Geanette Parker
Medical Billing and Coding Certificate Program Graduate from Carrington College
I’ve worked in the medical field for 25 years. I started off as a certified nursing assistant, then worked as an emergency medical technician and a medical liaison. Medical Billing and Coding has always been a skillset I wanted to acquire, but I never felt I had the time to do it well. When you’re working full time, committing to a full-time college program is tough. But when I lost my job last February, new opportunities presented themselves. I was able to collect unemployment and I also qualified for the New Mexico Workforce Program, which offers grants to help retrain employees. That program covered the cost of my Carrington education, so it felt like the perfect time to make myself more employable once life started returning to normal.
I had heard about Carrington through local TV commercials. I really wanted to do something productive during the pandemic, so I checked out the Carrington website. I decided that returning to school when I wasn’t likely to find a job anyway made a lot of sense. Believe it or not, I was hired three weeks before I graduated! I started my new position as Business Office Manager at Genesis Health in Albuquerque on February 8—exactly one year to the day from when I lost my last job. I graduated on February 26. Even though I hadn’t yet completed my program when I interviewed, I knew having that education and training on my resume would prove valuable—and it did. I’m now managing a team of four and am really enjoying it. And since I live only six minutes from the office, I love my commute, too!