District VII Faculty Highlight: Stephanie McKenzie

Feb 11, 2014

HCC Southwest's own Stephanie McKenzie knows a thing or two about business. She's a woman on a mission and combines two careers as a professor of business administration and as a relationship coach. It sounds exhausting, but McKenzie takes it all in stride. It's her passion.

When people ask McKenzie how she became "Coach Steph," she says she was always the go-to girl for relationship advice.

"I prided myself on being able to help people see what they couldn't see was affecting their situation, whether it was a romantic, platonic, family or as we now say, 'complicated' relationships,” she explains, "Here I am teaching a roomful of students, some of which were affected in some way or the other by a troubled relationship, and felt the need to give out advice freely. I had a captive audience, after all!"

McKenzie graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science and then received a Master's in Business Administration from the American Intercontinental University. She's even working on her Masters in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Now, as an award-winning marketer, college educator, certified coach, owner of The Relationship Firm and published author, McKenzie brings more than two decades of business and marketing expertise to crafting strategies that make relationships work. She even took her show on the road recently, hosting Relations Un-Confidential at HCC Southwest’s West Loop campus, which included other relationship professionals.

"Relationships mean something to me," McKenzie explains. "They mean love! They mean life! I didn't choose this...it chose me, and I plan to ride it until the wheels...fall...off! Roll with me?"