Mission Support Alliance Employee Wins Women Innovator of the Year Award

Mission Support Alliance (MSA) employee Ashley Ward was recognized as Innovator of the Year at the 2019 Women in IT Silicon Valley awards ceremony in San Francisco, Calif. Ward, who serves as MSA’s director of Information Systems was recognized for her efforts bringing new and innovative technology to support the Hanford Site’s cleanup mission.

I’m truly overwhelmed to receive this award,” Ward said. “This could not have been possible without my great team and all of their hard work.”

Partnering with MSA’s Public Works organization, Ward and her team are putting state-of-the-art technology into the hands of workers in the field. Through the use of mixed-reality technology, which can best be described as real-time virtual reality, workers have more information readily available along with expanded communication capabilities to their teams. This has the potential to streamline training and accelerate schedules.

“Congratulations to Ashley on this well-deserved award,” said Todd Synoground, MSA vice president for Public Works. “Ashley has that unique characteristic of being a technical expert in her field while also being a strong and dynamic leader. Her innovative thinking and uncanny ability to identify creative solutions are second to none.”

​In her role at MSA, Ward leads a team of over 150 IT professionals that develop and maintain more than 1,600 applications that manage data and information across the 580-square-mile Hanford Site supporting approximately 9,000 workers. Hanford, the largest environmental cleanup project in the country, is located in southeastern Washington State.