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As the senior director of Global Client Service for , Laura McGinn deals with a lot of people. She works with leaders, for example, to ensure that they operate from a place of competence and confidence, that they’re hiring the right people and that they’re building good relationships with clients.

She also interfaces with colleagues and clients, and she manages a team of employees. But in the end, her customer-service mindset — honed over years of retail experience — came most in handy for McGinn herself. Because she prioritized her career ahead of everything else, she decided she needed to earn her bachelor’s degree (and then a master’s and a doctorate) in order to become the best leader she could be.

It was a decision that would take her on a long journey from an 18-year-old high school graduate who left college after one semester to a globetrotting senior director of a global company who never wants to stop learning.

McGinn is the oldest of her siblings and a straight talker with a slight New York accent. It’s easy to imagine her in a retail environment because she can think quickly while making you feel like you’re the only person in the room.

Her service-oriented mindset saw her climb the ranks in retail, eventually becoming the district sales manager for one organization. Then, in 2006, she and her husband moved to Delaware to be closer to family and to take a step back. She was experiencing some health issues, and she wanted to reevaluate her goals. Not finishing college gnawed at her, so much so that she’d enrolled at ��ɫ��Ƶ in 2003 but stepped away after a year for family reasons.

“It always bothered me that I never finished college,” McGinn recalls. “I felt that I was missing out on being the best leader I could be, and [I] needed the education to help me be more successful.”

Finally, in 2009, her moment arrived.

In Delaware, McGinn found the opportunity that would define her career: She joined CSC in 2008 as a recruiter. She was quickly promoted to team leader before she joined the Digital Brand Services division in 2009.

“When I was first asked to lead a team at CSC DBS, I decided that was my moment to start back with [UOPX], and I enrolled shortly thereafter,” she says.

McGinn always had college in mind, but CSC’s tuition reimbursement benefits sealed the deal for her.

“Without the confidence that I would have help funding my education, I would not have pushed ahead,” McGinn says.

McGinn had other support too. Her husband cheered her on, as did McGinn’s close friends. McGinn and her husband also have large extended families that stick together and support one another. McGinn and her family started a in memory of McGinn’s prematurely deceased niece, and she knew they were cheering her on in her educational aspirations.

McGinn needed it too. Having supported herself since she was 18, she was committed to her career. It came first. She liked UOPX for its flexibility, but she had to figure out how to fit even the flexible schedule around a job that had her working until 11 p.m. some nights and, before the pandemic at least, traveling around the world.

During her Bachelor of Science in Business program, McGinn finally found the approach that worked for her. She took a time-management framework taught by her employer and customized it for her needs and commitments.

“I learned that what worked best for me was to set my schedule to limit my workday hours [on] two early mornings to complete an hour or two of coursework, and two early mornings for reading,” McGinn explains. “Then I spent the majority of my weekends focused on research, assignments and writing. I also used airport downtime between flights to catch up on coursework.”

McGinn essentially determined which hours needed to be devoted to work and blocked that out accordingly. Then, she blocked out chunks of time for school.