The Client Partner of the Year Award is an award given by ROVE recognizing a client’s philanthropic leadership and business partnership.

ROVE, a leading systems integrator in the southeast region, today announced the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) as the recipient of the 2020 ROVE Client Partner of the Year Award. This award is an ongoing tradition reflective of ROVE’s core company values in building lasting relationships with client-partners as well as common purpose that drives our innovations.

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The Client Partner of the Year Award is given to one client-partner each year that exemplifies philanthropic leadership as an organization and consistently strengthens business partnerships through strategic alignment within the communities they serve. ROVE is honored to recognize MAHEC as this year’s Client Partner of the Year.

“We created this award to recognize organizations that had a unique way that they creatively leveraged ROVE to extend out their organization and drive innovation throughout their company. We chose MAHEC because of their unique, dual mandate of being able to educate and drive R&D throughout the pandemic. They not only provided a testing model for situations in the crisis, but also thinking forward about how we can address this crisis and eventually move forward through a vaccination process,” stated Marcus Jacoby, President at ROVE.

In March 2020, the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, declared a state of emergency, immediately banning the gatherings of more than 100 people. Colleges and universities subsequently had to pivot from in-person learning to virtual education. With ROVE’s help, MAHEC was able to pivot both faculty and staff, including students, quickly online.

“If WebEx and the solutions that ROVE suggested weren’t as easy to use as they are, I’m not sure that we could have been as successful as we were during this pandemic. Being able reach out to the community easily via WebEx made it all very simple and straightforward, allowing us the ability to proceed more quickly than we would have been able to do without it,” stated Adam Eberhardt, AV systems engineer at MAHEC.

Lizzie Cozart, director of philanthropy at MAHEC, added, “Overnight we weren’t able to be face to face with each other anymore. We weren’t able to build that personal connection and so we all had to pivot. Thanks to ROVE and their support, we’ve been able to nimbly respond and keep our focus on building relationships all with the focus of making people’s lives better and helping people in our region and beyond.”

The Client Partner of the Year Award also recognizes the value of true partnership in business. This award highlights organizations that continue to successfully collaborate with ROVE to drive both internal and external efficiencies despite current challenges set by the pandemic.

“We’re very excited for the future after making it through this current pandemic. We’ve spread out in places we’ve never been to before and there’s many more opportunities to assist the community through technology. This pandemic has actually helped us learn how to use technology better to assist the community in healthcare,” said Chris Jury, director of IT Operations at MAHEC.

“To be recognized with this award from ROVE is amazing and exemplifies what MAHEC does on a daily basis.”

Since the start of the pandemic, MAHEC has played a key role in COVID-19 prevention and treatment collaborating with medical practices, educational partners, and community-based organizations across western North Carolina. In February 2021, MAHEC partnered with UNC Asheville to operate a large-scale community COVID-19 vaccine clinic that has administered 16,000 vaccines to date.

About ROVE:

ROVE is a Systems Integrator that services Enterprise, Commercial and Public Sector clients across the Southeast Region. ROVE’s mission is to partner with customers on their transformational business process initiatives to deliver impactful technology solutions that provide modernized business platforms. ROVE is proud to be certified by the United States Department of Veteran Affairs as a registered Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB). For additional information, visit www.withrove.com.

About MAHEC:

Mountain Area Health Education Center was established in 1974 and is a leader in healthcare, education, and innovation. Located in Asheville, MAHEC serves a 16-county region in Western North Carolina and is one of nine Area Health Education Centers in North Carolina. MAHEC’s mission is to recruit, train and retain the workforce needed to create a healthy North Carolina with a focus on primary care in rural communities and those with less access to resources. MAHEC’s Biltmore campus is also home to UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC, an academic health center in partnership with UNC-Chapel Hill that includes programs from the UNC School of Medicine, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and UNC Adams School of Dentistry.

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