Sakellis

I. BACKGROUND

A. 2010-2015: Plaintiff Is Regarded as a Highly Skilled Clinician but Receives Some Negative Feedback In 1992, plaintiff began working for Cedars as a clinical nurse in the labor and delivery unit. Beginning in 2010, and at all times relevant to this appeal, plaintiff worked in Cedars’ mother-baby unit (also referred to as the postpartum unit). Plaintiff asked to be transferred to the postpartum unit because, among other things, she wanted to work with the postpartum unit’s manager, Anna Greif (Greif), and she believed the postpartum unit would be less stressful than other assignments.1 Plaintiff’s performance evaluations for the fiscal years ending 2010 through 2015 uniformly praised her skills as a clinician. She was also commended for her bedside manner. One evaluator emphasized plaintiff was “often one of the nurses [the

1 Plaintiff had been in remission from breast cancer since 2005 and it was important to her that she be able to take breaks to drink water and for other purposes, which she was not always able to do in her previous assignment.

2 evaluator] select[ed] for difficult patients or patients where service recovery [was] needed.” Colleagues…