Kristine Arens grew up in Central Wisconsin, surrounded by trees in rows, and industries that consisted of paper mill jobs, cranberry bogs and potato farmers. She took a chance and left her town and headed 3 hours south to go to school at UW-Platteville (UWP). She was a trendsetter, leaving town and going to college. She realized that she would never return to her hometown and knew she had to blaze her own trail. While Kristine is not a first-generation student, she has seen what it is like to make the difficult and rewarding decision to pursue an education when it might not be the common path. Not many of Kristine's family went to college. Her Mom was a non-traditional student, finishing college when Kristine was already 10 years old. Her Dad decided to also finish college the year after she graduated from UWP. After Kristine graduated with her computer science degree, she took a leap of faith and left the state where her family (and extended family - all 60+ of them) lived to start her career as a software developer at National Computer Systems, now Pearson Education in Iowa City. She quickly moved from a more traditional programmer role to working on many cutting edge technologies that evolved in the early 2000’s. Kristine also worked for several years behind the scenes as a database administrator and then transitioned to more customer-centric roles as a data center account manager and a program technology manager. In her role as a program technology manager, Kristine oversaw the technology arm of large-scale state department of education customers. As a technology leader at Pearson, Kristine worked on contracts worth nearly half a billion dollars and helped ensure over 6 million students were able to successfully take on-line and paper assessment tests. Some of her customers included Florida Department of Education, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College (PARCC), Tennessee Department of Education and Georgia Department of Education. After nearly 20 years in the IT industry, Kristine decided use her knowledge to help others grow in the technology sector. She started her own coaching and consulting business, focused on supporting emerging leaders and quick growth companies. She ran her coaching and consulting company from 2011 to 2016. In 2016, Kristine was offered an amazing opportunity to bring her coaching and technology interests back together at The University of Iowa working in the full-time MBA program as the Professional Director of the Business Analytics Academy. It was a great opportunity for her to support the next generation of technology professionals and continue to learn about the evolving industry. In 2019, Kristine graduated from Iowa with her Master of Science in Business Analytics degree and has been the Professional Director of the Master of Business Analytics program and a faculty member of the Department of Business Analytics since 2018. As a faculty member and proud supporter of Iowa Hawkeyes, she has focused her support toward women in business, diversity, equity and inclusion and supporting students who might need a little extra guidance. She is here to be your cheerleader, your mentor or just a general listening ear.