More than 150 Hopkins experts are helping design future-state processes for the new Workday platform
Since 2024, when the Sightline program launched to modernize business processes with Workday, Johns Hopkins experts—in a steady stream—have joined Sightline staff virtually or in-person at the Johns Hopkins Mt. Washington campus where Sightline is located.
These health system and university subject matter experts collaborate to establish better ways of working across human resources, finance, supply chain, and sponsored projects. “The expertise, input, and feedback of our colleagues are essential to the Workday design and build,” says Matthew Nesbitt, program executive for Sightline.
More than 150 experts have participated in the first set of design sessions. They helped rethink a myriad of details that go into 50 future-state processes. Fueled by coffee and snacks such as Swedish fish and peanut M&Ms, these experts are reimagining processes large and small–from attaching invoices to vendor supplier accounts to updating how to flag deadlines for grant and award spending.
Sessions are set up in a series of three sprints called “worksets” that run through March 2026. Collaborators work to streamline and improve processes in the sessions. Future-state configurations with broad impact will undergo “customer confirmation” before being adopted in the new system.
The Sightline team will occasionally highlight John Hopkins experts helping to improve administrative work.
JHU Human Resources Spotlight: Karen Sentementes
Expertise: Human Resources
Position: HR Director, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
“We have a tremendous opportunity to rethink the “why” around established processes. Certainly, there are nuances division to division, but there also are advantages to finding overarching commonalities.”
Before joining Johns Hopkins in 2017, Karen Sentementes used the Workday platform at the Baltimore-based Legg Mason. At Hopkins, she participated in the initial vendor demonstrations last summer, and is lending her expertise to design sessions aimed at examining HR processes for faculty and staff members.
Sentementes expects the new platform to provide better data visibility for managers and employees. “The new system will provide employees with access to more of their own data and more sophisticated online tools to manage their own careers,” she says. “I’m very excited about the data our managers and employees will have at their fingertips.”
JHHS Supply Chain Spotlight: Brandi Haines
Expertise: Supply Chain
Position: Director of Procurement Operations and Strategy, JHHS
“What’s truly refreshing about the Sightline team is their commitment to collaboration. Beyond their expertise, they’re remarkably open to engagement and deeply understand the unique needs and challenges faced by those of us who work with these processes daily.”
Brandi Haines is a key JHHS supply chain connector. A long-time employee who started as a procurement specialist in 2013, she now oversees two critical teams: Corporate Procurement and Materials Management Information Systems (MMIS). Among other vital functions, these teams manage the procure-to-pay process across the health system, the vendor master, and maintain the item master—a catalog of frequently purchased items with negotiated prices from specified vendors.
Haines’ hope for the Sightline initiative is clear: it provides the opportunity to take a holistic view of our current, often fragmented, systems. “This full review of business processes and practices will help us address inefficiencies and inconsistencies,” she says. “Ultimately, this will improve user functionality and enhance our corporate teams’ ability to provide operational support.”