Shanicqua Carter.
Shanicqua Carter (Master of Business Administration) will represent the graduate students of the Fall Class of 2025 at the Thursday, December 11, morning graduation ceremony. Carter, originally from Camden, New Jersey, has lived across the U.S., including South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kansas, and currently calls Hawai‘i home. Her career spans over a decade of experience in customer service, digital strategy, military logistics, project management, and accounting. She is the accounting manager for Hawai‘i Meals on Wheels, where she oversees financial operations, reporting, compliance, and process improvement in support of the organization’s mission of serving Hawai‘i’s kūpuna (elders). She also served five years in the U.S. Army.
Carter’s academic journey reflects a strong commitment to integrating business leadership with data-driven solutions. A member of Delta Mu Delta international honor society, she completed multiple professional certifications including program management, project management, and agile development and scrum, skills that complement her goal of advancing in technology, finance, and administrative leadership roles.
For her MBA Capstone Project, Carter and her team developed a comprehensive business plan for a Hawai‘i-based meal-prep company. Completing this project allowed her to apply the full range of knowledge gained throughout the MBA program in leadership, finance, analytics, and strategic planning in a real-world scenario. The project reinforced the importance of data-driven insights, strong teamwork, and strategic alignment across business functions.
As Carter graduates with her MBA, she reflects that HPU and the program strengthened her confidence, sharpened her leadership abilities, and prepared her for the next steps in her career, including completing the Master of Science in Data Science at HPU, which she anticipates finishing in fall 2026.
