Hollis Greenberg

When I was still in elementary school, my family purchased one of the first computers in our town. Little did I understand then that Apple II would shape my career. I dragged that computer to college, first as a psychology major, then as a marketing major. My senior year I enrolled in Management Information Systems course and fell in love with computing! But, alas, I did not want to extend my graduation date so I continued on with my marketing program.

The next fall I returned to school as a graduate student in an MBA program. Once again, I enrolled in the graduate-level Management Information Systems course but found it too easy. I switched into the CIS concentration course and it was love at first sight! It was love until I took my first programming course. I have to admit that I really struggled to learn COBOL. During the semester, I had a breakthrough and finally “got” how to program. That ”A-ha” moment cemented that I was finally studying what I was meant to study.

After graduate school, I took a marketing research position at a large international firm. Before long, I convinced my manager to allow me to learn, develop, and rollout groupware to the marketing and sales departments. Within a year, I was involved in requirements gathering for a larger customer resource management (CRM) system. I was the only person in the marketing department with a server on her desk and was now wearing the hats of both the system administrator and application developer.

In my corporate career, I’ve held positions as an application developer and business analyst. Through it all, I never left the classroom entirely. I took additional courses, obtained multiple certifications, and taught college courses at night. Approximately twelve years ago, I relocated back to my home state of Massachusetts and made my side job my day job. I have been teaching at Wentworth for nearly six years and still love watching students have those “A-ha” moments.