Ken Nelson

I have been at Microsoft for 10 years now.  Several years ago, I began the transition from individual contributor to management.  During most of this time, I have been assigned to a hardware organization that was light on project and program managers.  Because of this, I ended up doing a lot of my own project management in addition to learning to manage a growing team.  Being a large proponent of continuing education, I decided at that time that I wanted to pursue an advanced degree online that would allow me to focus on both leadership and project management.  After doing some research on programs, I found the MSEM program at University of Arkansas.  After looking at the curriculum and the affordability of the program, I was sold.  The program allowed me to focus on the areas that I wanted for my career and stay well within Microsoft’s tuition reimbursement allowance.  Additionally, I grew up in Arkansas so returning to University of Arkansas for my graduate degree was a little like a homecoming.  

When I started at University of Arkansas, I already knew that I wanted to focus my studies on Leadership and Project Management.  Both areas of study have helped me in my career immensely.  I was able to immediately apply concepts such as servant leadership to my management style and the project management courses have made me very effective at applying a hybrid agile approach to software development that works well within a hardware organization.  However, the courses that have had the most impact on my career to date were the ones in Decision Analysis.  When I took the Decision Models course, I needed a semester project, and my current manager gave me a major decision at work to help with.  The decision analysis work I did for Microsoft as part of my Decision Models course led to a quantitative decision backed by data that was approved by senior management.  Furthermore, I was chosen to implement the decision which led to a whole new project at Microsoft that I am leading today.