NSU Horizons Spring 2013

34 HORIZONS As a young girl, Bonita (Bonnie) Hathcock would sit on the fire escape of her apartment building in Shippens- burg, Pennsylvania, and gaze out at Shippensburg State College in the distance. “I used to think there is no way I could go to college,” she recalled. “And yet I knew education changes everything.” And it did. Hathcock eventually graduated from what was then known as Shippensburg State College, now Shippensburg State University, and in 1989, earned her Master of Busi- ness Administration degree from Nova Southeastern University. The former senior vice president of Humana, Inc., said the M.B.A. from NSU “was the golden ticket” that gave her entry to the executive offices of several Fortune 500 compa- nies over a 37-year corporate career. In 2007, she was named Human Resources Executive of the Year and, in 2010, was inducted into the Hu- man Resources Academy, the top honor in the field. Raised by an uncle and aunt after her father abandoned the family, Hathcock began working when she was 11 and never stopped. She worked as a baby- sitter, trimmed trees in a local peach orchard, and clerked at a dime store through high school. When she graduated, she took a job as a secretary. But she longed for something better, and she knew the first step toward her goals was higher education. She first took classes at a local junior college and then at Shippens- burg, planning to teach business courses. She worked for a business school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but grew restless after a few years. A friend suggested Hathcock apply to Xerox Corp. “She made it sound so glamorous. I thought this might be a path- way for me,” Hathcock said. “I was looking for opportunities for upward mobility.” She began at Xerox’s Harrisburg office as a secretary in 1975 and quickly found the opportunity she was seeking. Within six months, she was promoted to the marketing department. In a few years, she was promoted again to Xerox’s international training center. Her career at Xerox lasted almost 10 years, until she was recruited to become director of training at Datapoint Corp. in San Antonio, Texas. From there, she was recruited to become training director at Siemens-Rolm’s telecommu- nications division. She spent nearly 10 years at Siemens, working her way up to vice president of human resources for one of the company’s largest divisions in the United States. While at the company’s office in Boca Raton, Florida, her husband encouraged her to pursue an M.B.A. Hathcock says she considered two schools and wanted more information about their programs. At the first school she called, the person who answered the phone was terse and unprofessional. She then called Nova Southeastern University. M.B.A. Was Her Golden Ticket BY LIZ ATWOOD Since her retirement, Bonita Hathcock spends much of her time in her antiques-filled home office. ALUMNI PROFILE