Family Matters

Growing up, Taylor Dowdle would spend her weekends at her father’s gas stations located north of Seattle, sitting on the counter and watching him count cash, balance the books and bring a cup of coffee to the truck drivers who kept his station supplied.

“It was a home for me,” says Dowdle, who is graduating this June with an Online Master of Business Administration (OMBA) degree from Seattle University’s Albers School of Business and Economics.

In 2008, when Dowdle was 11, her father, Jeffrey, died suddenly of a heart attack.

“He’s just such a motivator in my life and I think a driver in every area,” says Dowdle.

From the pain of losing her father, Dowdle forged two disparate yet intertwined career paths that merged in the OMBA. One is helping run her family’s business—her mom, Dana, continues to run Harbour Pointe Chevron Gas Station in Mukilteo. The other is serving those grieving the death of loved ones in the way she had been served when she lost her father as the Senior Volunteer Coordinator with Providence Hospice of Seattle.

Now with the expertise gained in the MBA program Dowdle can better support her mother.

“In a family business, you have to think with a brain of HR, accounting, legal ethics, you have to think about all those things at once because you're watching every area of the business,” she says. “So, the MBA really helps to kind of build up the skills in all of those diverse areas and be able to bring that back to the business.”

After her father died, Dowdle attended Camp Erin King County, a free, overnight camp for youth grieving the death of a loved one. She is grateful now to be able to give back to the program that benefited her as a full-time employee.

The expertise gained from her degree program helps her in this role, enhancing the work supporting Providence’s pediatric hospice and palliative patient and family support and Camp Erin volunteers through a command of matters like supply chain management as well as managing vendors and contracts.

“You're doing a lot of those business steps, so I can bring that into that space as well,” she says.

Dowdle completed double undergraduate degrees at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. One bachelor’s is in business with a human resources concentration and the second in human development and family studies.

After returning home to Washington state, and the disruption that accompanied the pandemic years, she focused on her goals and contemplated how she could put that time to good use.

“There was this kind of pause in life to say, ‘OK, what's next?’ Or what can we do from home during that time?”

The Online MBA option gave her the flexibility to stay on top of her studies, but she says it was the service focus that piqued her interest in Albers.

“We’re thinking about empathy and we’re thinking about those we are serving, whether it's a consumer or a business partner, but that idea of service is really what drew me to SU,” she says.

For those considering whether to pursue the Online MBA, Dowdle says go for it.

"I would say just jump two feet in,” she says. “I think there is a lot of power in just being ready to learn and being ready to challenge yourself.”

Dowdle lives in North Bend with her boyfriend, Andrew, and their puppy, Bandit.