>> I was offered a number of different scholarships primarily in business
and in the STEM fields and engineering.
And, I really didn't know what I wanted to do, at that time.
I thought that I wanted to look like Eddie Murphy looked like in Boomerang, right?
So you had the corner office, you had the suit, the briefcase, and I had this image
of what I thought my life should look like.
So I began in the STEM fields, and switched over to the school of business,
and finished up with a Bachelors degree in business administration.
I worked for about three years in the private sector, mainly in a number
of entry level customer services and sales and management trainee positions,
and none of those positions were really gratifying to me.
I, I, I, I really didn't care that much for working towards just the bottom line
for stakeholders or for a company.
I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I could check that,
that sector of the workforce off.
I haphazardly found my way into a graduate degree program at the University of Memphis
and the division of Public and Non-profit Administration, was not familiar with,
the division of, of Non-profit, Non-profit Sector and all.
But I knew that that program might allow me to work for an organization that had a mission
as opposed to a sort of corporate goal that aligned with improving income and revenues.
And so, I began going down that path as I tried to just narrow the focus
of what I thought I wanted to do.
And I obtained my masters in public administration in 2004,
and immediately began working in the field of Higher Ed for six years before moving
over into the non-profit field, working for non-profit in 2010.