Please help us welcome one of our newest team members in IT Services!

Ruowei Fischer just joined the project management office as a business analyst II.

In her role, she acts as a liaison between the functional user (or client) and the technical team (or developer). Her job is to gather information and requirements from the client. What problem are they trying to solve with this software development project? What are their desired outcomes? What’s the desired timeline? She takes that information and shares it with the developers, sometimes even helping design a solution that can then be implemented by the technical team.

Before joining the IT Services team, she spent some time as a BA at the University of Cincinnati, where she gained experience in the skills necessary for successful project management and software development, including client relationship management and application design. One project in particular that she worked on for UC was a redesign of the students’ tuition bill – transforming it from a PDF to an online, web application version.

“That reduced a lot of accessibility issues and made it more fluid – so students could use the web browser to view their bills,” she said.

Before coming to the United States 13 years ago, Ruowei earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Shanghai Normal University in China. Then, before her work at UC, she worked for the Miami Regionals within the erstwhile eLearning group (now Miami Online) during the early parts of the Covid-19 pandemic (when online learning became a critical part of our curriculum offerings).

Ruowei’s favorite part of the business analyst job is when she has the opportunity to design solutions for clients.

“I get to take something with zero information and come up with the design,” she said. “Another favorite part is talking to developers. I like to communicate with people and figure out the best way to solve a problem or develop a product.”

It isn’t a wonder that Ruowei, a voracious language learner, is a good fit for the job – in her role as a business analyst, she often finds herself in the position of translating between clients and developers. In one direction, she helps developers understand the technical needs of the clients; in the other direction, she presents the issues of the developers without a lot of jargon, so business partners can make decisions easily when they need.

When asked what she likes to do in her free time, she described an impressive list of hobbies and activities that bring her joy, including her dog, Fenrir, and cat, Hero (who won the "animal antics" category of our yearly holiday photo contest!). Ruowei loves learning and speaking new languages, and in fact she speaks four: Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, Korean, and English.

“I like studying languages,” she said. “I watch a lot of anime, that’s my casual thing I love to do.”

She and her husband are spending the December holidays on a trip through Kyoto, Japan, and also visiting family in China. She mentioned that she will be meeting up with some friends in Japan that she met through the language-learning app, Tandem. She also spends time hiking, listening to music, playing video games with her husband, and watching anime and Korean television shows (K-dramas). Not to mention she is a self-described adventurous eater!

“I will try a lot of different food. I also cook Japanese and Korean cuisine!”

Welcome to the team, Ruowei! We’re so happy to have you here!