Tamara Ward-Lucas arrived, quite unexpectedly, at a career crossroads.
She couldn't go back; the job she once loved had changed beyond recognition, and the uncertainty of what came next made leaving on her own terms the only choice that made sense.
Around her were opportunities. She just had to decide which ones to seize and when.
Tamara’s first step was enrolling in The University of Baltimore’s M.S. in Artificial Intelligence for Business.
On the surface, it was a knowing investment in her future. But it was also Tamara rewinding to her earliest career in computer programming and communications and starting again.
Tamara didn’t return to college for any master’s degree. She has a bachelor’s degree in speech communications and master’s degree in journalism, both from University of Maryland.
She chose UBalt’s program to make herself more competitive in an overcrowded job market.
“Coming here to UBalt to pursue Artificial Intelligence for Business seemed very logical, and clearly that's where the world is going. Everything is AI-enabled, and the future workforce is looking for people with AI skills,” she said.
Tamara appreciated early that her courses involved technical learning—Python, data science, and business analytics—but were more heavily focused on the human impact of AI. Her professors are redefining what leadership means in the workplace—it's about understanding AI's role.
Since starting at UBalt, Tamara found a revolving door of opportunities to build on who she is and who she wants to be in the future.
“The program has changed how I approach technology and ethics, and it has given me the critical skills that I need to start a new career in artificial intelligence,” she said.
A key turning point came when Tamara enrolled in the Business, Ethical and Regulatory Perspectives of AI course with Dr. Ting Zhang.
“She has a unique way of finding what your talent is, and then catering to that talent,” Tamara said of Zhang. “In her class, I have done more in one semester than I've probably done in two years in my career. And I say that not to say that I wasn't doing meaningful work in my career over the last two years; I just honestly believe I was underutilized. I can't say that in her class.”
Zhang encouraged Tamara to pursue a research project and then gave her a pathway to earn funding to present it at a conference in Las Vegas. Tamara received a Turner Research and Travel
Award through the UBalt’s Office of the Provost to cover the costs of her study and participation in the conference.
Her research queried how accurate, hallucination-free, unbiased, and consistent in sentiment AI-generated news summaries are relative to their source articles. She ran 100 business and economics news articles from a handful of center-bias outlets, including the Associated Press and Reuters, through leading LLMs, including ChatGPT and Claude. She unexpectedly found that the models softened language when AI was depicted negatively.
“I was a little nervous about completing my research and also traveling to Las Vegas to present it. But once I got there, I felt relieved and grateful for the opportunity to not only represent myself but also some of my classmates,” she said.
Tamara also credits Zhang with blossoming her entrepreneurial mind. Tapping into a long-held love of public service and her newly developed skills in AI literacy, Tamara started two community initiatives that help senior citizens and high school students better understand and ethically use AI.
Zhang may have opened a door through her support and lessons, but it was Tamara that burst through, leaving the crossroad she once faced far behind.
The conference, she said, gave her the confidence to present her research to more audiences. She recently earned an invitation to share her findings via poster presentation at the National Symposium on Effective and Ethical AI, a two-day conference that positioned her among other emerging scholars and prominent researchers advancing responsible and ethical AI.
Tamara is nominated for the Excellence in AI and Technology Industry – Emerging Scholar in Responsible AI award by the AINext Awards and Conference.
She also applied and was accepted to join the Center for AI and Digital Policy’s fall 2026 AI Policy Clinic Research Group. The semester-long program establishes an international cohort to discuss AI analysis, research and evaluation to establish policy and governance.
“We're at a critical juncture here in the United States. There is no comprehensive AI law. Right now, we have a patchwork of legislation across the different states and some cases they conflict with one another, which creates headaches for businesses that operate in more than one state,” Tamara said. “Having the opportunity to take what I've learned here at UBalt and then learn even more on a global scale will put me in a position to help shape policy here in the U.S. and I'm looking forward to that.”
None of these opportunities were even in Tamara’s mind a few years ago. She’s grateful for the new perspective she has on her life, her career and her abilities because she came to UBalt.
“I feel like I can do things that I never had a desire to do, but now I have a desire to do them,” she said. “I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, but now I have a genuine interest in having a business. I never really wanted to do consulting, but now I have an interest in consulting businesses on how to deploy AI ethically, and those are passions and desires and skills that I've acquired since I've been here in the last year.”
After Tamara completes her newest master’s degree, she might further scale the community initiatives she’s launched, dive more into her passion for AI governance and public policy or find a role where she can study LLM models’ impact on individuals and businesses.
Tamara now knows her future is limitless.
“I am proud of myself for coming back to school,” she said. … “I'm surprised, and I'm not saying I didn't think I was capable, I just never had the opportunity, or the motivation, or the support that I have here at UBalt to do the things that I've done over the last year.”