Shivani Sharma ’19
Education: MS Management Information Systems Internship: Professional: TriNet USA, Inc.; Manhattan, NY Lifion by ADP; Manhattan, NY
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Describe your career and what led you to your current position. I started my career as a Programmer Analyst in the banking and financial domain at Cognizant, India. Therein, I was involved in data transformation and migration projects which required extensive data mapping, requirements analysis, solution designing, database management, and ETL. During my MS-MIS program, apart from the curriculum, I took online courses to gain additional knowledge on data analytics, data visualization, and artificial intelligence. The coursework along with the self-study and prior work experience helped me to land my summer internship at TriNet as an IT Development Intern in their Finance space wherein I was able to leverage my existing skills and develop an advanced knowledge base. After completing my Summer 2018 internship, I was offered a full-time position in Fall 2018 as a Business Systems Analyst under the same team at TriNet – Austin, TX. As a Business Systems Analyst with TriNet’s Corporate Functions IT team, I am a technical solution designer and liaison between Business and Engineering teams. My responsibilities include gathering and analyzing requirements from business groups, performing gap analyses to seek methodologies to optimize and automate business processes, and creating detailed design documents for engineering teams while constantly engaging and communicating with project managers, tech leads, and user groups to achieve desired KPIs. What extra-curricular activities were you involved in at A&M?
Why did you pursue a master’s degree? My primary motivation for pursuing a master’s degree was to fast track my career progression. From my prior work experience in the IT industry, I was inspired by my project and program managers who used to work with diverse clientele while coordinating technical projects with dispersed virtual teams. Thereafter, I was driven by the prospect of working on the latest technologies in a people-oriented field. Pursuing a master’s degree in MIS provided me the perfect amalgam of business and technical expertise that I was looking for my career. What is the biggest challenge you faced in graduate school? My biggest challenges were time management and adaptability. With so many things happening in parallel, I learned to prioritize my work items. To adapt to the grad life, I assimilated new experiences, viewpoints, and diverse work cultures with the help of my peers, colleagues, and professors. What is the biggest reward for earning your MS-MIS degree? The biggest reward for earning an MS-MIS degree is to have an experience of a lifetime and to be a part of this prestigious institution in years to come. The journey to my degree has been highly transformative and satisfying. The MS-MIS degree helped me to steer my career direction towards the role that I wanted for myself and making me adept to work on latest technologies in the industry. Last but not least, it’s not only about the lessons that you learn and classes that you take – it’s also the spirit, camaraderie, and mindset that you inculcate over the two years that prepares you to overcome obstacles and achieve your targets in the future.
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