When it came to selecting an MBA program to advance her career, the Costello College of Business was the obvious pick for Tara Herterich, BS Criminology, Law, and Society ‘22. Recently completing her undergraduate degree at George Mason, she already loved everything about the university.
Given her fulltime position at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the online program was especially appealing to her. In the fall of 2024, her MBA journey was energized when she was awarded the Michael S. VanPatten Family Endowed Scholarship. For someone who is paying for her education all on her own, it made a significant difference in her budgeting for the semester. Herterich is expecting to complete her MBA by August of 2025.
Being taught by faculty members who had hands-on experience at high levels of industry is another reason why choosing Costello was easy for Herterich. “All of them have experience being CFOs, CEOs, and other executive positions,” she says.
At first, she took the program more slowly, taking one class at a time. But as she got used to working while studying, she doubled up her courses. With her criminology background, it is little wonder that her favorite MBA class so far is her fraud investigations class. “I like to relate what we’re talking about in the class to current events,” she says. “It gives more of an open discussion with classmates.”
Despite being an online student, Herterich has been able to expand her network and make many new friends through the Costello MBA program. In fact, these interactions have been encouraged by the amount of group work assigned. She has been proactive in seeking out the support of classmates as well. “I’ve met girls who’ve been in similar classes as me, and so we created a study group and contact each other,” she says. “It’s been really helpful.”
Herterich’s employer immediately saw the benefit in her pursuing the Costello MBA, promoting her to manager once she enrolled. Currently, she’s learning about finance and budgeting from her courses and applying those skills to her job since she has now been entrusted to oversee finance on her team. Overall, she is excited to be learning new tools and rapidly gaining confidence to be a strong leader. “I’ve been gaining a lot of insight especially with how to manage a team, how to deal with difficult conversations,” she says. “That’s what I was needing some improvement on, and I definitely got that through here.”
Soon, Herterich is interested in leveraging her education and experience to move from infrastructure fiscal security to more of a people management position. Looking further ahead, she wants to see what other fields on the corporate side might resonate with her. Art and design are other passions of hers, which she plans to either incorporate into her career or launch as a side business. Before any of those goals and before she graduates, she is excited to travel to Athens, Greece, for the global residency program in June.
Every day as a data center security manager at AWS looks different for Herterich as she manages security operations through tasks like overseeing guards, equipment, and vendors. Following her workday, she hits the books studying. And then on the weekends, she wraps up any projects or papers she has.
When Herterich was deciding on what she wanted to study during undergraduate, she had skipped over business thinking it would not interest her. “I went back to it later because I realized it really applies to what I’m doing in security and managing people,” she says. Early in her career, Tara Herterich has realized the importance of high business acumen to being a leader in nearly any field. She is working hard on all the right things, and she’s already seeing the results.