Pat Breen and Cathy Ford have been promoted to two newly created manager positions in IS Applications Development at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, Fargo, effective April 7. Breen is the new manager of IS Membership, Underwriting and Correspondence, while Ford is the manager of IS Provider Network, The Healthcare Online Resource (THOR) and Infrastructure.

Breen was born in Watertown, S.D., and grew up in Hillsboro, N.D. He received his bachelor of science degree in computer science and business administration from North Dakota State University, Fargo, and joined BCBSND in May 1989. He held various levels of computer programmer jobs before being promoted to project team leader in IS. Most recently he was project team leader of the IS Member Touchpoint Measures (MTM) Initiative.

He and his wife, Brenda, live in Fargo and have seven children, Michaela, 23, Jim, 21, Aaron, 19, Josie, 18, Sam, 14, Madline, 9, and Miriam, 4.

Ford was born in Panama City, Fla., and moved to North Dakota in 1973. She received her bachelor of science degree in accounting and computer information systems from Minnesota State University Moorhead and joined BCBSND in December 1989. She worked as an analyst programmer, systems analyst, lead systems analyst and project team leader, most recently as the IS Panther project team leader, responsible for development staff in Provider/Network systems, Corporate and RFS Project Tracking systems and RequestCenter and Remedy.

She and her husband, Tim, live in Fargo and have two children, Tristan, 16, and Kaitlin, 14.