the clean room and manufacturing ready to go in Toronto for the project builds including a difficult last-minute audit finding and navigating process challenges due to the new clean room vision. (Maria Gonzalez, Martin Par Rahul Jawalkar, Disha Patel)

Kudos for the amazing and prompt support for all the “and one more last thing” calls to fix bits and pieces of SharePoint for the new QMS-209-W release. (Randy Tamayo)

For expediting building and testing sterility cases in parallel with setting up the clean room in preparation of a test engineers being on site tomorrow. All in one day! This puts the project in a great position. (Rahul Jawalkar)

Kudos for his amazing efforts to procure the boards for the project resulting in smooth passing of the boards through incoming inspections and power up tests. All this resulted in completing the project change request on time and under budget! (Michael Ganzert)

Kudos for developing and implementing a new Kanban system to better manage fasteners on the MFG floor. (Hannah Richards, Kamalpreet Singh, Sandro Sultana, and Nana Owusu)

Extra big Kudos for organizing the items from warehouse into organised racks so we can fill the new kits efficiently and for catching the mistakes in the long list of fasteners. (Joy Mendoza)

Regulatory/Training

Kudos for guiding our client through their MDR submission. Feedback from the reviewer ‘Overall, I would give you a huge A+ on this submission‘. (Taimoor Khan)

Thanks for successfully leading the Toronto Intertek audit with no non-conformances! (Deborah Pinchev and Taimoor Khan

Kudos for her support and working late nights/weekends preparing for the FDA audit. (Maria Gonzalez)

To all who supported the NCC (Brazil) audit: and a special shout out to Nana Owusu for demoing end of line testing on a device in front of the inspector. (Sean Mitchell, Brian Ives, Vanessa Faria, Joseph Bogner)

Kudos for pitching in and assisting with Victoria’s ISO 13485 recertification audit. (Joris van der Heijden, Dana Trousil, Brian Ives, Matthieu Lemay, Nathan Müller, Laurie Lavallee, Vanessa Faria, Deborah Pinchev, Prename Patasse and Lucia Cristobal)

Big kudos for logging in remotely from a completely different time zone and guiding one of our auditors throughout the entire three-day audit. You are a shining example of our company culture and values. (Dhruvitha Krishna)

For all the efforts to lead and complete the Verification and Validation activities on a project leading into the 510k submission. (Palash Jha, Deborah Pinchev, Russell Haley, Julian Grove, Garrick Gunn)

Kudos for your efforts in leading and executing the release of Quality Management System (QMS) 222 and 228 to incorporate the new manufacturing validation process. (Dana Trousil)

Kudos for his efforts on the Design History Record releases. Releasing 70+ units in a week is no easy feat. (Sean Mitchell) Kudos for stepping in and helping with the reviews and collaboration on this program. (Dhruvitha Krishna, Bhavyashree Parmar, and Alexandra Reid)

For making an excellent slideshow on laser safety training. Medical imaging of laser char marks on a real human retina really makes you think twice about laser safety!  (Ryan Field)

IT/IS Support

For always being an extra pair of hands and eyes in the Toronto office myself and the rest of the IT team, and always being quick to answer and dependable to boot! (Andrei Ursu and Alen Isaac)

Kudos for helping set up a big computer with a bunch of GPUs and a lot of RAM, lots of disk space and everything for the development of our QA/RA tool using AI. I was trying to penny pinch a bit and put together a bare minimum system that would kind of work. They went above and beyond and put together a system that’s future proof. (Bruce Kaiser, Jermaine Richards, and Eric Klassen)

Business Development & Marketing

Kudos to the BD team for a home run hitting year! (Dave Dobson, Mark Drlik, and Tara Acheson)

Kudos for her creative edits to our business review presentation!  She made us all look much better. (Tara Acheson)

Big Kudos for the amazing work and vendor support on our tradeshow booth update! (Morna Gamblin)

Kudos for all his marketing and trade show ordering support. He does so much and is always calm and smiling! (Christian Fleischhacker)

StarFish Spirit

For spearheading StarFish Group’s effort to donate over $20,000 to the Mustard Seed food bank fou totally embrace and represent our company culture and values!  (Trinity MacRae)

Kudos for being resourceful and finding a workaround during the July All Hands meeting. The speakers in the room in Victoria weren’t working so we couldn’t hear anyone online. She went and found a Jabra speaker and then set herself up in the middle of the room whenever a presenter from Toronto or remote location was speaking. This kept the show on the road while IT worked to solve the issue with the room speakers. (Daniela Chapman)

Kudos for helping me to break into my car, so I could get the keys inside. (Alen Isaac)

Kudos for donating time for the Skills Auction Car Cleaning service. My car took extra effort and Rahul did a great job, which earned me extra brownie points at home.  – Note from Rahul: Glad you loved it. Tried my best to make it look clean and smell good. (Rahul Jawalkar)

Kudos for carefully rescuing a spider outside the Manufacturing kitchen, gently carrying it in his hands up two flights of stairs and releasing it in the main parking lot. Despite not being a big fan of spiders, this made my day! It went up my sleeve briefly, but we made it safely to our destination. (Kenneth MacCallum)