国产传媒

Mount Saint Mary’s alumna Jennifer Bolanis-Rogers ’01 knows firsthand the positive impact Mount professors can have on a student’s academic pursuits and career aspirations. “The Mount professors care about students so much. They empowered me to do anything that I put my mind to,” she says.

Jennifer, who graduated with a bachelor’s in business administration with an emphasis on management, is the owner of Get Organized, Inc., an Orange County-based business specializing in accounting, consulting and organizing. Her life-changing moment came during a Small Business Management class at the Mount during her junior year, when professor Barbara Lewis guided students through creating a business plan.

“For the assignment, we had to choose a business for the case study,” Jennifer recalls. “I immediately went home and researched successful small businesses. That is when I discovered that professional organizing was a career, and I found a national association of organizers with a chapter in Los Angeles.”

That same year, Jennifer accepted her first organization job. Her employer taught her how to use Quicken money management software, which would become the backbone of her current company. Jennifer now employs two subcontractors and has over 100 clients, many of whom have worked with her for decades. “If I had never taken that business class, I would have never found my true calling,” says Jennifer, who is a QuickBooks Proadvisor, a certification for accounting experts.

Jennifer has donated to the Mount since graduation, and recently established an endowed scholarship fund to support current students. “I want to give other students the same opportunities that I had,” she says. Jennifer herself was part of the student-employment program and received an annual scholarship from the Mount. “Without the financial support I received, I would not have been able to attend Mount Saint Mary’s.”

Sierra Pitman ’24, who graduated from the Mount last May with a bachelor’s in nursing, received support from Jennifer’s endowed scholarship. Like Jennifer, Sierra credits her professors’ dedication to her success. “My professors showed me different avenues of nursing I had not considered,” says Sierra, now a nurse at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley. “This scholarship made all the difference. I would not have been able to go to college without it.”