Over the span of the next couple weeks, we will be welcoming our second guest blogger Alison Wellman Smith. Alison is a Business Analyst, focusing on the Grants Dashboards on the MFR project in HUIT. Alison began her career in sponsored research a little over thirteen years ago at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where her responsibilities focused on both pre and post award. From BWH, she transitioned into a post award role in the Office for Sponsored Programs here at Harvard. After six years in OSP, Alison took a position at the Harvard Kennedy School where her focus was on post award, training, and financial budgeting and reporting. Finally, before transitioning into her current role in HUIT, Alison worked in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences where she focused on sponsored systems, various reporting efforts and assisted the Finance Office with sponsored budgeting. 
Working as a Business Analyst on the MFR project in HUIT, Alison works with the Grant Working Group focusing on data accuracy and the development of the Grants Management dashboards in OBI, will be working closely with Mike Toon and Tracey Westervelt in OSP on converting some of Mike’s reports for better use, and is starting to help support the OBI Financial Dashboards. Alison’s main focus is to understand business process and act as the go between for the Dashboard Developers and the business. Keep an eye out for Alison’s first blog post where she will touch on topics such as how data flows into OBI, and how GMAS access impacts what access someone will see in OBI. 
If there are any specific questions you would like Alison to address in her blog posts, please email contactgmas@harvard.edu with the subject line “Ask Alison”.