A heartwarming story about QUEST alumni, Beth and Brian Schaeffer

By: Ryan Chow

In the warm summer of 1996, Beth and Brian embarked on an adventure known to all of us as QUEST Camp at Camp Horizons in Harrisonburg, Virginia. As members of Cohort 4, they met each other at a time when QUEST (formerly called IBM/Total Quality Management) was still a new program. Beth was double majoring in Transportation & Logistics and French, while Brian was studying Mechanical Engineering. After they met at QUEST Camp, Beth and Brian worked together on the same team for a few projects. While QUEST has always been famous for uniting business students with engineering students on multidisciplinary projects, nobody at the time could predict that Beth and Brian would go on to get married and have two kids.

Despite demanding schedules throughout their undergraduate and adult careers, Beth and Brian were able to carefully craft their lifestyles in order to maintain a successful relationship. Their individual careers have also been a remarkable success since they met each other. After graduating, Beth worked as a consultant at Hitachi Consulting and IBM. She currently works in human resource management at Merkle, a performance marketing agency specializing in data-based marketing solutions. Brian spent 12 years working in management consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM. He currently works as a manager at Johnson and Johnson, a job which allows him to work from home and spend more time with his family.

Beth and Brian were married on August 9th, 2003. They currently keep their hands full with their 7-year old girl and 4-year old boy, who were born three years apart, but share the same birthday. Both individuals credit the QUEST program for an “ingrained ability to work on teams” and said that the skills they learned play a large role in their career success.

Thank you to the Schaeffers for sharing this heartwarming story and staying involved with the QUEST community after all of these years.

The Schaeffer Family