{"id":16094,"date":"2025-08-01T01:10:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T08:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/?p=16094"},"modified":"2026-02-17T10:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:08:16","slug":"heather-stegner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/2025\/08\/01\/heather-stegner\/","title":{"rendered":"Heather Stegner Levels Up to COO with Executive MBA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Heather Stegner<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When Heather Stegner<\/a> (\u201924 EMBA) sat down with the new president and CEO of the American Wood Council (AWC), she wasn\u2019t expecting a career-defining conversation. But that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CEO shared his vision for creating a chief operating officer (COO) role\u2014and told her he had her in mind for the position. Within minutes of the meeting, she was looking up application deadlines for the Carson College of Business\u2019s online Executive MBA<\/a> (EMBA), an affordable, flexible program offered through WSU Global Campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, Stegner was the vice president for communications and educational outreach for the AWC. She spent most of her career in public relations and wanted to broaden her business acumen with an EMBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to expand my focus,\u201d she says. \u201cThe WSU Executive MBA really stood out. It offered a well-rounded foundation in business while emphasizing leadership and strategic management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A broader lens for leading across functions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As COO, Stegner oversees operations, communications, membership, technology, and education for the AWC. She sees her role as building bridges across departments, identifying innovation opportunities, and ensuring the team delivers meaningful results for the wood products industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She credits the Carson College EMBA program with giving her the tools and confidence to lead at a higher level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe program broadened my perspective, sharpened my strategic thinking, and helped me become a more effective and empathetic leader,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stegner found the courses in management and leadership especially influential. While facing tough decisions at work that challenged the status quo, her EMBA training helped her weigh the complex ethical implications of those choices for both internal teams and external stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning that\u2019s immediately applicable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stegner says a surprising highlight of the EMBA program was the immediate applicability of the skills she learned. Course content frequently aligned with her professional responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, while enrolled in an international business management course, Stegner was in France representing her industry at a global meeting. Another assignment asked her to develop a business case\u2014perfectly timed with a project she was leading to improve internal operations at the AWC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As AWC\u2019s vice president for communications and educational outreach, she rolled out a new internal platform to ensure staff were using the correct files. The business case in her MBA program provided a framework to consider each step of the new platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat project helped me think through change management\u2014how to communicate the changes, prepare people affected by them, and implement the solution in a way that would stick,\u201d she says. \u201cThat kind of real-time application made the learning incredibly relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purposeful leadership, rooted in real life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As a mom and a first-generation college graduate, earning an executive MBA was a huge accomplishment for Stegner. She says the milestone reflects her hard work and commitment to growth, and it gave her a greater appreciation for her support system at home. Stegner says one of the most meaningful moments of the program was walking across the stage in Beasley Coliseum, knowing her daughter was watching and cheering her on while she received her diploma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally, she viewed the EMBA as a way to strengthen her professional qualifications and check a box for advancement, but what she gained was a transformative set of skills and insights that reshaped her approach to leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe EMBA gave me the business acumen and leadership tools I needed to step confidently into the role of COO,\u201d she says. \u201cIt helped me formalize what I had learned through experience and gave me a broader strategic lens to lead across functions. It was the right program at exactly the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Heather Stegner (\u201924 EMBA) sat down with the new president and CEO of the American Wood Council (AWC), she wasn\u2019t expecting a career-defining conversation. At the time, Stegner was the vice president for communications and educational outreach for the AWC. She had spent most of her career in public relations and wanted to broaden her business acumen with an EMBA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":[635],"featured_media":16323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[429,623,626,425],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16094"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18403,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094\/revisions\/18403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16094"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/edividend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/author?post=16094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}