Meet Our 2026 ESPRIT Award Winner: Roxanne Gay

Roxanne Gay has a warm hello and cheerful smile for everyone who comes through the blue doors of the 6th-floor lobby at VNS Health’s 220 East 42nd Street office, from job candidates arriving for interviews to team members with questions about their benefits—or those who simply work on the 6th floor and are walking past the reception desk.

As a Human Resources (HR) Shared Service Coordinator, Roxanne is often the first person you meet when you arrive at the 6th floor at 220. “Where I sit, I get to meet so many different kinds of people,” she says. “No two people have the same issue, and I like the challenge of helping each one so they can move on with their day.”

Colleagues admire how she is responsive and patient with every visitor, answering each question with care, even if it’s the fifteenth time she’s heard the question that day from fifteen different people.

Some visitors arrive frustrated or worried, with an urgent problem on their minds. Roxanne always stays calm and treats each of them with kindness and respect, whatever their title or department and whatever brought them in.

She also brings people together. At quarterly HR meetings, Roxanne designs and leads team-building activities, and she is quick to volunteer when it’s time to decorate for the holidays. Her fellow HR team members call her “both our cheerleader and our guiding light, lifting others up while keeping us grounded.”

A self-described “people person,” Roxanne comes by it naturally. “I get it from my parents,” she says. “They were lovely, outgoing people, and that’s my favorite part of them that I carry with me.”

Roxanne, who has been at VNS Health for eight years, was surprised to be chosen for an ESPRIT Award. “I love what I do,” she says, “and I’m humbled that people feel safe and comfortable coming to me when they need help or direction.”