Regis MBA helps graduate students and alumni bridge science and business
Adapted by Kristen Walsh
Marissa Garozzo ’10, MS ’12 had science and regulatory management skills down pat when she started her career in the pharmaceuticals industry after completing an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in regulatory and clinical research management at Regis. Today, she works at Pall Corporation; with more than 10,000 products across different business unit portfolios, the global company supplies filtration, separation, and purification solutions across life sciences and industrial applications. It’s not surprising, then, that Garozzo is back at Regis for an MBA.
“By being in the MBA program, I really understand how much business I didn’t know before,” says Garozzo, who is a biotech technical inside sales associate at Pall. “But I can already see how much more competent I am on the job. I can now speak about the importance of inventory turns, more closely examine revenue recognition, and conduct more comprehensive margin analysis. I also use marketing strategy tools I learned to work with product management on proposing new product development ideas.”
The Regis Professional MBA program launched in fall 2020 and is designed for, and open exclusively to, Regis graduate students and alumni who can apply previous coursework and receive the degree with as few as six additional online courses and a personalized, career-focused specialization. Unlike traditional MBAs, the Regis Professional MBA offers a tailored curriculum developed to meet the rapidly growing needs of professionals in non-business fields, such as health care, education, social service, communication, and life sciences.
For nurse practitioner Samantha Nugent, MSN ’17 the notion of an MBA was not top of mind until she heard about the Regis program.
“I had told myself I would likely not go back to school for quite some time given I had just gone through an associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degree without a break,” Nugent recalls. She earned a Regis master’s degree in the Family Nurse Practitioner program. “But the MBA program has helped me discover how health care and business
tie in so well together.”
The curriculum directly relates to Nugent’s work providing annual wellness visits through home care working with UnitedHealth Group/Optum.
“This is exactly what I was hoping for from an MBA program—the realization that understanding the business aspect of health care is just as important as understanding how to treat and care for my patients,” Nugent says. “Because the truth is, you cannot have adequate health care without a strong business supporting the field.”
Knowledge and Confidence
Kayleigh Walsh, MS ’14 graduated from Regis with a master’s degree in clinical research management and regulatory affairs. A principal lead clinical research associate at Johnson & Johnson in Irvine, California, she plans to use the MBA to advance
her career even further.
“I see the MBA as an opportunity to possibly leave the clinical research bubble and become more involved in the higher-level company-wide decisions and practices but from the research angle,” Walsh says. “Having an MBA would give me the confidence to speak to the business side of the decision-making process and also utilize my previous research experience to make well-informed decisions for that side of the business.”
Members of early Professional MBA cohorts varied widely in their initial comfort level with business. Walsh, for example, was concerned that “some classes or subjects would be like learning a new language to me because they were far outside the realm of my current job and I wasn’t familiar with them.”
It was that fear factor that Professor of Finance and Accounting Chris Kubik, DBA, wanted to address head on. “My goal was first and foremost to not have students be fearful of what we were going to talk about. I took a focused approach on industries where they could see some of their language like comorbidities and other sorts of things you wouldn’t necessarily see in any traditional MBA program.”
Former paramedic Stephen Monteiro, MS ’08 spent decades in various leadership positions with Caritas Christi Norwood Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital, served as a Federal Disaster Worker with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and helped Massachusetts General Hospital develop a statewide pandemic plan before making a couple
of significant career decisions.
“The arrival of COVID-19 became a very clear signal that it was time to test my knowledge and skills in the open health care market,” he explains. “I am motivated by the vision of accessible health care that is affordable to all. I am driven by knowing that it can always be made better.”
In August 2020, he launched Mitigant Risk Solutions, LLC, which provides consulting services in health care emergency management and hospital operations, including comprehensive program reviews. In March 2021, he began the Regis MBA program.
“Being a former graduate student at Regis, I understand how valuable the educational offering is here,” he explains. “My prior studies in organizational development helped to shape my critical thinking and leadership philosophy as well as provided me a rich contextual understanding of why so many impossibly simple organizational problems turn out to be ‘simply impossible.’”
Garozzo’s job also has ties to the pandemic; Pall is a supplier for many of the biopharmaceutical process developmental strategies used in vaccine manufacturing.
“I’ve worked with numerous companies directly involved in the COVID-19 vaccine race by providing them with tools, solutions, and documentation (necessary for submission to regulatory agencies) as part of their scale-up production plans,” Garozzo says. “When I’m able to support customers’ efforts, I feel like I’m making Regis proud by doing my part to contribute to the common good.”
Learn more about the Professional MBA degree in the Marshall M. Sloane School of Business and Communication at Regis: regisma.me/mba.
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