Alexandria Serra
Lawyer and Entrepreneur
PMBA Student

Entrepreneurship is my life! I was unsure that a PMBA was for me … until I took Dr. Jackson’s Strategic Innovation Course. Throughout the course, I learned skills that were directly applicable to my business in real-time. The final project, a strategic analysis of my business and industry, propelled me not only to cultivate an innovative way to shake up the pet industry, but gave me the confidence to pitch the idea to Mass Challenge Texas, a zero-equity startup accelerator program. From the moment I started the badge course, I was hooked. I knew I had to get my graduate degree. K-State PMBA courses are like rocket fuel for my career!

Shawn Drew
Market President & CEO
Commerce Bank, Manhattan, KS

"While many of the topics were things I was aware of from being in the business world, I found the information great for the foundational/introductory badge. The piece I enjoyed most was the paper at the end. While I am not a fan of writing papers, I appreciated the challenge. We were asked to pick a company we knew a lot about and talk about strategic innovation in the company. I chose Commerce of course, but as I dug into our history, I learned a lot about strategic innovation inside Commerce I was never aware of.

I appreciated the fact that it was self-paced, I worked on it mostly from home during an evening. I probably spent a total of 8-10 hours on the program, most on the final paper. The course was a wonderful refresher of information and that innovation comes in many forms."

Kensley Fleischer, MBA
Marketing Specialist
Shamrock Trading Corporation

"As a graduate student who was preparing to enter a career in marketing, I knew it was vital to learn the basics of data analytics to understand the implications of different campaigns and their effectiveness, especially when justifying those with a higher cost by looking at return on investment. I took this course because I wanted to deepen my analytical skills and learn more about visualizing and interpreting data from a business standpoint. Plus, as digital marketing continues to evolve and become more data-driven, I knew that employers were looking for these types of skills in potential hires, and I wanted to stand out as an applicant. While the badge course was only six weeks long, it challenged me to learn another tool outside of Excel that I could use for more complex data. Now that I am working full-time as a marketing specialist, a big aspect of my job is analyzing data from social media, email marketing, push notifications, and other digital marketing campaigns to help shape future decisions for our brand. I think establishing data analytical skills is vital for any business major to be successful in their future career."

Dan Bergen
Director of Data Analytics
Centralized Supply Chain Services

"In February 2022, as part of our creation of a microcredentialing program, Chad Jackson facilitated the Strategic Innovation course for our organization,” said Dan Bergen, Director of Data Analytics at Centralized Supply Chain Services (CSCS). “Chad did a fantastic job presenting the material and challenging each one of the participants to think critically about what is important, where we should focus our time, and why it’s essential to learn new, practical tools. As result of this training, CSCS created a cross functional Innovation Task Force this spring whose recommendations were just presented to our leadership team to be incorporated into the strategic vision for coming years. The true definition of success in a course is not just the transfer of knowledge but the application of said knowledge and I am confident that without the Strategic Innovation badge program, CSCS would not have the dedicated focus and processes around innovation that we do today.”