Jenny Steffensen

Faces of omd

FACES OF OMD

JENNY STEFFENSEN

Jenny_Steffensen_Graduation

"I WAS THE FIRST IN MY FAMILY TO GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL AND EARN A DEGREE IN COLLEGE. OMD PROVIDED ME WITH THE TOOLS NECESSARY TO SUCCEED."

Jenny Steffensen was one absence away from failing out of high school. Her parents never went to college and, as the youngest of three siblings, she was the first to graduate high school. But today, Jenny has her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and recently celebrated her one-year anniversary as a Pharmacy Manager at CVS. So how’d she get there?

While working as a cashier at Target after high school, Jenny realized that she didn’t want be a cashier for the rest of her life. So she enrolled at Northeastern while continuing her job, not quite sure what she wanted to study or how to navigate the higher education system. But then she was transferred to the pharmacy department at Target, and suddenly her path became clear: she wanted to be a pharmacist.

Rather than continuing to hemorrhage money at Northeastern, Jenny transferred to Wilbur Wright College, and that’s where she found One Million Degrees. Jenny studied pre-pharmacy, continued her job and Target, and fully embraced the resources OMD offered.

“OMD helped me gain the confidence I needed to succeed,” Jenny explains. “They did an amazing job of providing structure and support to me as a scholar. I was given the tools necessary to succeed, such as having tutors and a coach.”

Jenny completed her coursework at Wright in two years and immediately transferred into UIC’s College of Pharmacy.

In Jenny’s words, “OMD is not just a scholarship…OMD is an all-inclusive program to facilitate the development of young professionals.” And Jenny has definitely succeeded in becoming that young professional.