Wakefield Named 2016 Outstanding Graduate
Posted: June 22nd, 2016
 Patricia "Tish" Wakefield has been named the University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium 2016 Outstanding Graduate by the faculty of the UW MBA Consortium program. Wakefield, who graduated in fall 2015, was selected from a pool of students that included graduates from August 2015, December 2015, and May 2016.
Wakefield came to our program with an extensive list of professional accomplishments. She is a published cancer researcher, has helped startup technology companies finance research operations, and has worked as a behavioral healthcare provider helping patients tackle tough problems. "I've wanted to earn an MBA for many years," Wakefield said. "I'm glad that I finally gave myself permission to do it!"
During her time in the UW MBA Consortium program, Wakefield worked with faculty from all four Consortium partner campuses. In their nominations the faculty described Wakefield as an excellent and thoughtful student.
"I have been continually impressed with Tish's willingness to question conclusions from research, regardless of the source," Dr. Ben Arbaugh, Professor of Management and Human Resources at UW-Oshkosh, said. "I found her thoughtful consideration and elaboration of issues raised in my classes to be both challenging and refreshing."
Wakefield enjoyed many aspects of the program including the flexibility and discussions, so it's no surprise to see the faculty comment on the value she contributed to the learning community through her involvement in discussions.
John Muraski, Lecturer of Information Systems at UW-Oshkosh, described Wakefield as "an amazing student." He elaborated by saying, "Her work effort and output quality was very high. More importantly, her discussion board posts both contributed and encouraged others to work with and think about the material. She was a very strong student and one of the best writers I've seen in some time."
Tom Mihajlov, Executive in Residence in Finance at UW-Eau Claire Tom Mihajlov, agreed. "Discussions were extremely well written with links to other sources which helped not only the structure of the class, but her peer students as well."
Wakefield is married and lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In addition to maintaining her own private practice, which she opened while a student in the UW MBA Consortium, Wakefield's post-graduation plans also include continuing in her position as a therapist for American Well, an innovative telehealth company based in Boston that provides primary care, behavioral health, and nutrition counseling through mobile devices and camera-enabled browsers.
She also plans to tackle some new data science projects to continue blending her interests in managerial decision making, problem solving, and research. "We are living in an age of vast data collection where scientific methods can be applied to business problems such as profitability and productivity," Wakefield said. "Because of the program's rigor, I am able to apply domain expertise and learn advanced business analytics to support data driven decision making. I am really excited about how the program opened the door for me to pursue additional training in data science and make more powerful contributions." |
