Brianna Nelson

As a full-time undergraduate at UHC, Brianna Nelson gained the business acumen to grow her own company.

NNearly eight years after building her makeup artist consultancy, Brianna is following a new business path in healthcare management.

After volunteering her makeup services for a charity event hosted by You Night, a local foundation that honors cancer survivors in a runway show, Brianna was inspired to use her talents to serve others through healthcare.

Now she’s back at UHC—this time as a graduate student—to complete an accelerated master’s degree in healthcare management.

Caring for others

Brianna reevaluated her career path—and decided to carve out a business niche in healthcare—after she saw the impact she could make in other people’s lives by volunteering for the runway show. “Working with that event for two years in a row really made me see how important healthcare is and how much people need support systems,” Brianna said. “I thought I really just want to give back.”

Learning from real-life examples

Brianna says she has grown the most from group assignments that involve case studies—real-life events and stories that teach business principles. “We have to put ourselves in those situations and consider how we would respond,” Brianna said.

The personal touch

For example, one case study featured a patient undergoing chemo and radiation therapy who had lost her insurance. So what would Brianna and her team do as hospital managers? “In the case study, the manager in the insurance department wasn’t doing everything possible to help her, and as a cancer patient, she had tons of medical bills. As a group, my team set up an insurance department in the best way to respond to such a situation—not giving up on the patient.”

Building confidence to achieve more

Brianna never expected she’d be so successful in college, and says UHC has given her the confidence to advance her career. “For me to go back to grad school says a lot about my professors,” Brianna said. “Now I’m in my fifth class, and I still have a 4.0. Graduate school is like having another family, where everybody has the same love of something and is trying to get through the program together.”

Up next

When she graduates, Brianna plans to get hands-on experience in a rotational hospital operations fellowship program. “It’s an intense internship,” Brianna said. “You touch every field in the healthcare management world, and it will help me decide where I want to focus.”