Grace Bonewitz
Wieland Designs, Director of Recruitment and Retention
Our CEO, Kip Wieland, is friends with someone who works at Goshen Health. He happened to reach out to them and just asked, ‘Hey, do you have a need?’ Someone contacted him the next day and said, ‘Yes, we’re trying to work out a way to get masks to our front line.’
From there, it went to our sewing department. Sandy Phebus is our industrial sewing specialist, and she came up with the first prototype for the mask. We sent it through Amy Self, marketing specialist with Goshen Health. She and I were kind of the two working behind the scenes between the mask designer and those who would be making them.
I worked with Tony Short, our director of supply chain, to make sure we had the fabric and elastic – all the things that were quickly becoming in demand out on the market. There were a couple of rounds of prototypes. Amy worked with Goshen Health’s chief medical officer, Dr. Dan Nafziger, and their materials management team to make sure everything met their qualifications.
At the end of each day, whatever our team had made, Amy was picking up and taking to be laundered at Kirt’s Dry Cleaners and then it was going into the hospital.
We’ve distributed 10,000 masks to non-profits in the community. Goshen Health medical staff was around 3,700, I believe. We are currently prototyping a new one for hospital visitors. Wieland donated 275 masks to Goshen city employees.
It was an honor to just be the liaison behind the scenes. It was an honor to be able to help and to be able to have a team that was able to meet the community need.
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