Meet Our 2026 ESPRIT Award Winner: Samira Husseini

Samira Husseini enjoys what she calls “cracking the code.” As a Contact Center Agent III at VNS Health’s Contact Center Shared Services (CCSS), she takes calls from providers and billing offices with questions about health plan claims—a process full of acronyms and specialized terms. On each call, she does her research until it all fits together, “like solving a puzzle,” she says.

Samira belongs to Gen Z, a generation that grew up essentially online, and she earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology through online classes. That fluency with technology makes her the person that teammates turn to when a system or tool has them stymied.

The exchange runs both ways, and she values what longtime VNS Health members can teach her. “It’s really interesting to learn from different people’s experiences, and then add my own experience to the mix,” she says.

Samira is always ready to share what she knows, even on a busy day. When a new colleague needed technological help in assisting a health plan member who had called in, Samira set aside her own work to walk the colleague through each step.

“Her support helped resolve the plan member’s needs in that moment, and also gave me the confidence and knowledge to handle similar cases on my own,” the colleague wrote in nominating Samira for ESPRIT honors. “What stood out was not just her knowledge, but her understanding of how stressful those situations can be.”

When her supervisor shared the news of her ESPRIT Award, she told Samira how proud she was that Samira was getting the recognition she deserved. For Samira, the feeling is mutual. “I really love my team,” she says.