After 10 years, Ashley Mudd still remembers walking into the Cajundome as a senior for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Career Fair.
She stopped at a booth for the state Girl Scout Council, shook hands with two alumni recruiters, and walked away with an opportunity she wasn’t sure she’d land.
“The role was designed for a more experienced hire, but I was able to somehow convince them to take a chance on me,” she says.
Within weeks, she was finishing her final semester leading teams, managing budgets, and redesigning a century-old nonprofit structure.
“I joke that majoring in sociology really just taught me how to deal with people and systems,” she says. “It’s given me insight that’s been as personally fulfilling as it’s been professionally.”
From her first role with the Girl Scouts to becoming the inaugural executive director of the Leadership Institute of Acadiana, Mudd says her sociology degree gave her the tools to lead and make lasting impact.
Now, students can pursue that same foundation with a B.A. in Sociology 100% online.
Turning Lessons into Leadership
Fresh out of college, Mudd was entrusted with responsibilities often reserved for seasoned hires at the state Girl Scout Council. She led teams, managed budgets, and helped redesign the organization.
When senior leadership shifted, she stepped into a director-level position to restructure operations.
She gathered data from other councils and analyzed models to design a structure that better served both staff and members.
“That project taught me a lot about leadership and doing what's best for the whole,” she says.
“The sociology background helped me view people and communities differently and understand how to best serve them.”
Those were lessons she took with her as she stepped into her role as executive director for the Leadership Institute of Acadiana, where she expanded programs across parishes and built strong community partnerships.
“In so many ways, that was a dream job. I’ve always been passionate about leadership development. I created the leadership studies minor at UL Lafayette, which was the first time a student created an academic minor,” says Mudd.
“So, when there was an opportunity to be the executive director of a nonprofit whose sole mission was leadership development, it felt like destiny; like maybe all my work was leading up to that.”
Her commitment to developing leaders across Acadiana earned her UL Lafayette’s Emerging Leader Award at the 2020 Women’s Leadership Conference.
At the Institute, she emphasized both dialogue and data. Drawing on her sociology coursework, she saw the value of research in measuring impact.
“That's something I can credit to my time at UL Lafayette,” she says. “Those quantitative and qualitative research classes taught me the value of real research. We hired a statistician to evaluate how effective our projects were, then came together and created a report that was available for Lafayette.”
Building Stronger Communities
Today, Mudd has her own consultancy, providing leadership coaching and team workshops to help organizations create sustainable change.
“My current work is really a combination of all these skills I've developed. A lot of businesses are focused on results, but we won't get to those results unless we have strong internal relationships.”
Looking back, she sees how much her undergraduate experience prepared her for a career she once thought required graduate school.
“What’s funny is I thought you could only use sociology if you had a master’s or PhD,” she says.
“But I’m happy I worked and got that real-world experience. Sociology, in practice, is very much about relationship management and group dynamics and how people work together.”
Today, students can pursue that same sociology degree online at UL Lafayette, gaining the skills to think critically, see the bigger picture, and turn their studies into real-world impact.
For Mudd, the key has always been what you put into the experience. She encourages students to approach it the same way:
“What you put in is what you get out. This is the type of program where the more you engage with the material, the more impactful it will be.”
Turn insight into impact with a 100% online sociology degree from UL Lafayette.
