Rose Volponi joined the Duke Department of Population Health Sciences in 2024 and currently serves as the Operations Coordinator for the Qualitative Research Partners (QualCore) team. Before coming to Duke, Rose spent nearly two decades in early childhood education and nonprofit management, building over 15 years of administrative, leadership, and management experience. In that time, she guided an organization through its entire life cycle — from start-up through a decade of growth, a pandemic-era rebrand, and eventual dissolution — while championing inclusive, community-centered environments for educators, families, and children.
 
Her path to Duke grew naturally from years of collaboration with Duke faculty, graduate students, international families from the Fuqua School of Business, and undergraduate volunteers, all of which deepened her appreciation for the university's research mission. She now channels that experience into supporting QualCore's work, where multidisciplinary teams partner with clinicians and investigators across Duke's School of Medicine (and beyond!) to conduct rigorous qualitative research that centers the voices and lived experiences of patients. Rose is passionate about the human stories that drive meaningful health research and is dedicated to keeping the team's operations running smoothly so that important work can move forward.