Genetta N. Staple Ward G’16

Communication is the key to everything.

Several years ago, I earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from a university in West Palm Beach, Florida, and continued on in their MBA program. It didn’t feel like the right fit for me. I supplemented my business education with communication programs like Toastmasters, until I decided that I wanted to take a slightly different path.

I had attended Bay Path’s One Day A Week College in 2000 while working full-time for the Department of Defense at Westover Air Reserve Base. Looking back, my experience was very positive and women-focused. So I Googled the University’s website and was excited to see Communications and Information Management in the master’s degree program offerings.  It was exactly what I was looking for. I could be a totally-online student.

The program connected the dots for me. The coursework covered business infrastructure, industry laws, and organizational flow—aspects that drew me to studying business in the first place. Yet, it also incorporated and emphasized skill-building in communication and data analytics, areas that are hotspots in businesses and organizations across the board. It highlighted the importance of communication in relation to organizational strategy, such as the use of the balance scoreboard, and techniques for communicating data through different mediums and technology, like social media.

The knowledge I acquired in the Communications and Information Management program has increased my confidence and my understanding of how important it is to be able to effectively gather information, analyze it, and communicate it with various audiences in order to accomplish an organization’s goals, and to stay competitive and innovative. The best thing is: I can continue to apply all of this knowledge to the projects I am currently working on. One of the projects, Conociendo su Communidad/Getting to Know Your Community, involves educating the younger generation about the history of the immigrants who came to Panama, where I grew up, to build the canal—a project that is dear to my heart.