UOPX alumni spotlight: Maddison Phillips

Most wouldn’t expect much academically or career-wise from an eighth-grade dropout. For years, Maddison Phillips (BSB/HR, 2024; MM, in progress) held to that majority and believed she wouldn’t amount to anything.

But life had other plans for Phillips, and through determination, self-awareness and hard work, she beat the odds. Here’s her story.

When her family moved from Globe to Chandler, Arizona, Phillips was entering high school and met resistance. As she recalls it, the public school principal didn’t think the school was the right fit for her. “I was a flamboyant child, to say the least,” says Phillips, pointing to the bright pink hair she sported at the time as well as the face piercings. The principal ultimately recommended private school, which Phillips’ family couldn’t afford. Since school was not a family priority, Phillips and her mother decided that eighth grade was her ceiling.

“That was it. We were done,” Phillips says.

Phillips lived with her mother, who worked as a server, and two younger siblings. Her dad was a contractor and frequently traveled; he and Phillips’ mother divorced when their daughter was young.

Phillips’ mother also battled an alcohol addiction throughout Phillips’ childhood, which left a lot of responsibility with Phillips. She learned to cook whole meals in the microwave since her mother worked nights and weekends, and she didn’t want Phillips using the oven while she was away.

By 15, Phillips was ready for a real-world paycheck, so she took a job at Arby’s.

“I found a sense of purpose,” she says. “Before, I was just kind of the parent, and now I had a job, and I had responsibilities, and I had structure. I loved it.”

Soon enough, however, the shine wore off when Phillips’ mother began to rely on the steady income.

“Mom and I became too much of a co-parenting team, and I felt like I didn’t have a mom. I started having resentments toward that, so eventually I left the home,” Phillips says.

At 16, she negotiated for her mom’s permission to earn her GED. The years that followed were a whirlwind of waitressing and bartending to make ends meet.

Phillips tried rehab a few times, and it was the third try that succeeded. On March 7, 2020, she checked into a halfway house and everything “clicked.” She no longer wanted to live a life of addiction and started claiming responsibility for her actions.

“I was so busy playing victim to my childhood, [to blaming] my mother’s way of raising me, that I wasn’t owning my life,” Phillips says.

All that changed when Phillips turned 35 and took control of her choices. She recognized that to stay sober, she would need to get out of the restaurant business because the social drinking culture was too tempting for her.

Jobs were hard to come by in 2020, though, as the world navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. But the halfway house helped Phillips find a position on the assembly line at Honeywell, where she jumped right into a six-day workweek.

Honeywell offered tuition assistance for employees to attend University of Phoenix. Phillips remained doubtful, but she applied and eventually started her program.

Her first course laid the foundation for her academic career, covering fundamentals like how to study and manage her time. It sounds basic, but the concepts helped set her up for academic success. Her confidence slowly and steadily grew. “After about two years at University of Phoenix, I was like, ‘Wait a minute: I’m actually smarter than I’ve ever given myself credit for,’” says Phillips.

Still, Phillips had to work hard. “You can’t just log in, type up a thing and say, ‘Great,’” she says with a laugh. 

Phillips established a cadence for completing her schoolwork and valued the input and guidance of her peers, whose wisdom inspired everything from creating a quiet study space to leveraging University library resources. Then, with one year left in her bachelor’s degree program Phillips told her academic counselor, “I think I can do more.”

Her academic counselor encouraged Phillips to consider the Master of Management program. Once Phillips completed the bachelor’s program, she would go straight into the master’s courses.

She solicited advice from other alumni and was leaning toward yes, but it was when her mother gave her approval that Phillips decided to go for it.

“I feel like people like me don’t get to have these opportunities unless the fairy godmother comes down,” Phillips recalled telling to her mother. “I don’t think that people like me really understand how to make these things happen without just working hard.”

Her mother agreed but added that Phillips was “a really good student.” This affirmation not only inspired Phillips to continue her education but brought healing to their relationship.

During that conversation, Phillips “realized that she also believed in me in a way that I didn’t think she did. And then it trickled down. I could do this, you know?”

Back on the work front, Phillips was growing ready for a new challenge. She contacted UOPX’s career services department, which proved instrumental in Phillips’ next move. Her career advisor helped fine-tune her resumé and directed her to Amazon because of the company’s reputation for growing leaders.

Phillips applied to Amazon, and within two hours received a request to interview. The next day she had a three-hour interview that led to a job offer as an area manager in Goodyear, Arizona. Today, Phillips manages 75 direct reports in her role. She inspires her team with her humility, honesty and in-the-trenches, right-alongside-them leadership style.

“As leaders, we are still learning, right? I think it’s so beautiful to be able to learn from [my team] daily because I still make mistakes,” says Phillips.

When she feels the time is right, Phillips has no problem sharing her story. “When people hear of the struggles and some of the things I went through and to see where I got, I tell people all the time, ‘Nobody gets dropped off on top. Nobody just gets helicoptered up there,’” Phillips says.  

What else is on the horizon for Phillips? School-wise, she is on track to complete her master’s program in September 2025. At work, she hopes to earn a promotion to operations manager at Amazon. She also wants to run for president or vice president of Glamazons, an affinity group (or employee resource group) at Amazon that supports the LGBTQ community.

“I think it’s really important for those of us who are part of the [LGBTQ] community to really dive in and put the work in to make sure everyone feels safe,” Phillips says.