Laurie Martin is a lifelong learner, with a string of letters behind her name to back it up.
After earning her LPN license, Martin earned an associate degree in business and then a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
For the last three years, she’s worked as a care transition liaison for in-home health service provider LHC Group in Western Massachusetts. When she learned the company offered an incentive for employees interested in earning their degrees online through the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she saw the opportunity to add three more letters to her resume: MBA.
“I’m able to use the MBA in a lot of different areas,” she says. “With my current nursing license, it gives me some freedom.”
From Clinician to Corporate
Martin started her career in bedside patient care, but soon found her workload included an increasing amount of documentation.
“I said, ‘Well, if I'm going to be doing a lot of this paperwork and background, I might as well learn about it, so I know what I'm doing.’ That led to me getting my associate, and it just kind of expanded from there.”
As care transition liaison, Martin coordinates between LHC Group’s sales team and operations team to make sure that referrals are processed accordingly so patients can get the care they need.
In addition to her work with LHC Group, Martin conducts Alzheimer’s and dementia training for caregivers and is working on publishing a book.
Balancing all those priorities alongside graduate coursework was a challenge, says Martin, but she’s become proficient as an online learner through her prior experiences; she reminds herself that grad school is only a season.
"I find myself getting up most mornings to work on my homework, then doing it at lunchtime, and then again after work,” she says. “So basically, every day I'm doing homework around everything else. I really don't have a lot of free time, but I’ll be done in April!”
Putting Curriculum to Work
Pursuing an MBA degree online has given Martin the opportunity to better understand management, human resources and explore advanced concepts in data analytics.
“I’ve really liked the opportunity to problem solve,” she says. “I try to use it in my day-to-day practice from customer service, to working with coworkers, to making suggestions to management.”
Once Martin completes her degree in April, she hopes to find an opportunity for growth within LHC Group.
“I want to leverage the experience I have along with my education, or what I call the alphabet soup behind my name,” she says.
For students just beginning their journey, Martin offers some advice:
“First, prepare for the amount of time that it's going to take you and be strict about how much time you're focusing on your classwork, because if you don't take advantage of it, you're going to be way behind the ball,” she says. “Second, be in constant contact with your professors to discuss any issues that you're having.”
Take the next step in your career while balancing your personal and professional priorities through the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s MBA degree program online.