Biometric Thumb Scanners, Pop-Tarts, and Websites, Oh My!
In the Haworth College of Business, faculty pride themselves on challenging students academically in order to fully uncover student talents and skills. The challenge of college life paired with working full-time creates a unique balancing act, one which Jennifer Rutledge, B.B.A.'04 mastered during her time at WMU. Working in the Schneider computer lab during her first few weeks at Western, she learned of a job opening for a web designer at BlueGranite, a local software company. Rutledge recalls when her favorite professor Dr. Han found out about her job at BlueGranite, “When he learned that I was going to school and working full-time, he sat down and helped me to balance out my schedule to make it more manageable.”
Rutledge stayed with BlueGranite for eight years and then was ready for a new opportunity. She was contacted by a recruiter for Biggs|Gilmore who was seeking a project manager with web/digital experience. Rutledge interviewed for the position and was offered the job the same week.
The ability to work well as part of a team has been central to Rutledge’s success:
“I noticed right away that a lot of my courses had coursework that was team-based. At first I thought that I would really rather just do the work by myself! Quickly I realized that if I wanted to get a good grade I had to work with people’s strengths and find creative ways to get them involved in the project. Being able to work effectively with a team is crucial to job success. I’m now managing teams and have found my niche in working with technical and non-technical people to make a project succeed. Throughout my education at Western, teamwork was just one of the things that really prepared me for the real work environment. The coursework was relevant to the job market and helped me to be a well-rounded individual.”
She also notes that her training in effective communication in the college of business has been another lynchpin of her career, particularly the emphasis on striking a professional and friendly tone in e-mail.
Rutledge has had the chance to work on some very exciting and innovative projects through both BlueGranite and Biggs|Gilmore. At BlueGranite, she worked in conjunction with World Wide Works, a non-profit that provides healthcare support for struggling companies. Her project: to build a software program that would manage all the core business operations for a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, from check-in to prescription fulfillment. One of the key obstacles for the hospital was locating medical records for each patient, leaving doctors with virtually no medical history when treating patients. Rutledge’s team implemented a biometric thumb scanner that could identify the patient at check-in. They tied all patient medical records to one account so that doctors had accurate medical and treatment history and were, in turn, able to provide better healthcare.
At Biggs|Gilmore, Rutledge worked on the Pop-Tarts American Idols Pre-Sale Ticket website. The website, sponsored by Pop-Tarts, announced the start of the American Idol concert tour. The site had several components, including a pre-sale countdown clock, integration with Ticketmaster, and exclusive backstage interviews and video footage from the concerts. When the Idols tour came to Detroit, Rutledge’s team from Biggs|Gilmore joined a group of Kellogg employees for the show.
In her spare time, you will probably find Rutledge spending time with her family. She and her husband, Jonathan, have a 15-month-old daughter, Marissa, who is the apple of their eye and queen of their free time. Rutledge also likes to give back to her community and often does so through her expertise in web design for local organizations such as Girl Scouts of Kalamazoo and the Western Michigan Project Management Institute, where she just finished a four-year term as vice president of marketing.
From thumb scanners to Pop-Tarts, to Girl Scout cookies, what will Jennifer take on next? We will just have to wait and see.