From Warehouse to Wealth: How Shanelle Gibson Earned $132K as a Scrum Master Without a Degree

Meet Shanelle Gibson

Shanelle Gibson, a 33-year-old Scrum Master, is now earning $132,000 annually, just a decade after working 12-hour warehouse shifts for barely $15 an hour—without a college degree.

“Whether you succeed in college or not doesn’t define who you are as a person,” she told CNBC Make It as part of its Ditching the Degree series.

Gibson's journey began in 2015 when she had an epiphany while folding clothes in a warehouse. She realized her current job wasn’t the career path she envisioned. As she watched friends graduate from college and secure high-paying careers, she decided to take a different route to avoid student loan debt.

“I just had this ‘aha moment’ where I looked around at these mountains of boxes and tired people working alongside me and thought, ’I shouldn’t be here; I feel like I’m destined for more than this minimum wage job,” Gibson recalled.

Determined to change her life, she uploaded her resume to Craigslist. A hiring manager from ParkingSoft, a parking management software startup, noticed her application and invited her for an interview. She secured a job as a phone dispatcher, quickly impressing her team and being promoted to customer support analyst due to her initiative in solving customer issues.

With skills learned from her experience and previous retail jobs, Gibson transitioned into Scrum Master work. “That job started my tech career,” she said, noting that the technical skills she learned, including SQL and JIRA, made her a competitive candidate for higher-paying tech jobs.

Frustrated with the monotony of customer service roles, Gibson explored becoming a Scrum Master and took a $400 two-day course at Scrum Alliance. According to Coursera, a Scrum Master champions projects and teams, taking on roles such as facilitator, coach, or project manager.

After earning her certification, Gibson landed her first Scrum Master position at UnitedHealthcare. By 2022, she advanced to a lead Scrum Master role at her current company, earning well over $100,000 annually.

“I knew that I was capable and hardworking, but society tells us that you need a college degree to land a high-paying job,” she said. “Hitting that milestone helped me realize that there’s no special formula to earning six figures; it’s up to you to decide how hard you’re willing to work toward that goal and not let something like a degree requirement limit you.”