How an alumna turned a canceled internship into her Creighton legacy  

By Amanda Biggs  

In March 2020, as spring break emails turned into cancellations and internships disappeared overnight, Betsy Tanner, then a Creighton student majoring in Business Intelligence and Analytics, found herself staring at an uncertain senior year. 

“My internship had gotten pulled,” she said. 

Tanner was back in Sacramento, uncertain of what to do next, and that’s when Caitlin Feldmann, a Creighton Career Center assistant director, told her something interesting. 

“You should create your own internship.”  

We have very motivated, very capable students. When they see something valuable for their peers and the community, they lean in.

—Caitlin Feldmann, Assistant Director, Career Center

Tanner took the nudge literally. 

Armed with newly acquired knowledge of business analytics software, and a desire to serve, she began offering pro-bono analytics help to nonprofits.  

What started as Tanner’s makeshift plan became the seed of the Community Analytics Consulting (CAC) Team. 

Now, CAC is entering its sixth year and seventh project under faculty moderator Natalie Gerhart, PhD. CAC pairs Creighton students — from freshman to seniors — with community nonprofits to solve real analytics challenges, from messy data to tangible stakes.  

Tanner’s first big win came soon after she returned to campus. With Gerhart’s backing, she and classmates pitched United Way of the Midlands on a practical, high-impact idea.  

“I had a loose plan and was honest that we’d figure it out together,” Tanner said.  

The project: build a map showing where services were most needed, redesign categories as funding shifted and publish the insights across United Way’s network. It was classic Creighton — hands-on, mission-driven and built through trust. 

From there, the work grew. 
 

Using data to drive social impact for Omaha nonprofits  

Tanner and CAC partnered with the Omaha Chamber of Commerce on a “boomerang” analysis to understand how to attract alumni back to Omaha. And then came a moment that crystallized the team’s purpose: The Furniture Project, which furnishes homes for refugee and immigrant families.  

Students created an intake system and an analytics dashboard that revealed a surprising pattern — families speaking less common languages received more items. The reason the nonprofit told them wasn’t preference; it was access.  

“We have a translator at the shop who can talk to them,” the team learned. The insight led to a recommendation to expand translation capacity, a simple operational change with outsized human impact.  
 

Alumni leadership continues the Creighton mission  

Tanner’s classmate Ethan Hall, BSBA’21, became the engine that helped the idea endure. As Tanner formalized the club, Hall made the analytics deliver — leading the United Way partnership, teaching peers software like Tableau and SQL, and building dashboards that stuck.  

Today, Hall is based in Milwaukee and works at Milliman, an actuarial consulting firm, where he supports a range of analytics and decision-support projects for clients across the healthcare industry. Business intelligence and dashboard development remain at the core of his work, connecting data to meaningful organizational insights.  

He credits Creighton with helping him see analytics as more than technical problem-solving. Through experiences like CAC, the iJay Practicum and multiple internships, Hall learned to apply data with purpose — using it as a tool for informed, human-centered decision-making. Those hands-on opportunities, he says, built his confidence and helped him bridge the gap between classroom theory and industry expectations.  
 

Heider College of Business students leading with data and compassion  

That blend of rigor and purpose is exactly what current CAC leaders describe. Joe Davis, Class of 2026, joined after hearing older students talk about “valuable learning experiences with real-world, messy data.” 

Now a co-chair, Davis helps facilitate teams and translate between nonprofit partners and student analysts.  

Julia Staniszewski, Class of 2026, first tried CAC while still choosing a major. 

“Using real nonprofit data is complicated and not always organized,” she said. “That taught me a different set of skills than the classroom and showed me I loved analytics.” 

Now co-president, she intentionally mixes freshmen with returning members so every group has guidance.  

Gerhart sees that mentoring ecology as CAC’s secret strength. “We’re increasingly getting freshmen and sophomores who want to dig in before they’ve even taken the upper-level tools courses,” she said. “We make sure there’s a piece of the project they can own alongside juniors and seniors with Power BI, Tableau or prediction skills.”  

The projects keep coming. Last semester, CAC supported Chronic Care International on diabetes-care dashboards that update as new data arrives. This semester, the team is kicking off work with Boys Town, exploring fundraising efficiency.  

The legacy: Jesuit values in action  

For Tanner, who now runs her own consumer packaged goods (CPG) consulting firm in Los Angeles, the connection between her work and Creighton’s Jesuit values is unmistakable. 

In her role, she partners with small and emerging CPG brands, helping them scale responsibly and build meaningful connections with consumers. Her focus on sales, brand partnerships and regenerative agriculture reflects both her business acumen and her passion for sustainability.  

Tanner is deeply involved in supporting local food systems and community gardens in Los Angeles, where she’s found a community of people tackling climate challenges through innovative, mission-driven food work. 

“I’m a connector,” she said. “Creighton’s ‘of course you can’ support never made me step back from challenges — only toward them.”