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Carin O'Donnell

Carin O’Donnell, a 1990 graduate from the Paralegal program, credits the small class sizes at Manor and the personalized attention she received with allowing her to thrive academically.
“The Paralegal program opened up a lot of opportunities for me because I got equal attention from my instructors, even though I was the kid who always sat in the back of the classroom,” O’Donnell said.
After Manor, O’Donnell went to The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1996 she received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Marketing.
In 1999, O’Donnell graduated from the Widener University School of Law and immediately passed the Bar in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Today, she works at the law firm Stark & Stark in Newtown, Pennsylvania, where she has been for eight years handling cases involving construction accidents and people injured at work. She has also returned to Manor to teach in the Paralegal program and she delivers lectures on auto law to other attorneys for their continuing education courses.

O’Donnell also felt that the Paralegal program at Manor more than prepared her for what lay ahead, saying, “I found that I had a better foundation than other paralegal colleagues I encountered. Manor made me a better paralegal and because of that I was more versed when I went to law school.”
“Having been a paralegal student, a practicing paralegal, a law student, a lawyer, and a teacher in the Paralegal program, Carin sees the profession and the benefits of our program from every perspective,” Pevar said. “We gave her an incredible foundation, a great work ethic and a real respect for education.”

Maria El-Khyari also benefited from the flexibility of the business curriculum. A 2005 graduate, El-Khyari received her degree in International Business, a concentration within the Business Administration program.

When El-Khyari started at Manor, she worked as the executive assistant to the vice-president of Traditional Sales at CARDONE Industries, the largest family owned automotive remanufacturer in the world. When the VP left the company, she “fell into” the position of account manager for the director of International Sales. Knowing the company was going global, she decided she wanted to align herself with that opportunity and came to Manor.

In 2009, El-Khyari will receive her B.S. in International Business from Holy Family University. Today she is a market analyst/researcher for the company.

“What Manor did was open my mind to other options, to other possibilities in the world,” she said.

El-Khyari felt that Manor helped her to thrive as a person, saying, “College isn’t just about getting a degree. It’s about self-discovery. Discovering your abilities, your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes. Manor allowed me to take that journey.”

El-Khyari also recognized the benefits of the “melting pot” aspect of Manor College.
“To work in International Business, you have to be culturally sensitive,” she explained. “Because of the diverse student body and through the courses I took in religion and marketing, Manor really opened my views to cultural sensitivity.”

Another benefit of Manor recognized by El-Khyari was the way the college gave her the opportunity to gain confidence in herself.
“I’m not the same person I was before Manor,” she said. “I was scared and insecure. I had no confidence in my ability to succeed in college.
“At Manor, they believed in me before I believed in myself. And then I started believing them,” she said.

Vitaliy Konev


“Manor’s program gave me a taste of computer science and what it is,” Konev said. “At first, I thought I would just be a computer programmer and would just be doing coding,” he explained, “but the exposure I got through the program introduced me to other possibilities, a higher level of computer programming.
“It’s what made me decide to go on and major in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Finance,” Konev explained.
This spring, Konev graduated from Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business with a B.S. in Business Administration with the MIS and Finance concentrations.
As part of Drexel’s co-op program, Konev worked for CIGNA, an insurance company in Center City Philadelphia, in the IT department. He also moved out to Seattle for six months to work for Bill Gates, who he had the opportunity to meet, at Microsoft.
At the end of June, Konev moved back to Seattle permanently to go to work for Microsoft full-time as a Performance Technologist.

Something else Konev credits the Computer Science program with is giving him the opportunity to thrive, both academically and personally.
“Manor prepared me for how to learn, and taught me how to get good grades,” Konev explained.
“Because I excelled at Manor, I had the opportunity to continue my education at Drexel, which I never could’ve afforded but because I had a 4.0 at Manor I received an academic scholarship,” Konev said. “Drexel, and other four-year universities, love transfer students who have a history of having been successful in school.”

“Everybody at Manor was used to talking with students with accents,” Konev continued. “I found that the faculty didn’t judge students on how they spoke, but rather what was in their minds.”

“The teachers in the Business Division showed me that there were no limits to what I could achieve,” he said. “Norma Hall told me I could do anything if I tried hard. And eventually, I believed her.”

Konev, who started at Manor a mere eight months after arriving in the U.S. from Ukraine, also found Manor to be very welcoming to foreign students.
“There were a lot of international students at Manor when I arrived,” he said. “So I was not the only one.

“Everyone at Manor connects with you on a personal level. You don’t feel like you’re by yourself. I found that with the faculty in the Business Division, there was always someone to answer my questions.”

Laura Cacciatore-Stauff, Computer Science '98

Laura Cacciatore-Stauff, a 1998 graduate of the Computer Science program, appreciated the chance coming to Manor, with its broad-based business curriculum, gave her to test the waters of her future career and to diversify her education.
For the last nine years, Cacciatore-Stauff has been working in Philadelphia at Christie, Pabarue, Mortensen & Young, a law firm specializing in insurance and litigation, where she started as a software trainer. In 2000, she was promoted to Information Systems Manager.

“The way the program was set up it allowed me the opportunity to get my feet wet and see if I would like the career, both from the technical aspect and from a business/managerial perspective,” Cacciatore-Stauff said. “And as a computer science major, I also had to take accounting classes, which now in my job enables me to see more than just the technical side of things. I can see where accounting and other business-related issues could surface.”

“Coming to Manor was like walking into Cheers, where everybody knows your name. I gained a lot of confidence at Manor,” Cacciatore-Stauff continued. “I was nervous about starting college, but at Manor, you don’t feel like a cog in the machine. Instead you feel like, ‘I can take this on!’”

Cacciatore-Stauff felt that the courses she took as part of the computer science curriculum gave her a knowledge base that she still falls back on today, 10 years later.

Chris Jud, Business Administration '03

Chris Jud, a 2003 Manor graduate who earned his Associate Degree in Business Administration, credits the program with giving him the opportunity to experiment with various aspects of the field to determine where his interests were.

“I was able to dabble in the business curriculum a little bit,” Jud said, “which enabled me to decide what exactly I wanted to do while I was still able to take the core courses toward my degree.”

After graduating from Manor, in 2006 Jud received his Bachelor’s Degree from LaSalle University in Business Administration with dual majors in finance and accounting.

Jud has worked as an experienced staff accountant at Goldenberg Rosenthal, LLP, in Jenkintown, where he has multiple job responsibilities. He is an auditor, a tax preparer and has other accounting duties. Prior to that, he worked in Philadelphia as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the largest financial service firms in the world. He has passed the four parts of the Certified Public Accountant exam and once he has the required two years of experience working in the field he will be a full-fledged CPA.

“Manor enabled me to excel academically,” said Jud, “and helped me to earn the kind of grades I needed to get into LaSalle, with a pretty nice scholarship to boot. The Business Administration program gave me a well-rounded business foundation that really enabled me to attain a higher degree without too much difficulty after I transferred.”

Ibrahima Sanogo, Paralegal '97

Ibrahima Sanogo came to Manor straight from the Ivory Coast in the fall of 1994. In 1997, he received his Associate degree in Paralegal. In 2001, he earned a Bachelor’s in Management at Rosemont College, where he also received his MBA in International Business in 2003.

It was while serving an internship at an immigration law firm in Doylestown that Sanogo discovered that immigration law was his passion. Eventually he went to work for Lindner & Lindner, another firm specializing in immigration law, first as a legal assistant, then as a paralegal and then as senior paralegal. Today, Sanogo volunteers with the Liberty Center for Victims of Torture and he teaches Immigration Law at Manor.

Sanogo says that the intimate environment at Manor, and the individual attention, created an atmosphere he found very conducive to learning, which, as an adult learner, enabled him to thrive.

“We have enough stress in our lives,” Sanogo said. “At Manor, the coursework is challenging, but you don’t feel the hardship of learning. It’s a pleasure to learn at Manor. After a hard day at work, as an adult, coming to Manor in the evening to learn was really enjoyable,” he continued.

As an immigrant who began taking classes at Manor very soon after arriving in the United States, Sanogo also credits the college with giving him the opportunity to assimilate American culture in a friendly, comfortable, non-threatening environment.
“Manor really prepared me to be able to interact with my future American co-workers,” Sanogo said. “Through interacting with the other students, and through my externship, I became familiar with American workplace culture.”

“Professionally, the Paralegal program covered everything I needed to know by the time I graduated. Previously, I didn’t have any practical exposure to how law is practiced in America and the program laid the foundation that allowed me to see the real world of law.”

Sitong Liu Hom, Accounting '01

For Sitong Liu Hom, a 2001 graduate of the Accounting program, Manor gave her the confidence she needed to continue her education. “The Accounting program really opened up the doors and gave me the confidence to do other things,” she said. “Because of the small classes and the professional and friendly faculty, I achieved a 4.0 GPA and I knew I could go on and do well at a four-year school.”

After graduating from Manor, Hom transferred to LaSalle University, where she first received her B.S. in finance, with a minor in accounting, and then earned her MBA with a major in accounting.

While earning her MBA, she interned at Morgan Stanley first, and then with ChemHost, Inc., a chemical company based in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, where she continued to work as a Finance Manager for three years after receiving her MBA.
This year, she began working at Panalpina, Inc., a logistics company in Morristown, New Jersey, as an Assistant Head of Finance.

“The Accounting program gave me a great foundation and led me to where I am today,” Hom said.