A year ago, Tori Love couldn’t have imagined where she would be, walking across a stage with a college degree.
Last May, Love, a Bluefield, West Virginia native, was laid off from a job she loved. After working for Walmart for fourteen years, she found herself searching for a new position.
“I started working at Walmart as a part-time cashier when I was 17,” she said.
Love enrolled in college after high school, but continued to work. She ended up transferring to a different college to be closer to her work commute so she could continue working and go to school, but as she moved through the ranks at Walmart, she found her workload to be too much to continue her college education. Besides, she was earning good money with a promising career, moving up the corporate ladder.
She worked as a department manager and became assistant manager for a store that was almost an hour away from home. With a salaried position, Love decided to drop out of college, having completed 77 credits.
She eventually got a job closer to home in Princeton and began growing her family. During the COVID pandemic, and with a new baby at home, she jumped at the chance to be a market coordinator.
“I was supporting 11 stores at that time. I was the first person in that position, and I got to make it what I wanted. I loved it,” she said.
Another new position opened after a few years as a Delivery Territory Manager, and she built that position and the delivery market from the ground up. Then, in May of 2025, the company restructured, and Love’s position was eliminated.
“I was just devastated. It was so shocking. No one saw it coming,” she said. “They gave me three months to decide what I wanted to do.”
Even though Love had many years of experience in retail, management, marketing, and HR from her positions at Walmart, she found that jobs she was applying for wouldn’t give her an interview because she hadn’t finished her bachelor’s degree.
Then, a chance encounter with her daughter’s Girl Scout Leader, Jamilah Stuart, led her to the RBA program at Tech.
“I’m talking to my daughter’s Girl Scout Leader, and I’m just venting. I told her I lost my job, and she said she thought she could help. She asked if I had heard of the Regents program at Tech, and I said, no, what is that? Those small conversations or connections you make with people, you never know what will happen. It changed the course of my life having that conversation with her,” says Love.
“I never would have thought to come to Tech,” she continues. “This program has made me able to achieve something that I thought I wouldn’t finish. My kids are in every sport you can think of. We do every activity. I’m so busy. I thought, how could I go to school? How on earth could I make that work? The program being online gives me flexibility to sit at softball practice and do schoolwork, and to build my portfolio in a way that makes my work experience feel even more valuable. Being able to take that experience and say ‘I learned this in the real world’ and be able to get college credit for it is so insanely cool.”
“I am so grateful for WVU Tech and for the opportunities. I’ve had a wonderful group of people who have helped me. I did not realize how affordable it would be. It’s incredibly affordable to go to school here. That was another thing that held me back. I also got some financial aid, which I didn’t think I would. I was really grateful for that.”
Love now works for Visit Southern West Virginia as a Marketing Manager and will be
walking across the stage earning her diploma on Saturday.
To learn more about WVU Tech’s Regents Bachelor of Arts degree, visit https://www.wvutech.edu/academics/sas/rba.