TTEC Scrum Master Nadeen Khweis credits Daniels’ MSM program for launching her career
Nadeen Khweis
As a University of Denver undergraduate majoring in psychology, Nadeen Khweis (BA 2017, MS 2018), never pictured herself going to business school. But that was before she took Daniels’ undergraduate Gateway to Business class.
The course—essentially an introduction to various business specialties—prompted her to change her career plans.
“Initially, I was planning to go to graduate school for psychology,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘I’ve mastered the people side of business—understanding the psychological factors that influence and affect employees and companies—now I need to go study the technical side to business so I can have a well-rounded background.’”
When Khweis learned about Daniels’ Master of Science in Management (MSM) program, it seemed like the perfect fit, so she enrolled in the intensive, full-time program.
Essentially a two-year program condensed into nine months, the MSM welcomes students from both non-business and business backgrounds, giving them a solid grounding in the management field.
“The program was very rewarding—it exposed us to all aspects of the business world,” Khweis said.
Although nervous about entering the program without much business knowledge, her fears were quickly allayed.
“I would say to others who are considering this program and don’t have a business background—don’t be anxious,” she said. “I worked hard, wasn’t afraid to ask questions, was super engaged in class—and ended up graduating with a 4.0 [GPA].”
The MSM program gave Khweis an opportunity to focus on two of her main interests: project management and marketing.
“I took a class in project and budget management and realized this could be a career option,” she said. “Management is an adaptable degree that you can apply to a variety of career paths.”
Before graduate school, Khweis landed a marketing internship in Denver at Black Knight, Inc.—a provider of integrated technology, services, and data and analytics solutions to the mortgage and real estate industries. As her MSM elective, she continued interning for Black Knight. Upon earning her master’s degree, she was hired by Black Knight as a marketing communications specialist.
In November 2019, Khweis took a new job as a scrum master in the corporate marketing department at TTEC, a Denver-based leading global customer experience technology, strategy and services company that works with Fortune 100 and 500 companies. In her role, Khweis works on projects for TTEC’s two divisions, Engage and Digital, and collaborates with members of the communication, marketing and sales teams to develop creative materials using the management practices of agile and scrum.
“I ensure that work flows smoothly during various stages of the project cycle,” she said.
Khweis added that she regularly taps into the skills she learned in the MSM program, including Teaching Assistant Professor Lowell Valencia-Miller’s Foundations of Strategy class. And Valencia-Miller, who also serves as the MSM program director, returned the compliment.
“Nadeen came to us and said, ‘I want to discover who I really want to be and trusted her advanced education to us,’” he said. “She’s been very successful in translating that into a career, and we couldn’t be happier for her.”
The MSM program was launched in 2016 with the goal of providing an avenue into the business arena for students of varying undergraduate backgrounds, ranging from engineering to the liberal arts. The curriculum underwent a redevelopment in 2018 with an eye toward helping students become leaders in their chosen fields.
“You could be a brilliant mechanical or electrical engineer, but how do you fit into your organization?” Valencia-Miller said. “We said, ‘Let’s expose students to learning about how to lead themselves, their teams and their organizations.’”
Toward that end, program faculty steer students into better understanding their own passions and what drives them, followed by learning how to work on teams as problem-solvers for a nonprofit and then, finally, on a project for a complex, for-profit company. Last spring, for example, MSM students worked with Swedish-based Bona AB, an industry leader in hardwood floor care. They visited Bona’s U.S. headquarters and developed a proposal for introducing new product and marketing solutions, presenting it to the company’s senior vice president of strategic development.
“For us, our success is the success of our students,” Valencia-Miller said. “Nadeen is a prime example of someone who has embraced Daniels and our mantra of ethical leadership—and she’s out in the world being an example of that each and every day.”