Integrity, Trust, and Accountability in Every Detail – Celebrating Donna Monroe’s 21 Years of Excellence

“You Start Where They Put You.”

The year was 2000, and Donna Monroe had just joined the University of Louisville, working the “dirty side” of cage wash. Some might have seen that as an unglamorous beginning, but Donna had already learned an enduring truth during her years in the Navy: “you start where they put you, and you prove yourself from there.”

Within three years, that philosophy had carried her to a new reputation, one of resourcefulness, composure, and quiet mastery. When complex problems arose, and in the life sciences, they always did, people stopped looking for answers elsewhere. They started looking for Donna.

That reputation was put to the test during her years managing a transgenic cardiac disease model breeding colony. The alarm came suddenly: other colonies were breaking with mouse parvovirus (MPV), and her facility’s models were at risk. The animals represented years of meticulous genetic crossbreeding, work that could be undone with a single trace of contamination.

But panic wasn’t in Donna’s nature. Her Navy background as an air traffic controller had trained her to stay calm when systems failed. “You don’t freeze—you work the problem.” And so she did. Donna imposed a complete lockdown on her colonies, changed the locks, restricted access from everyone, graduate students, technicians, even principal investigators, and began a systematic review of her disinfection protocols.

What followed was both simple and profound. She gathered every disinfectant she could find, Spor-Klenz, Virkon, MB-10 Tablets, and built her own side-by-side comparison. Plates seeded with microbial cultures were treated, covered, and incubated under identical conditions. It was careful, deliberate, and empirical, the kind of science that quietly moves the world forward.

The results spoke for themselves. MB-10’s efficacy was so clear, so decisive, that it prompted a sweeping response: immediate, university-wide adoption across all Research Resources Center facilities.

A few months later, Tim Hidell, then managing the MB-10 program at Quip Labs, noticed something curious, sales reports showed a surge of orders from the University of Louisville, despite no recent call from his team. Puzzled, he dug deeper. Every trail, every conversation, led back to one name: Donna Monroe.

When Tim finally met her, it wasn’t in a boardroom or laboratory but in a humble minivan parked outside the facility, a “soccer mom van,” he likes to joke. There, the conversation turned not to products but to principles. He learned how Donna’s drive stemmed from two unwavering priorities: putting her kids through college and maintaining the kind of personal integrity that naturally leads to professional excellence.

Tim’s decision to pursue her with weekly phone calls wasn’t about sales, it was about character. He recognized in Donna the rare combination of deliberate problem-solving and uncompromising standards that mirrored his company’s values.

Twenty years later, Donna can look back and smile at the surprise of her own longevity. “This is the longest job I’ve ever had,” she reflects. “Normally I fix everything and move on.” But at Quip Labs, she found something different, a mission that *amplified* her values rather than asking her to compromise them. Here, she could help research facilities everywhere achieve good science while protecting the integrity of the work itself.

Her first major project set the tone. Within minutes of arriving on-site for the University of Louisville’s large-scale decontamination, the longest-running decon in company history, she took command. Seven vivariums, 65 research labs, dozens of staff members to coordinate, all while ensuring compliance and training oversight. It was a logistical challenge of the highest order, and Donna turned it into a standard.

That project became the foundation of what is now Quip Labs’ industry-leading Decon Team, known across the field for its thoroughness and reliability in high-stakes research environments.

Today, Donna’s leadership lives on not just in policies or protocols, but in people, including her son, David Ferguson. Together, they represent the next generation of excellence at Quip Labs, each bringing deep technical knowledge and the same steady commitment to precision.

Donna’s approach, the methodical discipline that once saved those 85 strains at Louisville, has become the blueprint for every QuipDecon project. Each one includes ATP validation before and after treatment, rigorous documentation, third-party pathogen testing, and repeat validation when needed.

Her guiding principle remains unchanged: *when something absolutely has to be right, you don’t take shortcuts.* And at Quip Labs, she’s found a team that shares that conviction. The company’s leadership has never pushed back when she’s insisted on extending testing or revalidating results. They understood that her demands weren’t about perfectionism for its own sake, they were about protecting the science.

Two decades later, Donna Monroe is still the person everyone calls when something absolutely has to be right. And through her tireless work, she’s proven a quiet, enduring truth: when integrity leads, excellence follows.