Raised in a home filled with
poverty, alcoholism and abuse, Dr. Wendy Carter persevered against the
odds to earn five degrees from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and University
of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently serving as a program coordinator for
the University of Maryland Baltimore County PROMISE (Maryland’s AGEP)
program, Dr. Carter also owns her own company that markets her dissertation
completion product, "TA-DA Thesis and Dissertation Accomplished™."
TA-DA is a product which she created, developed, and shares with graduate
students to help demystify the maze of higher education.
As a result of her personal adversities, Dr. Carter has a passion for helping people succeed. A strong advocate of higher education, in the midst of her educational trials, Dr. Carter realized that the thesis and the dissertation phase is where fifty percent of students drop-out. In response to this startling statistic, she developed an interactive CD-ROM tutorial product designed to alleviate the high attrition rate among graduate students working on dissertations or theses.
One of five children, this eager young scholar’s parents could not afford to send her to college. Keeping her eyes on the prize, when told something could not be accomplished, Dr. Carter, found the means to succeed despite the obstacles. As a result, Dr. Carter has adopted author Julia Cameron’ s (The Artist’s Way) personal philosophy "Leap and the net will appear," a motto which served Dr. Carter throughout her educational career.
As a student at the rigorous Boston Latin Academy (formerly Girl’s Latin), Dr. Carter was able to attend one of the country’s most demanding preparatory schools and excel both academically and as a leader. To escape an alcoholic household, she applied to Stanford for her undergraduate program, where she was accepted. She earned both a B.A. and M.A. from Stanford in six years, in addition to becoming a single parent.
After graduation, Dr. Carter went to work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Unchallenged by her work, Carter applied for and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon’s School of Urban and Public Affairs for their Master’s program in Management and Public Policy. Acceptance into the program was a stellar accomplishment, but as a single parent without financial aid the news was bittersweet. In keeping with her motto, she "leapt," and the funding net appeared with a Patricia Harris Fellowship.
Again getting funding after her admittance to the doctoral program, Dr. Carter was accepted to the nationally-recognized Ph.D. program in sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Securing a six-year research assistantship, Dr. Carter honed the skills she now markets to become the first in her group to finish her course-work in the doctoral program. Despite failing her qualifying exams, she succeeded in her second try while suffering from depression and continuing to raise her daughter. Today, her daughter is a senior majoring in Communications at Howard University.
In all, Dr. Carter has identified roadblocks throughout her life, overcome them, and moved forward to advance to new levels of success. As a woman, parent, educator, motivational speaker and business owner, Dr. Carter exemplifies leading by example.
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