Ombudsperson Jen Pablonis Is Your Workplace Ally — but Nature’s Favorite Target
By Rob Biertempfel
As Carnegie Mellon University’s staff ombudsperson, Jen Pablonis serves as a vital resource — a confidential ear, an impartial guide and a committed community builder.
Now in her fourth year in the Office of Human Resources (OHR), Pablonis helps employees navigate informal workplace concerns, resolve conflicts and improve communication.
“When people talk to me about their issues, they appreciate that I am a neutral party,” Pablonis said. “They understand I’m not on anyone’s side. I listen to their story and maybe offer a different perspective. I’m an advocate for fairness.”
That impartiality builds trust, allowing staff members to see their situations from new angles, especially in conflicts involving colleagues or supervisors.
“I can say, ‘Have you considered this? What about that?’ and just really listen,” she said. “That’s when people sometimes realize, ‘Oh, my supervisor is just a person, and I hadn’t thought about how they’re experiencing this.’”
Pablonis handles a wide range of workplace concerns. Some are straightforward, like locating a missing paycheck, while others are more complex involving issues of fairness, equity or ethics..
Pablonis guides staff members through the many available resources and options. This may include connecting them with the Ethics and Reporting Hotline, the Employee Assistance Program or the Office for Institutional Equity and Title IX.
Pablonis’ role goes beyond one-on-one consultations. She advises CMU’s six thriving Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which collectively have more than 800 members. Pablonis also manages the Staff Mentorship Program, which in 2025 had its largest cohort with 31 mentor-mentee teams.
“Jen wears a lot of hats to make that all happen,” said Todd Rosignoli, assistant vice president of learning and development in OHR. “Part of her ability to engage with people is building that trust immediately. Jen keeps a positive attitude about herself and is not afraid to do a little bit of push and pull with people to get them to think more deeply about things.”
Creating a safe space for employees is central to Pablonis’ work. But away from the office, she has a knack for winding up in dicey situations.
“I guess I'm just accident prone,” Pablonis said with a laugh. “Bad things would always happen to me when we would go on vacation. Every year at camp, I got hurt.”
Pablonis has been bitten by a squirrel, stung by a Portuguese man-o-war and rammed into a fence by a horse. She’s conked her skull on a water slide, broken her tailbone doing the limbo while roller skating, and face-planted in the snow after a 10-foot tumble off a ski lift.
And then there was the brown recluse spider bite — a vacation mishap in Mexico that could have come straight out of a medical drama.
“We were at this beautiful resort having dinner on the beach,” Pablonis recalled. “The next morning, I woke up and there was this giant ugly looking bite and a bloodline traveling up my leg. It was absolutely disgusting.”
The hotel doctor’s initial reaction wasn’t comforting. “He saw it and said, ‘Oh, my God,’” Pablonis said, laughing. “That’s not what you want the doctor to say. He showed me a picture on his phone of a brown recluse spider that was the size of his palm. He said, ‘I think this is what bit you.’”
The bite healed after a few days but unfortunately didn’t result in any superpowers. “I kept hoping maybe I’d turn into Spider-Woman, but nothing,” Pablonis said.
Her family jokes that she should live in bubble wrap. “I don’t think you’ll ever see me hang gliding,” Pablonis said.
Then again, Pablonis once managed to get hurt while simply waiting for friends who were skydiving. Spotting a dog being attacked by larger dogs, she jumped in to save the little dog, which promptly turned on her and sank its teeth into her thumb.
“When the skydivers landed, they came over and said, ‘We’re the ones who jumped out of a plane. Why are you getting all the attention?’” she recalled.
After years of surviving freak accidents, spider bites and other close calls, Pablonis is happy to leave the chaos behind and focus on calm.
“I’ve definitely had enough excitement for one lifetime,” she said. “Now, I’m happy to be the uneventful one — just helping people figure things out and maybe making their lives a little easier.”