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Click on the links below to read about each student's experience
at Antioch:
Kimberly Bowen
M.S. Management, 1996
Kimberly Bowen was working as a marketing manager for the Microsoft
Corp. when she realized that career advancement might mean an M.B.A.
"The curriculum in M.B.A. programs I looked into seemed mostly
irrelevant to what I valued in management," she describes.
“I couldn't invest that kind of time and money in learning
what I didn't think was very important and essential to managing
people and organizations. And I couldn't face two or three years
of sitting in rows of desks while a teacher told me what I should
think."
Then she discovered the Graduate Management Program (GMP).
"When I learned about Antioch's GMP, I lit up immediately.
I was thrilled to find a holistic curriculum that recognized personal
growth was essential to being a leader and that examined the role
of organizations in the community and world. When I visited a class,
I knew this would be an exciting place to learn.
"A year after graduation, I left Microsoft to start my own
consulting practice, providing strategic planning, marketing strategy
and team development services to businesses and organizations. I
have evolved my practice from learning about facilitation, organizations
and team dynamics in Antioch's GMP.
"I bring my whole self to my work, with the creativity and
spirituality that was awakened at Antioch, delivered in a suitably
professional form. I can unlock creativity and bring disconnected
teams into alignment with very productive results. That combination
of spirit and business is what excites me, and what made Antioch
a great place to learn," Bowen says.
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Mary Chin Barrett
M.S. Management, 2003
Mary Chin Barrett is information technology services manager for
the Western region of the Banta Corporation, a printing company.
"When I was considering a graduate program," she says,
“I had looked at several M.B.A. programs in the Seattle area.
There were two specific criteria I used to grade each program. First,
it must pursue constant innovation and improvement in its business
education. Second, it must combine theoretical training with practical
business skills, thereby allowing students to keep abreast of current
trends and to master every nuance of management."
Antioch’s program “not only met these two criteria,
but also added to them the strengths of creativity and flexibility.
"Through the Graduate Management Program, I did a personal
excellence project. This project gave me the opportunity to pursue
a topic of significance in my personal and professional life –
exploring the question of strategic outsourcing in China. With this
project, I was able to reconnect with the exciting development of
my native country as well as provide a context for studying the
benefits and risks of outsourcing to China.
"Going into the program, I expected I would become a better
leader and mentor within my own organization. Surprisingly, this
program has been a journey of transformative self-discovery."
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Jane Thilo
M.S. Management, 2002
Jane Thilo was a successful physician specializing in anesthesiology
when she came to Antioch. She was also an entrepreneur by nature.
As a management student, Jane envisioned a new role for herself
in transforming health care. Her master's thesis explored what she
sees as the need for a profound paradigm shift in health care that
involves moving beyond a mechanistic, technical focus to a more
holistic, organic perspective. Evidence of the shift is just beginning
to emerge in the form of more holistic treatment approaches, as
well as collaborative, team models in some health-care schools and
systems.
For Thilo, this is the leading edge of a much more dramatic revolution.
In January 2003, she and her partner established a consulting group:
Encompass Health. The company tag line, “Shaping the future
of healthcare" speaks to their determination to help create
the new type of leadership required of this new era.
Thilo credits inspiration from her Antioch experience for both
the vision and much of the theory and content that informs her work
in Encompass Health.
"We emphasize systems perspectives, action research and emotional
intelligence in our leadership model for physicians and other medical
workers," she says. “These aren’t just about ‘feeling
good.’ They have a direct impact on the bottom line, on the
quality of life and work, and on issues of potential liability."
Thilo is also on the editorial board of a new publication, Modern
Physician. She also has published an article in The Monitor, a journal
for the American Association for Ambulatory Surgery Centers, about
the role of emotional intelligence in creating an effective work
environment for healthcare professionals.
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