In This Story
After the curriculum was shaped with the help of a consortium of local companies, George Mason University’s Master of Science in Technology Management was launched in the late 1990s. These companies agreed that each of them would commit to sending two employees every year as students.
Jeanine Callahan, MS Technology Management ’98, who was working at BTG, Inc. at the time, was eager to seize the opportunity. “It was a competitive selection process,” she says. “This was an opportunity to do an executive-paced program for 18 months, and then the company was paying for it if I was selected.” Entering the program not only escalated Callahan’s career, but it changed her life as she met her husband Colin Callahan, MS Technology Management ’98, in her program’s cohort.
She vividly remembers seeing Colin on the first day of their orientation. “We were headed to Enterprise Hall, walking up the stairs, and I remember he just looked at me and said it was going to be a long 18 months,” she says. They introduced themselves, meeting before they had even stepped through the classroom’s doors.
During the program, both she and her future husband formed numerous lasting and meaningful relationships. “Our son’s godfather was one of our classmates,” she says. “We’re good friends as couples with other classmates and see them pretty regularly.” Attending classes together nearly every Friday and Saturday and coming from similar backgrounds in technology service companies bonded the students. Furthermore, their class’s leadership and feedback helped shape the program for subsequent students. To this day, the Callahans are still in contact with many of their classmates.
“I think that the experience of that program solidified for me how important building professional relationships is, not just developing them, but how to nurture them over time and and how to show up for people professionally,” says Callahan. It is a skillset that has served her both in day-to-day work and her own career development. In fact, she notes that every job position she has gotten has been built on a relationship. Callahan’s eagerness to build relationships and work with others has led her to serve on various advisory boards at the Costello College of Business, including as director-at-large on the alumni chapter, where she has brought her expertise to help guide the next generation of business leaders.
As essential to Callahan’s career as networking and interpersonal skills have been, the course material from the technology management course has also stuck with her, helping her manage more effectively and overcome new challenges. “One of my most influential professors was Catherine Cramton [professor emeritus of management],” she says. “She was doing research at the time on what fundamentally turned into remote work. She talked about groups that collaborated over space and time.” Cramton’s teaching on the subject was ahead of the curve and later helped Callahan rally her teams during the COVID pandemic.
Competing for and enrolling in Costello’s first technology management graduate program was a momentous occasion for Jeanine Callahan. It helped her become the leader she is today, currently an executive consultant and portfolio manager at E-volve Technology Systems. Even more importantly, it’s where she found her family starting with Colin. The couple’s son is completing his master's degree at George Mason, continuing the family tradition.