Meet Stephanie Santore, Associate Director, Academic and Administrative Affairs, Department of Internal Medicine

My role is Associate Director for Academic and Administrative Affairs for the Department of Internal Medicine. I oversee a team that manages the faculty affairs and human resources (HR) functions for the department.

We handle appointments and promotions, leaves of absence including sabbaticals/triennials and medical leaves, policy questions, and faculty searches. Our team is a great resource to go to for all faculty appointment-related questions.

We also manage onboarding and hiring for staff, faculty, post-docs, postgraduates, students, interns, clinical fellows, unpaid affiliates, and hospital residents - all the different groups that work in Internal Medicine. Our team is a first point of contact for any kind of HR-related questions that the sections might have.

I also help with other various projects, training, and complex issues that come up.

I've recently started to work with Cayetana Navarro, program manager for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Internal Medicine. We are working to focus on staff retention, and we are mapping out what a career path would look like for staff members in different job categories. Whether it’s research or finance, we are separating out various job categories to look at the potential paths within them. There are so many different roles at Yale that sometimes it can be overwhelming. Our hope is that we can better help our staff figure out their next steps and how to get there.

I studied business management at Quinnipiac University, and I ended up getting a job in an HR department in a retail organization during college. I really enjoyed the work, so after graduating, I pursued HR as a career. I worked as an HR assistant for a construction company before coming to Yale and have held a few different positions since starting here. I started in central HR as the assistant in the HR generalist team, and then I moved into the Leave-of-Absence Coordinator position.

I moved to Internal Medicine in 2012 as an assistant administrator and then became the HR generalist for internal medicine for about five years. In 2018, my role shifted to support the staff and faculty affairs of the department and my current position as the Associate Director for Academic and Administrative Affairs role grew from that change.

I am very lucky to have a really great team; they are talented and a lot of fun to work with every day. Helping to build the team and develop them in their careers has been rewarding. I also love being part of the internal medicine community, you see a lot of the work that the faculty and staff are doing, and you are helping them in a small way as they move forward with their projects. I think that is what initially drew me to HR, I like that you're always trying to help somebody in some capacity, whether it's getting a new job, or being a resource for their concerns or questions.

There are so many opportunities. Yale is so big that there is always room to learn, grow, and move around. I also think internal medicine has been a really fantastic department. I have been here for a while, and there are a lot of really amazing people here and great work being done. It’s been really rewarding to be part of the organization and the broader Yale community.

Some of the things I enjoy outside of work are yoga, hiking, traveling (next trip is to Italy!), paddleboarding/kayaking, reading, and spending time with friends and family.