Josef Dunbar
Age: 34
Analytics program supervisor, Confluence Health
Descended from engineers and “shameless math nerds,” Josef Dunbar’s curiosity about how things work was sparked early on, culminating in his current job as analytics program supervisor at Confluence Health.
“I find reward in helping junior analysts learn new tools to solve analytical problems and working with executives to explore novel ways to dive into data,” he said.
He has a degree in biochemistry with a minor in chemistry from the University of Washington and a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Michigan.
He started his career in Michigan and Illinois, first as a software engineer and then a modeling and simulation engineer before returning to Washington, taking a job as a data scientist at Confluence Health in Wenatchee.
His work ultimately helps patients by providing meaningful health care and financial insight to the organization’s operations.
The most rewarding part of the work, he said, is seeing a team deliver “impactful” solutions. He enjoys channeling his curiosity toward real world problems.
His connection to the community also is growing, as he and his wife are now raising their new baby in Wenatchee.
What does success look like to you? What do you see as attributes of a successful community?
To me success is the realization of goals while navigating obstacles. While many projects must navigate obstacles, an example that I think demonstrates success was the migration of our hospital budgeting process to a collaborative platform.
The budgeting process historically involved generation of a budget file, emailing separate parts of the file to different leaders, collecting edits, and combining the separate files back into a single file. While this process provided a tailored approach for management, it was plagued by issues around file management and communication. By leveraging a collaborative online tool, we alleviated these issues while still being able to provide a tailored experience. What made this project a true success was our group's ability to work closely with different teams to understand their needs from the legacy system so that we could address them in the new one. We also ensured success by maintaining open communication about the new process during rollout, holding office hours and recording how-to videos.
I believe this view of success is also applicable to communities which are most successful when leaders and individuals are willing to listen to each other’s opinions and find compromise in solutions.
