Personal Tragedies Motivate Stylist to Redirect Her Future

At 38, Jennifer Wares knows she is older than most of her fellow marketing graduates at San Diego State University. She also knows that her degree from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business opens up an entirely new life and new career for her — something she never could have foreseen seven years ago, but fate has a way of changing things. 

Wares with her daughter, Olivia.

It was May 2015, and Wares had it all: A loving family that included her new baby girl, a thriving career as a hair and makeup stylist, and a new salon in downtown San Diego. 

The following month, everything Ware had known began to unravel.

Within a period of six months, she lost her husband, her best friend and her grandfather in a string of unexpected tragedies. Her enthusiasm for her once thriving career was disappearing. 

“I loved doing hair and I especially enjoyed the honor of taking part in creating the perfect wedding experience for a client,” she said. “Clients have flown me to their locations to work and craft hair and make-up for brides and their wedding parties, but after I lost my grandfather, life changed. I just didn’t feel creative anymore.” 

Jennifer Wares will graduate from SDSU in May 2022.

While she continued to work at the salon and stay strong for the sake of her child, she said she “felt like I had to do something different because of how much my life had changed.” Having worked in the business side of the industry previously, Wares shut down her own salon and refocused her career in that direction, starting with a return to school to earn her business degree. 

She began taking business classes at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California in 2017 and by the time she was done in 2019, she had earned four associates degrees and two certificates of achievement. 

But she took her education a step further by transferring to the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University to complete her bachelor’s degree. Wares said she chose to major in marketing because of her previous experience in salon management and her ability to successfully interact with people. 

While Ware still faces the challenges of raising a young child and completing her studies as a full-time student, she has the security of knowing she has an SDSU marketing degree and the educational skills she needs to jumpstart her new career plan. “Being in my 30’s and having life experience, my goal was to give myself the ability to understand the different disciplines in business, how they all work together, and how to gain better management skills,” she said. “Now that I’m about to graduate from SDSU, I can finalize my application and start Amazon’s 2022 Program Manager Internship program.”