IT Major: A growing tree of diverse opportunities

Candace Spear Class of 2007, Information Management Leadership Program, GE Healthcare - Wauwatosa, WI

Who would have thought I'd end up graduating with a major in IT. Going into Marquette with a focus toward Marketing and International Business, the then foreign IT major revealed itself as an appealing option. While from the outside looking in... IT was a technical, heads down career path, from the inside looking out it was talking with clients to understand how I can help them better their business operations with technology. But as I later learned that wasn't all.

After graduating, the world of IT was expanded for me beyond talking to clients and gathering requirements. I've learned IT has innumerable paths. Through the leadership program I joined as my first and current job after college, I've seen the career option of combining marketing and IT to help the company with customer segmentation; helping clients understand the database capacity they require; designing infrastructure solutions that allow critical business systems to be highly available; and my last exploration - understanding business intelligence to properly assess how we must adapt to changes in data in our environment.

All of the experiences I've mentioned simply go to show the variety of opportunity in IT. Had I not taken a second look at IT as a major, unfortunately I would have missed out on a growing tree of diverse opportunities.