UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State alumni Angela Liberto and Josh Rex have made a commitment to establish the Liberto Rex Dean’s Advisory Board Matching Scholarship in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), where they both earned their undergraduate degrees. The endowment, valued at $50,000, was built on the couple’s generosity and a matching commitment from the IST Dean’s Advisory Board Matching Scholarship Program, a fund financially supported by members of the board that enables donors to double the impact of their gifts.
“We are truly grateful to Angela and Josh for this generous gift,” said Andrea Tapia, interim dean of the College of IST. “And we thank the board members whose matching contribution expands the financial impact to help more students.”
The couple saw a “great return on our investment” from their experience at the University and, especially, in the College of IST.
“Penn State prepared us well for career success,” Angela said. “We wanted to provide support to current and future students who could hopefully enjoy similar lifelong benefits.”
Angela earned her bachelor’s degree in information sciences and technology with a focus on integration and application, along with a Smeal College of Business minor in business logistics, as a member of IST’s second graduating class in 2004. As a student, she was involved in the IST student government and the Women In Information Sciences and Technology organization, and she served as promotions director for The Daily Collegian’s Business Division. She was a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma and participated in THON fundraising and Homecoming.
Immediately after graduating, Angela began working at CGI, an information technology and business consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, where she focused on public-sector enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Josh earned his bachelor’s degree in information sciences and technology with a focus on integration and application in 2005. He worked in the University’s residential computing office throughout most of his time at Penn State.
“I was drawn to IST because of the mix of technology and business,” Josh said. “I felt it was well-suited to my skills and interests and thought it would be an in-demand degree for employers in the early to mid-2000s.”
Through Penn State’s on-campus career services, he too was recruited by CGI as an ERP consultant and relocated to the D.C. metro area.
“The best thing that came from that job was meeting Angela on my first day,” Josh said. “We were on the same team and had Penn State, IST and western PA roots in common. Soon we were dating and, in 2010, we were married.”
Angela, who also holds a juris doctorate from Duquesne University School of Law, now serves as vice president and associate general counsel at Dick's Sporting Goods.
“I’ve leveraged my technical background — which began with IST — into strategic support of our business with a focus on technology and, eventually, on intellectual property, marketing and retail,” she said. “I still draw on what I learned throughout my experience at Penn State when I work with our teams to solve problems, tap into project management skills, and draw from my technical background to think broadly about how to improve processes.”
Josh earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business in 2012. Almost 20 years later, he continues to work in the software space, now as a customer adoption strategist at Workday, focusing on the higher education, government and health care industries.
“My role at Workday involves working closely with our customers to develop an approach and strategy for how to adopt our solutions to meet the planning and analytic needs within their offices of the CFO and the CHRO,” Josh said. “So much of my career success is attributable to the College of IST, which, even in the early days, struck a strong balance between technical acumen and business principles that were highly sought after by employers.”