Leave Your Mark
Spring 2026 Grads Share Their Stories
As the spring semester comes to an end, more than 1,400 C. T. Bauer College of Business students will join the college's alumni base following the Spring 2026 commencement ceremony.
After leaving a lasting mark, four of those graduates share their stories of how the college has transformed their lives.
The Next Ina Garten
The last semester of college has been sweet for supply chain management senior Irene Kim, who started working full-time as a procurement specialist in the weeks leading up to spring commencement.
In her role, Kim ensures business runs smoothly and upholds the values of speed and efficiency that are critical in the supply chain industry. Kim is a natural fit for a career centered around getting things done in a highly strategized manner. However, she took the unconventional path of getting there and savored life’s delicacies along the way.
Years before she started studying business, Kim was a pastry student at the Culinary Institute Lenotre in Houston. While learning about desserts under world-renowned chefs, Kim found the craft to be a way to blend her different interests into a career.
“I really enjoyed pastry because it was a creative outlet for me, but it was also very scientific at the same time because with baking, you must be very precise with all your measurements and ratios,” Kim said. “After I graduated culinary school, I was excited to become a pastry chef at either a Michelin restaurant or one of the bigger bakery chains here in town.”
Unfortunately, before Kim had a chance to work in a commercial kitchen, a major change in circumstances got in the way.
Kim was stung by a stingray and developed some life-threatening food allergies, including an airborne allergy to sesame. As sesame is commonplace in many restaurant kitchens, it no longer was viable for Kim to pursue her initial goal.
Determined not to let the situation inhibit her dreams, Kim decided to start her own bakery, ultimately introducing her to business.
“When I developed recipes, I couldn't taste them myself, so I went on instinct with different ratios and flavors and had to use a lot of mathematical tools to measure the sugar content,” she said. “After starting Modu Bakeshop, I learned that supply chain is everything in running a business.”
Curious about how she could improve the bakery’s processes, Kim started studying supply chain management and entrepreneurship at Bauer College, eventually joining the Bauer Business Honors Program.
“In both business and baking you have to have a certain level of tenacity and drive,” she said. “It doesn't matter how much information you know. If you aren't motivated to apply the concepts, you won't get far.”
The more Bauer courses and organizations that Kim explored, the more she became more invested in the supply chain career field. After networking, she started her full-time position in March as she wrapped up her final graduation requirements.
“Bauer has given me a lot of opportunities to shine in my position now because it introduced me to taking ownership of my knowledge and curiosity to learn and grow as a business professional,” Kim said. “It also taught me that there isn't one path that you have to take to be successful. The opportunities will always be there as long as you look for them.”
Kim is no longer operating Modu Bakeshop, but her bakery dreams are far from gone. This summer, working with a new business partner, her next bakery will launch with a new menu, name and logo.
But first, Kim and her peers will celebrate their graduation at Bauer College commencement on May 16.
Most Likely to Go to the Moon
Bauer College Executive MBA student Toren Watson has always had his sights set on the stars.
Growing up in Houston, the “Space City,” he said he has always been fascinated by the mysteries and wonders of our solar system. One of his fondest memories he recalls is from his high school days when he traveled 75 miles outside of the city with his astronomy club to get a view of the night sky unobstructed by light pollution.
With a knack for math and science, Watson knew early on in his life that he wanted to be an aerospace engineer. He earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 2006 from Prairie View A&M University, and in 2007, he started his career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with the United Space Alliance.
“Every day is a little different,” Watson said. “The culture at Johnson Space Center is built around safety and a people-first mentality. I think that’s one of the main reasons I’ve been here for so long. You really feel like family when you’re working at NASA.”
There’s a new thrill waiting around every corner, Watson added. His days can range from troubleshooting hardware, preparing for an upcoming test or visiting the Neutral Buoyancy Lab where the astronauts train for their International Space Station missions.
Watson’s main job at NASA involves working on the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits. He worked as an engineer on the EMU team for over a decade, he said, before he was promoted to his current position as an EMU Subsystem Manager. In this leadership role, he manages one of the subsystems of the spacesuit that he has familiarized himself with over the last 15 years.
With the recent excitement around space travel centered around Artemis II, Watson said it felt surreal to see all that humanity accomplished within the mission.
“It was a sincere pleasure to work with those astronauts during the early stages within the EMU,” he said. It also inspired space enthusiasts from all over the world to follow along and share in the excitement and joy of manned space travel.
Watson said he has always been inspired by what space travel stands for. It represents pushing ourselves beyond limits and achieving what we previously thought to be impossible, he added.
For him, earning an EMBA was something he’s been reaching for, and as he moves ahead to graduate in the Spring 2026 commencement ceremony, he feels he’s finally grasped it.
“My family was my biggest motivator for going back to school,” Watson said. “I want to leave a legacy of practicing what you preach. My wife is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston in the College of Education. It’s important that our boys see us going back to school and achieving goals that we focus on.”
As Watson takes this next step (and one giant leap), he said he hopes he’s left a positive mark of love and respect on everyone he’s met at his time in Bauer.
Most Likely to be President
Dressed in a crisp blazer and wielding a firm handshake and a kind smile, C. T. Bauer College of Business graduating senior Emily Agruso is known for her charismatic and compassionate leadership.
Agruso has made her mark on Bauer College, serving as Bauer Ambassadors president, fulfilling the Ted Bauer Leadership Certificate Program requirements and getting involved in various business student organizations.
“I’m a first-generation student, so coming in, I already knew I was a little bit different than everyone else,” Agruso said. “I was uncertain of what I was doing here. One way I combated that was putting myself all in to getting involved with different organizations.”
While Agruso has always strived to be a leader, she said the community of other students, faculty and staff allowed her to grow into her capabilities.
“I absolutely struggled with public speaking previously, but now I feel much more confident doing so,” she said.
With her impressive résumé and majors in finance and entrepreneurship, Agruso has embodied extraordinary success in her schooling, but pursuing business wasn’t always the plan.
While researching colleges, Agruso’s passion to help others made her interested in studying education. However, taking finances into account, Agruso wanted a career where she could serve others while also gaining a significant return on investment of her college degree. In the end, she found business school to be her best path ahead.
“I was thinking about what I could do to meet my value of being able to give back to others while still fulfilling my ideas of having a good paying career,” she said. “I ultimately found Bauer because of the scholarship opportunities and I’m really happy to be here.”
At Bauer, Agruso has considered finance her “bread and butter” and found her footing in the personal financial planning track.
“Growing up, my family wasn’t always in the best financial position,” Agruso said. “That led me to believe there is a need for increased financial literacy. I thought about what I wished my family had in the past and how I can give back to others, so they are not in the same situation.”
Agruso has since combined her interests in education and money management by creating financial literacy presentations.
“The financial planning program recently wrapped up an eight-week session of going to high schools every week,” she said. “It was really enjoyable because I saw the impact that it was having on them. They were enthusiastic about learning valuable information.”
After commencement, Agruso will start her full-time career in finance while studying to become a certified financial planner. She thanks her family for their continued support throughout college.
Most Artistic
Where the rest of the world sees a blank canvas, MBA student Michelle McGuire sees room for endless possibilities.
McGuire has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember. There is power in the act of creating, she said. Regardless of all the things in life that can’t be controlled, it is through art that she grounds herself.
It is this principle that inspired her business Michelle McGuire Studio.
“It was born out of my own loneliness,” McGuire said. “I know now what I was experiencing was postpartum anxiety and depression, but at the time, I didn’t have a name for it. No one was talking about it. We had also just moved, so it was like we were at this blank slate of a house. I started creating paintings of familiar places that felt comfortable and joyful. When I put them on my walls, I immediately recognized there was a shift.”
She realized soon after that she wasn’t the only new mother that was feeling this sort of isolation. She began reaching out to more people and connected to them through her art until she found herself surrounded by a community who all experienced similar feelings of loneliness, anxiety or depression.
Through Michelle McGuire Studio, she said she wants to empower new mothers or anyone else who might be struggling with their mental health to embrace intentional change through art that transforms their homes into a place of joy and growth.
“My passion has always been for women to feel seen, and recognize that there are things within their control,” McGuire said. “It can be as simple as hanging a painting on your wall, as long as your intentional about it and the way it makes you feel.”
When she started her business, she was entirely self-taught. She looked to free online resources when it came to building her website, marketing herself and managing financial revenue. It came to a point where she had hit a wall on what she could learn by herself.
That’s when she came to Bauer College for her MBA.
Some might see McGuire’s progression from artist to business student as nontraditional, even her younger self would not have believed her path today. However, throughout her time at Bauer, she has found more similarities than differences between the two.
“Initially I was nervous because I thought my creative side would be a weakness,” McGuire said. “But as I’ve progressed through the program, I see that with business and painting, you are creating something from just a vision. You start with a blank slate and end with something meaningful.”
As she progressed through her business education, her art grew with her. Whatever challenge she was faced with, she always knew she had her creative practices to fall back on.
When McGuire founded her studio, her aesthetic focused on landscape art. She described how that came from a place of looking for familiar, safe places to land as she navigated through new feelings of motherhood.
When she started at Bauer, she found herself painting figurative work for the first time in years. She said she believes it comes from a place of rediscovering herself through this new era of her life.
“As I navigate this new experience with more of a business focus rather than a creative one, I have to rely on myself in a different way and look to the people around me for help,” McGuire said. “I realized that regardless of what you’re chasing, we all need each other. We’re not meant to do it alone.”
Graduating in the upcoming Spring 2026 commencement ceremony, McGuire said she looks forward to advancing her career in finance and investment. Art will continue to be a passion she uses to keep herself grounded, exercise her creativity and connect with others, she added.
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