Editor’s note: Congratulations to Grace on earning her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification—an exciting milestone that reflects the thoughtfulness, discipline, and leadership she brings to her work at UnionHub.
Some people are drawn to the moment an idea is born. Others prefer the satisfaction of seeing the finished product in someone’s hands.
Grace Oh-Willeke enjoys everything that happens in between.
As a Technical Project Manager at UnionHub, Grace helps guide projects from early conversations and static designs into fully functioning parts of the platform. Her work requires equal parts organization, curiosity, communication, and empathy.
“One of my favorite parts of the job is seeing our work come to life,” Grace says. “I love the feeling of being able to see a design go from flat images to a fully interactive and functional piece of our software.”
It is a process that can involve dozens of decisions, shifting priorities, and contributions from across the company. Grace helps connect those pieces, making sure the people doing the work have what they need to succeed.
“A huge part of my job is uplifting my colleagues and helping them access the resources, tools, and information they need to efficiently deliver new features and improvements to UnionHub.”
A Creative Approach to Complex Problems
Grace grew up in Denver and always hoped she would eventually return to Colorado. After high school, she traveled east to attend Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she studied Environmental Science.
Her career may not focus on environmental science today, but the way she learned to approach problems remains central to her work.
“My liberal arts education gave me the skills to think critically, communicate effectively, and approach problems with a creative mindset.”
Those skills are especially useful when a project sits at the intersection of technology, user experience, business requirements, and the realities of people’s lives.
Grace now lives in Colorado with her partner, Miles, and their dog, Oakley. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, hiking, camping, and baking. She has also been sharpening her cake decorating skills through Cake4Kids, an organization that provides homemade treats to underserved youth celebrating milestones such as birthdays, graduations, and adoptions.
The work gives Grace another opportunity to combine creativity with purpose—two qualities that also shape the way she approaches her role at UnionHub.
Designing for Difficult Moments
One of Grace’s longest-running projects at UnionHub began on her very first day: improving the experience of filing an insurance claim.
Claims for benefits such as short-term disability or long-term disability often occur during stressful and uncertain periods. Yet the process can require several layers of verification, repeated information, and coordination among multiple parties.
“Filing an insurance claim for something like STD or LTD requires multiple levels of verification, including the verification of coverage and personal information, often at a difficult time in someone’s life.”
That reality shapes the way Grace and the team think about the experience. The goal is not simply to digitize a complicated process. It is to make that process easier to understand and navigate.
UnionHub’s software gathers and tracks the information a customer needs to initiate a claim. The team has also been working on processes and integrations that reduce repetitive steps.
“We’ve been working to create processes and integrations that reduce the need to repeatedly input information and allow users to access their income protection benefits as quickly as possible.”
Another important part of the work is visibility. Rather than leaving users uncertain about what is happening behind the scenes, the platform is designed to provide clearer, more immediate information.
“Our claims process will also give users unprecedented and real-time insight into the status of their claim.”
For Grace, the project is a reminder that good software is not only measured by what it can do. It is also measured by how it makes people feel while they are using it.
Small Features, Meaningful Outcomes
Not every impactful feature is a large platform transformation.
Grace is also proud of UnionHub’s automated enrollment reminder communications, which help members avoid missing limited enrollment periods for voluntary benefits.
“Enrolling for voluntary benefits is often limited to a short window of time each year,” she says. “Our emails help ensure that folks don’t miss that window of time.”
A reminder email may seem simple, but for a member who might otherwise miss the opportunity to enroll, it can have a lasting effect.
That attention to practical, everyday problems is part of what Grace values about working at UnionHub. The team is encouraged to look closely at where users experience confusion or friction and consider how technology can make those moments easier.
The Experience Behind the Expertise
Before joining UnionHub, Grace worked with a software team delivering professional development content to faculty and staff in higher education.
Her commitment to helping people access important resources began even earlier. During college and immediately after graduating, she registered hundreds of Denver residents to vote.
Her path has included education, civic engagement, technology, and project leadership. Each experience has influenced the way she thinks about access, communication, and the people on the other side of a process.
Grace sees that same value in the varied backgrounds of her UnionHub colleagues.
“I’m proud of being part of a collaborative team that is willing to jump in to help teammates with problem solving, share knowledge, and share perspectives from previous roles or other areas of their lives.”
Those perspectives can reveal challenges that might not be obvious from a purely technical point of view.
Grace points to one of UnionHub’s UX designers, who previously worked as a dental hygienist and has shared firsthand insight into healthcare data and software experiences.
“She has been able to share unique perspectives about data handling and experiences using software in the healthcare space.”
At UnionHub, previous careers and unexpected experiences are not treated as unrelated chapters. They become part of how the team designs better products.
Bringing the Pieces Together
Grace’s work is often about connection: connecting an idea to a plan, a design to working software, or a team member to the information they need.
It is also about keeping the people who use UnionHub at the center of each decision.
Whether she is improving a claims experience, helping launch a new feature, or volunteering her time to create a birthday cake, Grace brings the same underlying belief to her work: thoughtful details can make complicated or important moments feel a little easier.
At UnionHub, she is helping turn that belief into technology people can use.
