‘Together, We Can Do This,’ Says COVID-19 Project Manager

Kathleen Hamill says Wentworth has a solid plan for reentering campus this fall, one that should work well barring major interference from the Covid-19 virus itself and providing students, faculty and staff stay fiercely united against the pandemic. The key to success, she says, will be diligence—closely following the reentry protocols and plans that are in place.

“There are a lot of unpredictable factors out there,” she said. “But the Wentworth model provides a blueprint for how to go on the offensive against the pandemic.”

Hamill, who joined Wentworth as its COVID-19 project manager in July, is charged with keeping the university community as healthy and safe as possible during the pandemic. She is overseeing the university’s response to the crisis and campus reentry, including testing, tracing, isolation, and leading the COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Case Management Team.

Hamill says that hers is a tough job, because predicting what the coronavirus is going to do is like banking on the stock market or counting on the weather forecast in New England. But if experience and can-do attitude matter, then Hamill is up to the challenge. And the force is with her, as they say. She is relying on data and science, and state and federal regulations and guidelines. She has ample support on her side, from Wentworth’s COVID-19 team led by President Mark A. Thompson. Meanwhile, staff members have been working around the clock on cleaning, and implementing special campus precautions and space configurations.

“I am hopeful that with all of the groundwork that’s been done already that we’ll be able to move this through to a very good outcome,” Hamill said.

During the height of the pandemic in Massachusetts, Hamill led a team of a dozen people that performed all functions of the COVID-19 response. Her work with Partners in Health and the Massachusetts Community Tracing Collaborative honed her ability to manage a team of case investigators, contact tracers, and care resource coordinators. That team advised patients on protocols for isolation and quarantine and developed other tools and systems for mitigating the virus.

Since 2013, Hamill has been a scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, where she has tackled issues related to human rights, public health, and humanitarian concerns. She has led rapid assessment research teams, created reports, and delivered conference presentations locally, nationally, and globally. Recently, Hamill has also worked as a visiting professor of international law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she developed and taught courses including Human Rights Law and Current Issues in Human Rights.

--Dennis Nealon