Krysta Ermine didn’t set out to become a programmer. A Penn State alumna who graduated with a degree in business management in 2016, she spent her early career at Bell Flight, a subsidiary of Textron Inc., working in the compensation side of human resources. When Ermine’s director encouraged her to take advantage of Bell Flight’s new partnership with Penn State World Campus that was launched to specifically address a data analytics skills gap across the organization, she enrolled with an open mind and modest expectations.
What followed was a career-defining journey: a business analytics graduate certificate that led to a master’s in data analytics, a role change into HR information systems, and a new professional identity from the one she had before.
Today, Ermine has been programming daily for nearly five years — building systems, designing databases, working with AI — and says she is still learning every day.
Read more about Ermine’s career journey in the Q&A below.
You went into the business analytics certificate program not quite knowing what to expect. What was that experience like?
I definitely went in with an open mind. I had always been on the slightly technical side of HR. Compensation work involves a lot of data auditing and Excel, but statistics and programming weren’t things I had ever really studied. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from business analytics. I’m not someone who loves heavy math or calculus, so the name alone was a little intimidating.
But I ended up really liking it. What helped was that the program didn’t ask you to become an expert in everything at once. It gave you a broad overview of the field — such as data visualization, database design, statistics, programming — and let you see where you might want to land. That was reassuring. I didn’t have to know all of it. I just had to find my space within it.
In the certificate program, we heard from speakers who talked about their careers in business analytics, and that made a real difference. Before I started, I had no idea what jobs in this field looked like. Hearing from people doing the work helped me see that it might actually be a good fit for me.
When did you decide to keep going and pursue the master’s degree?
I didn’t take any time off between finishing the certificate and starting the master’s. I found that I liked the problem-solving in this space, where you’re working with data and figuring out how things fit together. It was challenging in a way that I enjoyed, and continuing made sense.
The master’s program went deeper, particularly on the programming and statistics side, and that’s when I really knew I was headed somewhere new. I really enjoyed the programming side. The graduate certificate showed me what the field looked like. The master’s gave me the foundation to work in it.
Can you describe a moment when your course work connected directly to something you were doing on the job?
The clearest example is a statistics model project I was involved in at Bell Flight. While I was still in compensation, our team partnered with the HRIS group to develop a statistical model related to the compensation space. I was involved from the compensation side, watching the model get built.
Then, when I moved into HRIS, the code for that model became part of my portfolio. Because I had worked on it from the compensation side, I already understood the business context, which made me a natural fit to carry it forward in my new role.
The master’s program had covered a lot of statistics and code projects that involved stats, and that directly helped me understand both how the model worked mathematically and how the code behind it functioned. I went from being someone who observed that project to someone who maintains it. The program made that transition possible.
Your role has changed significantly since you started the graduate certificate. How would you describe where you are now?
I’m in HR information systems, which is a completely different world from where I started. It’s mainly programming in different languages, working with database design, data visualization, automation, and AI. For my current role, the master’s degree was a requirement. I couldn’t have moved into it without finishing the program. The credential is not just something on a résumé — it made this move possible.
I’ve been in this role for almost five years, and I would still tell you I’m learning every day. That’s one of the things I love about it.
What would you say to someone who is considering going back to school for a technical credential?
I’d tell them to do it, especially if they’re early in their career and want to move in a more technical direction. One thing I’ve noticed is that HR programs — even good ones — tend to focus on the softer skills and the policy side. The technical side — things like Excel, data handling, even just understanding how data is structured — that’s often a gap. And in most jobs, that gap shows up fast.
The graduate certificate program is a great place to start precisely because it doesn’t ask you to commit to everything upfront. You get a real look at the field, the careers, the skill areas, the kind of work that’s actually out there, and then you can decide how far you want to go.
This Q&A is part of “40k alumni: 40 stories celebrating 40,000 graduates,” a series marking the milestone of more than 40,000 Penn Staters earning their degrees online through Penn State World Campus.