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What are your degrees?

I have a Masters of Business Administration that’s an MBA from ����ֱ��, of course, 2003 and I have a Bachelor of Science in Communication that is from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. I am originally from Reading, I just went out there for school to get my undergraduate and then I came back a few years late. I also have a Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition, which is a little bit unrelated, but we can talk about that later.

Where did you envision yourself working at the time?

Interestingly, when I was an undergraduate in the late 90’s internships were not like they are today. So, I was doing an internship at The Gap believe it or not and I wanted to do anything besides work in retail because I was working on holidays and over the weekend. I was getting home at 11:00 p.m., so at that point in my life I was a college student and I was thinking if there is anything I can do to not work these hours, that’s what I want to do.

Tell me a little bit about what led you to this job at ����ֱ�� and what you are doing here now.

I am working in the Marketing Department, specifically my focus is on Graduate Students and Adult Education programs. We are marketing to graduates. We are marketing to adults who maybe didn’t have time to finish their Bachelor’s degree and they are looking to go back and take some more classes. We are marketing to those looking for Ph.Ds and any type of continuing education for adults.

What brought you back here to ����ֱ��? Did you want to come back here or did this just kind of fall in your lap?

It kind of just fell in my lap. I had done some marketing and spent some time in corporate marketing for the first decade of my career and then I moved into working for a digital agency locally here in Reading. We did a lot of work updating websites, creating new websites, creating digital marketing campaigns, social media campaigns, optimization of landing pages, email campaigns. Basically, anything and everything digital marketing. I had done some work on Wilson High School’s website and some print marketing assets for Wilson as well as Wyomissing High School. It was really exciting working within the education industry. I didn’t really envision myself working for higher education, but when this opportunity came on at ����ֱ��, I thought, “Wow that’s a really great opportunity to go back to my alma mater.” I loved my time at ����ֱ��, so I thought being an active member of the community and interacting with other parents in the community, friends who are also thinking about going back to school to further their education. I thought, “What a better way to give back and do something that I know I believe in.” When you are working in the field of marketing you really want to market programs or products or services that you actually believe in, that you have done, that you have experienced. That was really important to me. It is being able to market something that I feel really strongly about. I feel like that is what led me back here to ����ֱ��.

How does it feel to be back at your alma mater, but this time as an employee?

It feels very academic. Truthfully. It feels very intellectual because I feel like the people I am interacting with are so much more educated on an intellectual that’s it’s you know very prestigious to work for a very well-known regional university and I love that. I love being able to interact with the faculty and students and the team here at ����ֱ��. I’m among peers and other people who feel the same way as I do about service, companionship, love, contemplation and all of the things that ����ֱ�� stands for. It really feels good to be among other people that feel the same way.

What are you looking forward to in your new position? Is there something that you really love more than something else, marketing-wise?

I love optimization of website landing pages. I really feel like that kind of like my special sauce. I can look at a page and in marketing we call it “the top of the fold”. It’s what catches your attention first. We live in a very visual world these days, whether it’s video or whether it’s an image that gets your attention and sort of stops the scroll on social media. I think that I have a really keen eye for looking at things like that and translating that copy into something that actually produces results. That’s kind of what we are all about in the marketing department, is producing results because what good is a beautiful website if it doesn’t engage people to want to become a student here. It’s not about just putting the content out there. It’s about putting it out there in a way that sort of resonates with our intended audience, whether that is undergraduates, graduates or adults. We really want o make sure it resonates, so I think I am looking forward to talking with some of the faculty and the professors because really, I look at education as a lifelong learning endeavor. I got my MBA in 2003, that was such a long time ago and there is so much more to learn and ����ֱ�� has grown so much since then. I’m really excited to familiarize myself with some of the other programs, so that I can market those programs. Especially, in this day and age we have so many new and different things to market and to talk about. Our Health Care programs, Counseling programs, Mental Health, Addiction, things like that. Those are all unfortunately necessary occupations in this day and age. They are just coming to the fore front of needing people in those occupations. I am excited to learn more about them, so that I can effectively market them and draw people into our programs.

What impact has your ����ֱ�� degree had on your career thus far?

Definitely, going back to those very traditional Franciscan values, I feel like when you are respectful of people and ideas, you just get so much further in life and in career. ����ֱ�� has definitely had a major impact in that regard. That’s what I take with me every day in life.

Do you have a favorite memory or something that really sticks with you from your time here at ����ֱ��?

I think and I’m not 100% sure, but I think I was the first MBA class to graduate from ����ֱ��. It was a very new program and I remember being so excited about it because I actually waited 5 years in between getting my Bachelor’s Degree and then going back to school. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue on with graduate education or not. I worked for a couple of years and I worked in Philadelphia, but I lived in Reading and I remember hearing about this new program at ����ֱ��. ����ֱ�� was going to offer a new MBA program and it was ����ֱ�� College back then actually, it wasn’t ����ֱ�� quite yet. I remember thinking, “Oh, this is so great! I’m really excited. I’m going to enroll” Like I said I think I was one of the first classes and what makes me laugh is that I think probably 5 of the classes Dr. Scott Ballantine was the instructor because it was a new program and they didn’t have very many faculty members yet for teaching the graduate courses. That always makes me laugh. I was given an award back then and I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe they actually picked me for this award.” That was a fond memory of that time, gosh, 20 years ago.

What is one piece of advice that you wish you had known when you were a student that you would like to pass onto a graduate or adult education student?

This is a great question. I think that one of the most important things you can do as a student is to practice your oral communication skills. Whether that is getting up in front of a class and giving a speech or participating in interviews and using email communication with other professors, classmates, business people. Those are things that are so important in any career. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, Health Care, Business, Criminal Justice, you are always going to be using oral communication skills and they are so important. These days I think so many people graduate and they don’t realize this opportunity that they have while they are in class to actually practice standing in front of a class and giving a speech. Sometimes professors will give you an assignment and you have 5 minutes or 10 minutes to get up in front of the class and talk about something. There is nothing worse than someone getting up in front of a class and reading from a book like this. It’s so boring and nobody wants to listen to what they have to say. Now we have more opportunities than ever with video, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to practice that skill. It is not something that we are innately born with. It’s not easy to be on video. It’s not easy to get up in front of the classroom, but it’s something that you have to do in every kind of business. That would be my piece of advice. Practice while you are in school because it’s the best time to practice.

Interesting facts about yourself.

I am the author of two books about health and wellness. I received a Certificate of Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell in 2012 and published a book called A Silent Cure in my Back Yard which is about healing disease with whole foods. I then published a Children’s Book which won an award: The Mom’s Choice Award for Best Children’s Book in 2017. Both are available at our local Barnes and Noble as well as on Amazon (or from me directly if you want it signed). You canfind them both here: