Rebecca Lovell
UW Business School's First McGowan Scholar
In 2005 Rebecca Lovell, a second-year MBA student from Seattle, became the first UW student to win the scholarship named after – and funded by – William G. McGowan, the late founder of MCI Communications and catalyst of 1980s telecommunications deregulation. Each year, the McGowan Charitable Fund metes out scholarships to a select group of management students who exhibit extraordinary leadership, academic achievement, character, entrepreneurship and commitment to the community.
The scholarships were inspired by McGowan's own experience. A working-class kid from Pennsylvania's hardscrabble coal country, McGowan worked his way through college and eventually saved up enough to pay for a year of Harvard Business School. But he would have been forced to drop out had it not been for a scholarship that saved the day and paved the way for his industry-altering success and the philanthropy that followed. McGowan spent much of his later life giving back to communities that offered him opportunity.
Lovell hopes to emulate and even accelerate the payback. "I find McGowan's approach inspirational," she says.
A circuitous early career took her from a $5 billion multi-national company to a software provider to an executive placement firm to an international law firm to a non-profit social service organization. And whatever her initial position, she inevitably gravitated toward training and development. "It has always demanded the most of my passion and energy," Lovell says. "I've been chasing that piece ever since my career began."
With a McGowan proclivity for philanthropy, a decade of experience in training and development, and an entrepreneurial streak a mile wide, she took the next logical step: planning to start her own non-profit organization that would help prepare underprivileged women to enter the work force. But first she needed to enhance her financial skill set. "I don't like asking people to do anything that I don't understand," she says. "I felt the UW MBA program would give me both the discipline and the credibility I needed to succeed."
The arrival of the McGowan Scholarship, which covers her second-year tuition, is affording Lovell the fiscal liberation to embrace a wide array of extra-curricular activities in the MBA program and the greater civic community. She is co-chair of the Challenge for Charity auction and serves as MBA Association vice president of internal student affairs, career counselor at the Business Connections Center, and leadership fellow to first-year study teams. She's also been able to continue serving on a non-profit board and to take an internship with Rosehedge, an AIDS housing and health care organization, along with other civic endeavors.
"I feel that all UW MBAs, past and present, act as ambassadors to the greater Seattle civic community," she says. "And I take this role seriously. I do my best to represent the program in every capacity in which I serve, on and off campus."
Ultimately, Lovell believes the scholarship will help her fully pursue her non-profit dream, which is certainly a less lucrative aspiration than the typical MBA's, but would probably be okay in William McGowan's book.
"This scholarship is going to help me focus on what's important to me," Lovell says. "I don't have to take jobs outside of my interest. I can stay really focused."