As a 9th grader, I knew I wanted to work for the government and be a public servant. When my brother, Blake, attended Texas A&M, I learned that they offered business and liberal arts students the opportunity to participate in the Cooperative Education Program.
So, I started working with the City government, serving internships with the City of Corpus Christi’s Accounting Department following my Freshman year. As a Sophomore, I interviewed with the Department of Health & Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Personnel Administration in Washington, D.C. While they were impressed with my interview, they typically hired graduate students, so they asked if I would be willing to work in their Regional Personnel Office in Dallas, Texas. In the Spring of 1992, I started my federal service career as a GS-3 Personnel Specialist with the Department of Health & Human Services. Through that experience, I fell in love with HR (click here for more details of my professional journey)!
That following semester, I took my first HR Management class with Professor Blaine McCormick (pictured above right). Blaine had just entered academia after working in HR with Arco. His class further cemented my interest in HR, and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. I went on to a Co-op tour in Washington, D.C. for the Department of Health & Human Services—which clarified for me that I preferred field HR work over Headquarters policy work.
Blaine encouraged me to pursue a graduate degree. While he pushed for what was considered to be the best program in the nation at Cornell University, I wasn’t interested in moving to New York, so I was thrilled to learn of Texas A&M’s Master of Science in HR Management Program, which admitted 12 students in the Fall of 1994. Our MS/HRM Program chair was Patrick M. Wright (pictured above left), who has published a number of books that have helped shape my thinking about HR, including The Chief HR Officer.
Click here to learn more about Wright’s 2006 book, Building Profits through Building People.