Sharing a Life of Learning with Others

Laura McGinn loves to learn and has earned an impressive three academic degrees. What’s even more impressive is that she earned them all while working full time at CSC. And along the way, she’s shared what she’s learned to help her team members grow their careers.

The senior director of global client service has completed a bachelor’s in business, a master’s in global business and global management, and a doctorate in business administration while advancing her career at CSC. “I love to learn. I like to continue to get stronger as a leader and share what I’ve learned with my team,” she says, adding that the company’s tuition reimbursement program has helped her pursue her educational goals.

“I find that I learn the most by teaching or helping my team learn new things, and it helps with retention and growth,” she explains. “One of my passions is helping people grow their careers in the way that they want. As I was going through all my courses, it led me to new things that helped me continue to grow my leadership skills and, more importantly, people development skills. It just so happens that each program I started aligned well with the work I was doing at CSC.”

In addition to her degrees from the University of Phoenix, she's acquired a wealth of knowledge from her time in the working world, including lessons about getting and giving feedback. “It’s so important to be open to feedback,” Laura says. “You can learn so much about yourself and apply it in different ways.”

“Always give feedback in a constructive way,” she adds. “Being people-oriented and coming from a place of trying to figure out a situation goes so much further than just coming in negative or shutting something down right away.”

Laura joined CSC in 2008 as a recruiter after a long career in retail management that required frequent travel between her home on Long Island, New York, and stores in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area. “The only way for me to have grown in that environment would have been for me to become a regional manager, and then I’d have been on the road even more. I wanted to find something where I didn’t have as much travel.”

She posted her resume online and within a couple of days was contacted by CSC. “I had an interview within a week and a second interview within two weeks, and I was hired,” she recalls. “I was an HR recruiter for nine months, and an opportunity came up and my leader thought I’d thrive in the role, so I joined the Company Records Team, which I led for almost a year.”

Laura was then asked to join the company’s digital brand services (DBS) business, which helps companies gain control of their digital assets, maximize their online potential, and increase online security against brand risks. Most of her CSC career has been leading the service organization in DBS, which has blossomed from 19 people to more than 100 through expansion and the acquisition of several companies. “We’ve had a lot of growth internationally,” Laura says. “We’ve essentially doubled in size as a company, expanding our reach globally. I’ve helped scale up our processes, joined our teams, and helped with the integration of all the different businesses. Although I’ve led the Service Team for the majority of my career at CSC, it looks very different today than it did when I started. I’ve been able to advance professionally, staying within the DBS team and continuing to move up in my career through the service organization.”

In the organizational development courses she took, Laura says she learned a lot about the basics of what it means to run a good business. “One thing that stood out to me was how well CSC does things,” she says. “The professors would teach us new topics, and I realized we were already doing what they were talking about at CSC.”

One example: A company needs fundamental values to live by and to intertwine into business decisions. “CSC has processes in place to make sure that we’re having regular development conversations with our people so we know how they want to grow and are providing the tools so they can do that.” The company continues to emphasize learning and development as an integral part of its culture. “If I learned something in school that somebody in the business was struggling with, I looked for that topic on LinkedIn Learning and shared it with them,” Laura says.

Teamwork is one of CSC’s core values, and a lesson she’s learned along the way is to reach out to others and ask for help. “Sometimes we’re taught to figure it out on our own,” Laura explains. “We all have different talents we bring to the table, and we can’t be afraid to ask somebody for their help on something they may be more knowledgeable about. You could take the hard way and always try to figure it out on your own or you can go the smarter way and seek expertise when you don’t know something. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

Laura is very happy she decided to find a new career and landed at CSC. “This is an amazing company. I feel so blessed to be here. I’m very grateful for the continued opportunities to grow and the support I get along the way. This is a special place.”