Reaching New Heights
What Managers and Leaders Everywhere Can Learn From Boston College’s Motto, “Ever to Excel”
By Dean Andy Boynton
Can You Pass This Carroll School Exam?
Marc Seidner ’88, P ’24, Says He Can Spot a BC Student From a Mile Away
Contents
Launch
2 From the Editor Don’t Wait BY WILLIAM BOLE
4 From the Dean The Bridge BY ANDY
BOYNTON
Ventures
5 All That Glitters
Will the next generation care about luxury brands? It’s Sarah Gargano’s business to find out.
6 Accounts
Dave Epstein, LSEHD ’94, MBA ’00, delivers the whats and whys of the weather; the pandemic opened unexpected windows for many in the Class of 2020; speakers on campus; and more.
10 Insights
Carroll School experts question a new-old notion— “the ideal worker.”
12 Enterprise
With lampposts, electric trucks, and food digesters, alumni entrepreneurs are making it easier to be green in the city.
14 Application
Take this test, if you dare.
Carroll Capital
The Publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College / Issue No.3 / 2025
Features
16 Breaking Loose
With roots in classical literature, “Ever to Excel” has captured the spirit of Boston College’s rise in prominence. But can the University’s motto also guide leaders today as they shape the future of their organizations? Yes, if they tap into the “Ever to Excel” habits—and break free of organizational constraints. BY DEAN ANDY
BOYNTON
24
Not Shying Away
Shavel’le Olivier ’14 would tell you that she has always been a bit of an introvert. Now, as executive director of Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, she’s forging her own style of leadership— and drawing accolades for her urban innovations in a lively though marginalized neighborhood of Boston. BY
JACLYN JERMYN
28
Join the Club
Pressure is mounting for students to craft perfect resumes and land dream jobs, and co-curricular experiences have evolved to align with those goals. Intense applications and exclusivity are now trademarks of popular management clubs. So what’s a student to do? Carve out your own path, say career advisors. BY MASON BRAASCH
Assets
35 Financial Advisor Robo-advising helps manage your money—but at a price.
36 Community
An unusual requirement for graduate management students; faculty by day, adventurers off campus—with more overlap than you’d think; Rich Corrado, MBA ’92, and his ESG lift-off; Fulton’s beehives.
40 Research
Recent findings by Carroll School faculty members.
42 Impact
School principals come to Carroll School academy to hone their management skills; Carroll School’s centers.
44 Investments
Can a minor in management alter the trajectory of an arts and sciences student?
46 Distinctions
Gordon Wayne ’23 is feted for his campaign to end homelessness; Sophia Salamy ’27 and Aradhya Garg ’27 take second in 2024 Collegiate Ethics Case Competition; and faculty achievements.
48 Bottom Line
Marc Seidner, MCAS ’88, P ’24.
Launch
At one time, they had expectations for the jobs they would hold and the lives they would lead, just like any other college cohort. But Covid-19 upended those assumptions. It also opened windows.
Don’t Wait
For these alumni, change is now.
BY WILLIAM BOLE
There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen. So goes the saying usually attributed (accurately or not) to the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The quote resurfaced amid the upheavals of the Covid era and continues to reverberate at a time of headspinning change in society, technology, and politics.
The Carroll School’s Class of ’20 saw the world change before their eyes as they bolted campus in March of 2020, within days of a declared health emergency, missing out on senior rituals and a timely commencement. Months later, they were flung into unfamiliar work environments. At one time, they had expectations for the jobs they would hold and the lives they would lead, just like any other college cohort. But, as reported in our article on page 8, “Five Years Out,” Covid-19 upended those assumptions. The virus also opened windows.
Some of the new alumni were able to step back and take a probing look at their future selves— who, what, and where they wanted to be. It is the kind of self-reflection that unfolds over decades of a person’s life and career, but was compressed into weeks and months as a result of the disruptions, abrupt innovations, and other experiences of the pandemic.
Working remotely and confined at home, Nicole Robertson ’20
took an online wine course, which rekindled her thoughts of Italy, where she had explored viniculture during her study abroad. Robertson took the daring step of quitting her coveted job as an investment banking analyst and flew off to northern Italy last year to work as an au pair. She is now finding her way back to finance, while putting down roots in Italy.
A global pandemic is one way to fast-track changes. A social or ecological crisis would be another. Some talented alumni are not content to wait a generation for stunning ecological breakthroughs, like emissions-free air travel. They’re hoping to make decades happen a little more quickly by finding creative ways to leverage available technologies.
Luke Mairo ’17 is taking on a problem familiar to many owners of electric vehicles—finding a place to recharge their cars, especially in the city. The lack of reliable, curbside charging options has kept many drivers from going electric, so he and a cofounder launched a
company aimed at making it easier for urbanites to be green. Their company, Voltpost, takes existing lampposts and retrofits them as EV charging stations. Our story on page 12, “All Charged Up,” looks at Mairo’s enterprise and two other alumni eco-entrepreneurs forging other innovations.
While harnessing technology for positive change is vitally important, vision also matters. Gordon Wayne ’23 has an uplifting ambition: to be a catalyst for ending the deepening crisis of homelessness in America. He knows of which he speaks.
After high school, Wayne lived out of his car for more than a year, in the wake of a family implosion. Then, after being accepted to Boston College, he decided to do something for those who remained unhoused. He walked 550 miles from his town in rural Virginia to Chestnut Hill, sparking national media attention and raising $180,000 for the cause within weeks. Wayne’s campaign against homelessness continues, as you could read in our story “Walk This Way” on page 46.
One thing that won’t change in decades, let alone weeks, is the essence of a Boston College education, which helps produce alumni who stand out. “You know, you could spot a BC kid a mile away,” says Marc Seidner, MCAS ’88, P ’24, a leader in the finance industry who has the last word on page 48. He points to the influence of BC’s formative education, with emphasis on the liberal arts, reflection, and social engagement. Says Seidner: “It creates these unbelievably poised, eloquent, thoughtful professionals that I think are cast differently than others. I really do….”
Contributors
Tim Gray WRITER
Gray is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in financial topics. He contributed to The New York Times for two decades, and has written books and case studies with professors from Harvard Business School and the Wharton School. In this issue, Gray reports on recent faculty research (page 40), challenges to the prevailing notion of the “ideal worker” (page 10), and more. A graduate of Georgetown University, he and his spouse, Joseph L. Sweeney Chair Mary Ellen Carter, live in Bedford, Massachusetts, with a spoiled pointer named Greta.
Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mellowes is a rising senior studying Political Science and minoring in Accounting for Finance and Consulting. She is also a columnist for The Heights, and a tour guide and panelist for the Student Admission Program. For this issue, she profiles Carroll School minor Bo Brainerd, MCAS ’25, and her startup dating app Ophelia (page 9).
Mellowes is currently a financial planning and analysis intern for Charter Manufacturing and is looking forward to enjoying her Boston College senior year.
Mission
Check out our website and follow us on social media for the latest on the Carroll School of Management.
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Bryce Wymer ILLUSTRATOR
Wymer is an award-winning visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His surreal and dreamlike works take the form of painted and mixed media illustrations as well as fine art installations. Past clients include The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Apple, and his personal works have been exhibited in galleries around the world. For the cover story in this issue (page 16), he explores the theme of “Ever to Excel,” aiming to capture the tension between striving and rising—and the upward pull toward something greater.
Wintermeyer is a German-born photographer who has lived in San Francisco since the early ’90s. He focuses on portraiture for clients such as Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. In his personal work, he focuses on street photography, exploring the relationship between people and their environment. For this issue, he photographed Luke Mairo ’17, COO and cofounder of Voltpost, at the company’s San Francisco warehouse for a story on alumni entrepreneurs advancing the field of green technology (page 12).
The Carroll School of Management at Boston College ranks among the world’s leading business schools. It offers a rigorous, transformative academic experience that integrates the study of management with the liberal arts, while developing critical thinking skills and fostering ethical leadership. Part of a vibrant, Jesuit, Catholic university, the Carroll School draws inspiration and direction from our centuries-old religious and intellectual heritage. We maintain an enduring conviction that successful management education in the 21st century must combine excellence in teaching and research with reflection and action. The Carroll School educates the whole person in an atmosphere that is inclusive, ethical, caring, collaborative, and respectful of all, consistent with Boston College’s institutional mission and motto of “Ever to Excel.”
Engagement
We invite alumni, parents, and friends to engage with Boston College and the Carroll School of Management, in concert with the University’s mission and priorities. Through opportunities such as the Alumni Association’s programming, the Career Center’s Eagle Exchange, or a gift to the Carroll School in support of students and faculty, the BC community can make a meaningful impact on the University and beyond. For more, visit bc.edu/alumni.
John
Editor-in-Chief
WILLIAM BOLE
Deputy Editor
JACLYN JERMYN
Associate Editor
MASON BRAASCH
Creative Director
ROBERT F. PARSONS / SEVEN ELM SEVENELM.COM
Contributing Writers
TIM GRAY
OLIVIA JUSTICE, CSOM ’25
PATRICK L. KENNEDY, MCAS ’99
DANNA LORCH
SCANLON MELLOWES, MCAS ’26
SALLY PARKER
LILIANA STELLA, CSOM ’27
Contributing Artists
PAMELA BERKOVIC
JULIETTE BORDA
RICHARD BORGE
ANNIELLY CAMARGO
CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL
CAITLIN CUNNINGHAM
KELLY DAVIDSON
DANIEL DOWNEY
JAMES GRAHAM
JANNE IIVONEN
MATT KALINOWSKI
ROGER KISBY
DIANA LEVINE
TONY LUONG
LEE PELLEGRINI
WINNI WINTERMEYER
BRYCE WYMER
Image Specialist
STEPHEN BEDNAREK
Printing
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© 2025 Trustees of Boston College. All rights reserved. Carroll Capital is published once a year in June and printed by Royle Printing in Sun Prairie, WI. Please send questions, comments, or requests for more information to:
Phone: 617-552-1373
Mail: Carroll Capital, Carney Hall 443, 281 Beacon Street, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Email: carrollcapital@bc.edu
Opinions expressed in Carroll Capital do not necessarily reflect the views of the Carroll School of Management or Boston College.
and Linda Powers
Family Dean
ANDY BOYNTON ’78, P ’13
Winni Wintermeyer PHOTOGRAPHER
Scanlon Mellowes ’26 WRITER
Launch
The Bridge
Two new words for your BC lexicon.
BY POWERS FAMILY DEAN ANDY BOYNTON
As alumni, students, and other members of the Boston College community, we have our own expressions that speak to the heart of this Jesuit liberal arts institution. We talk about “men and women for others,” as well as cura personalis, or care for the whole person. Then there’s “Ever to Excel.” As I write in my essay beginning on page 16, the University’s motto can serve as a roadmap not just for those of us on campus but also leaders and managers everywhere.
Now, there’s another phrase working its way into this hallowed lexicon. It’s “The Bridge,” which points to the many layers of connections we’re fostering between management, the humanities, and the sciences. Both the scale and depth of this interchange are unique among universities in the United States.
Boston College has always exposed students to a broad array of disciplinary perspectives, partly by virtue of its undergraduate core curriculum, which has a large footprint across departments and schools. Over the past decade, the University has redoubled its efforts to break down curricular walls, and we’re in the early stages
of constructing new lanes on the bridge that will create unprecedented opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement.
The numbers already speak for themselves. Around half of the Carroll School’s 2,400 undergraduates are working toward a major or minor at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. Our students are now taking at least half of their credits in the arts and sciences, a reflection of not only their interests but also significant changes in the management curriculum.
The bridge goes in both directions. Our school at Boston College is also experiencing its largest expansion ever, with more than 1,500 arts and sciences students enrolling in one of seven management minors developed in recent years. Both they and our management students are encountering each other in the classroom, colliding with other perspectives. I like to call this “intellectual whiplash.”
Ryan Barcy, MCAS ’25, offers a telling anecdote in our article “Minor Miracle,” on page 44. A music and biology major, Barcy went straight from researching music of the medieval era to his corporate finance class last fall. “I was literally sitting in Burns Library, studying this 12th-century music book, flipping through the pages, which are made out of animal skin or something,” says Barcy, who minored in finance. “I leave this dusty room and go straight to corporate finance in Fulton. I had to switch to my business brain.”
At present, we’re preparing for a significant expansion of the bridge, partly through a groundbreaking initiative we’re calling “Bridge Scholars.” The program will be open to all Boston College
undergraduates, who will participate in a blend of coursework, including capstone experiences, aimed at helping them navigate different knowledge domains in an increasingly complex and dynamic world. We’re also exploring the idea of an institute that would promote faculty research collaboration across the University, along with public dialogue about humanity’s most pressing challenges, drawing on multiple disciplines.
This next stage of learning and scholarship will have a strong component of moral discernment—“grounded in ethics and expertise,” as Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley puts it. He points out that the Bridge Scholars Program will not only create new spaces for the interplay of disciplines but will also help students “make sense of those experiences” and synthesize different worlds of knowledge.
Why are University leaders, including Father Greg Kalscheur, SJ, dean of Morrissey, doubling down on interdisciplinary education? Because, for one thing, the history of innovation demonstrates that our greatest intellectual and social breakthroughs occur precisely at these intersections, where disciplinary boundaries become permeable and new possibilities for human flourishing emerge. We also often hear from alumni who speak of how an integrative formative education contributed greatly to their personal and professional success.
In the spirit of “Ever to Excel,” we’re looking to build rapidly on this tradition, putting “The Bridge” at the forefront of Boston College discourse—for the sake of our students and the greater good.
All That Glitters
WILL THE NEXT GENERATION CARE ABOUT LUXURY BRANDS? IT'S SARAH GARGANO'S BUSINESS TO FIND OUT.
The first time she ever went to Paris, Sarah Gargano ’92 blew all her pocket money on a fabulous bathing suit from a tiny boutique. It was the teenager’s introduction to the difference great craftsmanship makes. This taste for the finer things in life stayed with her through seven years working
JACLYN JERMYN
on Wall Street, stints in modeling and acting, and now representing iconic luxury brands like McLaren Automotive and French crystal maker Lalique. As founder and CEO of Sarah Gargano Communications, her company offers public relations strategy, marketing, branding, promotion, education, and more for luxury brands on a global scale. “When I think about collaborations, I constantly go back to the DNA of the brand,” she says. “What will be authentic? It has to make sense to be successful.” The mother of two teen daughters, Gargano finds herself thinking more and more about marketing luxury to the next generation. It can be a delicate balance to attract new customers while keeping current clients happy. There was a time when people would buy high-end products because of name recognition alone, she explains, “but this younger generation values community—do luxury brands have a sense of community that I can relate to?” Gargano welcomes the challenge.
PAMELA BERKOVIC
Ventures Accounts
On the Heights
Ron Howard
The Academy Award–winning director and producer offered lessons in leadership and teamwork at the 18th Annual Finance Conference hosted by the Seidner Department of Finance. “Working with different people, I had to consciously come to the understanding that I didn’t have all the answers,” said Howard, who keynoted the conference in May.
Raj Subramaniam
His first job after college was at FedEx—now Subramaniam is CEO and president of the global transportation and e-commerce corporation. At a March Chief Executives Club event, he reflected on his leadership journey. “If someone had told me that this is the job I would be doing 34 years ago,” he said, “I would have told them I had a better chance to play for the Indian cricket team.”
Barbara Pierce Bush
During the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics Chambers Lecture, the former president’s daughter reflected on leaving her nonprofit Global Health Corps to join the National Basketball Association, where she highlights issues like mental health as head of social responsibility. “The NBA may not scream ‘purpose,’ per se, but it is very in line with my purpose,” she said.
Stephanie Howard
The cofounder and COO of tech-enabled apparel brand Endstate joined the Women Innovators Network for a dinner cosponsored by the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship. Howard shared the unexpected career opportunities she had before launching Endstate. “Look for moments of serendipity,” she said. “Put in the hard work so you are ready to take advantage of them.”
Broadcast Dreams
Since grade school, Dylan Carollo ’25 has been forging his own path via radio waves.
BY MASON BRAASCH
For most 11-year-olds, afterschool activities might include playing with friends or watching television, but for Dylan Carollo ’25, the end of the school day meant it was time to attend to his CEO duties.
Growing up near Orlando, Carollo developed an interest in radio early on. As a preteen, he began producing his own daily music podcast, a curated playlist for friends and family to enjoy like a radio stream. Within a year, the podcast had evolved into international, web-based radio station D100 Radio, which Carollo ran from his bedroom. The station’s name was a nod to popular New York radio station Z100, he says. “I just replaced it with a D for Dylan.”
By the time Carollo was in high school, D100 had become one of the first independent radio stations in global entertainment company iHeartMedia’s catalog. “That was a moment where I realized this is something special,” he says.
When he arrived on the Heights as a sophomore transfer student, Carollo wanted to catch up on the Boston College experience and quickly developed Discover Boston College, a short-form D100 podcast
sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs. “If you’re a prospective student, current student, or even a parent,” he says, “Discover BC can be like an orientation tour, wherever you are.”
Carollo managed every step of the podcast process, from hosting to editing and distributing up to three weekly episodes. That was on top of his classes as a finance and entrepreneurship student, a part-time private equity job, and managing operations of D100. “I would rather have a super-busy schedule and make sacrifices in order to pursue this,” he says.
After graduating, Carollo passed the Discover Boston College mic to George Kaparis ’27, but not before launching In Flight, a new podcast in collaboration with the Carroll School highlighting trailblazing alumni and industry leaders. He’s overseeing the podcasts as CEO of D100 Media, which he has made his full-time pursuit. “I hope D100 can help more students engage with media and explore opportunities on campus,” he says, “but also inspire them to shape their long-term goals beyond Boston College.”
PHOTOGRAPH
Dylan Carollo ’25
THE EXPLAINER
DAVE EPSTEIN DELIVERS THE WHATS AND WHYS OF THE WEATHER.
BY PATRICK KENNEDY ’99
“For most people, the one scientist they’ll interact with over the course of a week is a meteorologist,” says Dave Epstein, LSEHD ’94, MBA ’00. It’s a responsibility that Epstein takes seriously: In a time when even the weather has been politicized, New Englanders have come to rely on the counsel of this meteorologist, horticulturalist, and Boston College alum.
For 33 years, whether on screen for WBZ or WCVB or, more recently, on air for WGBH, online for The Boston Globe, or in his gardening video blog posts at GrowingWisdom.org, Epstein has guided Bostonians through heat waves and snow storms and everything in between. People tune in to him not just for the day’s forecast but also for the wider scope of insight that has become Epstein’s signature.
As part of his multidisciplinary approach, Epstein relates weather to gardening, the climate, bird migration, and more as he strives to answer the broad range of questions his audience is likely to have in any given week.
Will my kids’ soccer games be rained out? Is it too early to plant tomatoes? Too soon to take down my bird feeder? Can I finally put away the snow shovel?
“We all experience the weather, and we all experience it basically the same way,” says Epstein. And if his readers and listeners come for the quotidian details, they might leave with a better understanding of the atmospheric phenomena that affect all our lives. “I’m giving the forecast, but hopefully there’s a nugget of educational information that you’re getting out of that—something you didn’t know, or something that was clarified.”
An unavoidable topic in meteorology today is climate change, and Epstein will discuss it frankly when extreme weather arises. He even spoke out against recent mass layoffs of datagathering personnel at the National Weather Service, which issues advisories including warnings of weather disasters attributed in part to climate change. Such public-safety
alerts are critical “in a world where misinformation is flowing at lightning speed across the internet,” he wrote in the Globe. Epstein’s comments on such topics tend to carry more weight because he is consistently careful not to sensationalize. “I don’t hype things up. The media often exaggerates, or doesn’t explain well, certain situations, which creates uncertainty and anxiety. So I damn well better be careful when I’m saying, ‘Hey, this is a big deal.’”
What his fellow Carroll School alumni might not realize is that Epstein has always been a bit of an entrepreneur, assembling multiple revenue streams as he’s worked at a variety of part-time but often high-profile gigs, from meteorologist, columnist, and television graphics specialist to high-end landscape designer and college instructor. “I’ve thought of myself as a small, single-entity company, with a lot of irons in the fire,” he says. “It’s allowed me to live a life of vocational diversity.”
Epstein—who earned his bachelor’s in biology from Colby College—also worked fulltime in quality assurance and product development in the software industry while attending Boston College part-time, first for a master’s in counseling psychology, and then for his MBA. “I still call upon the lessons from BC in a reflective way,” he says. “I have to set aside my ego and think about other people’s hopes and fears.”
He imagines what people want to know and why, whether they’re making travel plans or buying mulch. “I’m constantly trying to put myself in the shoes of the audience,” he says. Those shoes are an easy fit in the case of gardeners: Epstein’s own garden is filled with a bit of “everything,” he says. “Trees, shrubs, native plants, vegetables, pollinators, flowers, a water feature. There’s a lot of color and texture.”
For Epstein, who has been fascinated by weather since he was a kid growing up in Maine, meteorology remains both a vocation and no small amount of fun. He says, “Most people are curious about what they’re seeing out their window, and so that’s a cool place to be—to be the explainer that can help them understand the world they’re observing.”
Dave Epstein, LSEHD ’94, MBA ’00
Ventures Accounts
FIVE YEARS OUT
FOR MANY IN THE CLASS OF 2020, THE PANDEMIC OPENED UNEXPECTED WINDOWS.
BY SALLY PARKER
Nicole Robertson ’20 was restless. Confined at home during the pandemic, she signed up for an online wine course, hoping to recapture some of the magic she had felt exploring viniculture in Italy during her semester abroad. At the time, Robertson was working at an investment bank in New York. The relative freedom of remote work in an industry known for long hours in the office gave her breathing room to consider what she really wanted.
Taking the wine course changed her life. When she returned to Italy for a month during a work sabbatical to volunteer at a vineyard, Robertson fell in love with the country again. Then she went back to Tuscany for a second weeklong visit. She recalls telling herself: “Okay, relax. Reflect on yourself. You’re free to think about what you want to do with your life.” She began plotting to live in Italy as a finance professional.
Her story turns a light on the unforeseen pathways taken by members of the Carroll School of Management’s Class of 2020. They graduated into a world turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic. Five years on, alums are still feel -
ing the impact. For many, the pandemic opened windows in ways they could not have imagined back then.
Robertson wound up taking a highly unconventional route. Last year, she left her job in mergers and acquisitions at UBS, where she had interned during college. On a six-month student visa to study the language, she went to work as an au pair in northern Italy. (For a time, several thousand TikTok fans followed her leap from investment banker to au pair.) Now, Robertson is closer than ever to her ultimate goal: She works 20 hours a week in finance with an Italian luxury hotel company.
Some graduates say the Covid-era disruptions made them question a straight-line career trajectory in favor of a path that felt more meaningful. Karina Singhal ’20 is undergoing a career shift that traces back to feelings that welled up in her in the deepest throes of the pandemic.
“We were all suffering. Suffering is always all around us,” she reflects. “So it just underscores the importance of taking care of one another.” At the Carroll School, her concentrations were marketing and entrepreneurship, which she parlayed into a consultant’s role in the applied design group at Deloitte in New York. While working on team projects to design delight-thecustomer applications for clients, her thoughts turned to other ways of caring for the customer.
After three years, she left Deloitte. Singhal had been accepted to Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program, which offers delayed admission to gain two to four years of work experience. She spent a year studying and teaching yoga and meditation—“that has always been important to me personally”—and working in ground-floor hospitality jobs, including as a mixologist at a sake bar. “I loved having that face time with guests, picking up on the minutiae of the guest experience,” says Singhal, who sees the
hospitality industry as an expression of care for customers and one’s self. Now, through her MBA coursework at Harvard, Singhal hopes to blend design thinking with the self-knowledge and practical experience she has gained to create memorable moments for customers.
Navigating unexpected obstacles was no small task for those thrown into a world upended by Covid. In the pandemic economy, Sean Sullivan ’20, WCAS ’22, whose concentration was finance, had trouble landing a job in the industry. So, to pay the bills right after graduation, he began working as a concrete laborer on a Brooklyn high-rise project.
The job was a way to save for Plan B: return to Boston College for an additional year of eligibility as a track and field athlete while attending graduate school. He earned a master’s in project management at Woods College of Advancing Studies and is now an assistant superintendent at Suffolk Construction in Boston. “I had my share of uncomfortable decisions,” Sullivan says. “But five years later, I’m still living in a city that I love with close friends from my time at BC and with a career I have seen a lot of success in. To me that’s a better outcome than Plan A.”
The turmoil all around Sullivan had instilled in him a greater sense of empathy and purpose. Across the street from the high-rise site where he worked as a laborer was a mobile morgue for Covid-19 casualties. In the streets below, marchers protested the George Floyd murder. At the time, Sullivan felt despair, but he says the struggles made him more sensitive to the needs of others. Today, he relishes his role as a servant-leader at work, ensuring safety on the construction site and removing hurdles for crews before they encounter them. “I hate getting asked, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’” Sullivan says. “It’s because five years ago I would have given you a completely different answer than where I am at now.”
There was a time when that sort of unpredictability would have unsettled Ryan Sugrue ’20: One of his personal obstacles was a lifelong discomfort with uncertainty. Sugrue had studied business analytics and marketing, with an additional major in philosophy. He knew where he was headed after graduation—to a marketing job at Wayfair, where he had interned. He remained at Wayfair, but along the way, he embraced change and growth—for example, by stepping up when the company needed help creating inclusive marketing programs geared to diverse audiences.
“My life is so different now,” says Sugrue, who also came out as gay. “Covid taught me that you never know what’s going to change two, three, four, five months from now because life happens. Just live more in the present. That’s an important lesson I got from it.”
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Bo Brainerd, MCAS ’25, has a knack for playing Cupid. For years, she’s been setting up friends on dates and offering romantic advice, but in the age of dating apps, she felt like even the algorithms could use a little help. That’s why Brainerd, a philosophy major, management and leadership minor, and self-described “lover of love,” decided to launch her own dating app, Ophelia.
The app’s name comes from the phrase “oh I feel ya,” something Brainerd would say to friends while commiserating about dating. She wanted to create a platform where it felt easier for couples to build more meaningful connections. What sets Ophelia apart from other dating apps is its date curation services. For brand-new and long-term relationships alike, the Ophelia team will take the lead and plan perfect outings based on a pair’s preferences.
It’s Brainerd’s way of taking some of the stress out of online dating and letting couples focus on in-person connections rather than spending extra time online. Ophelia has set up more than two hundred first dates across Boston so far—80 percent have led to second dates. “A first date
is nerve-wracking, but when it goes well, it’s euphoric,” she says.
Brainerd signed up for the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual Elevator Pitch Competition on a whim in Fall 2023. She won second place with the concept for Ophelia, but the biggest prize was the support she received from alumni mentors. In particular, Peter Bell ’86, P ’20, ’25, general partner of alumni-run SSC Venture Partners, has been “integral to boosting my confidence” throughout the entrepreneurial process, she says.
Brainerd went on to participate in the Shea Center’s accelerator program, followed by the Strakosch Venture Competition, where she placed second and received $5,000. That summer, she joined SSC’s accelerator program, where she came away with a $10,000 investment in Ophelia in exchange for 2 percent equity.
The mobile app for Ophelia officially launched in November 2024, and Brainerd and her nine-person team plan to expand Ophelia’s services to markets beyond Boston soon.
Now that she has graduated, Ophelia is Brainerd’s full-time job, a reality she calls a dream come true. She has many ideas of how the platform could evolve, but one thing remains fundamental for her: “I will always choose a path that embraces the human experience.”
SCANLON MELLOWES ’26
Bo Brainerd, MCAS ’25, looks to make online dating more human with her app, Ophelia—and with tangible help from Carroll School alums.
OFFICE HOURS
CARROLL SCHOOL EXPERTS QUESTION A NEW-OLD NOTION—“THE IDEAL WORKER.”
BY TIM GRAY
Bill Gates, philanthropist and cofounder of Microsoft, has said he used to memorize the license plates of Microsoft employees so he could keep track of who was in the office. Gates spent a lot of time there, and he expected his employees to do the same.
Recent edicts suggest little has changed in corporate America. After a Covid-era interlude, many bosses are again judging people as Bill Gates once did—by time spent in the office. Amazon, AT&T, Dell, JPMorgan, and X, to name a few, have required employees to abandon remote or hybrid arrangements and return to full-time office work.
Their message is clear: Our ideal worker is someone willing to toil in our cubicles.
“Historically there’s been this sense that the only way to be viewed as a good worker was to just be there and be available.”
Vanessa Conzon ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION
Management experts at the Carroll School take issue with this notion, which has come roaring back post-pandemic. They say research shows there’s no single paradigm for an ideal worker; employees can be productive in various ways. So the willingness to log long hours in the office shouldn’t be the only measure of employee value. Depending on the job, it may not even be the right one.
Vanessa Conzon, assistant professor of management and organization, has found in her research that some workers strive to excel but also limit extensive overtime and after-hours socializing with colleagues. She calls them “occupied workers” to contrast them with the “available workers,” who stay late and then grab beers with colleagues.
Occupied workers typically have some sort of obligation outside of work—usually kids, maybe a volunteer endeavor—that also taxes their time. To balance that with work, they’re disciplined. They’ll eat lunch at their desks and decline invitations to happy hour or golf with colleagues. They’ll nudge meetings back to the agenda when people start to gossip or digress. One person Conzon interviewed even timed his bathroom breaks so he wouldn’t run into coworkers who felt like chatting.
“Historically there’s been this sense that the only way to be viewed as a good worker was to
just be there and be available,” Conzon says. But occupied workers represent another way to do well at work—an “efficient, focused way.”
Some employers may not appreciate people who work this way because they may cling to an outdated, even unfair, ideal. “Many employers still think, if you’re at work a lot, you’re a good worker,” says Conzon, whose research on the topic was published last year in Organization Science, a leading academic journal in fields related to management and strategy. “But there’s not a lot of research support for that, and it frankly reflects gender norms. Who can do that? Typically men.” (Workers of either gender without young kids also may benefit from this norm.)
Mothers are disadvantaged by those old-school expectations, but fathers can be too, says Jamie Ladge, a Carroll School professor of management and organization. Dads who take longer-thanaverage parental leaves can even face a stigma that moms don’t, she says.
“I worked on a project on fatherhood,” Ladge says. “The newspaper picked it up and reported that fathers who were involved with their kids were happier at work. Then I was picking up my kids, and I saw all these guys picking up their kids and felt good about that. But then I overheard the conversation between two of them, and they
were making fun of a guy who took a long parental leave.”
Brad Harrington, the recently retired executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, said the center’s research shows that employers are increasingly giving men and women equal amounts of parental leave. To that extent, the research suggests that more companies may be relinquishing gendered stereotypes about what constitutes an ideal worker and that an involved father can be perceived as “a professional and a parent.”
Sometimes companies offer mixed messages about what they want in employees, Ladge says. They’ll talk about wanting their people to find fulfillment in their work, even as they continue to evaluate them based mainly on hours in the office.
The best managers try to reconcile corporate rhetoric and the reality of complicated lives, she says. They allow their employees schedule flexibility and alternative work arrangements where possible. That builds trust—and can give people greater ability to reach for whatever a workplace’s image of the ideal worker is.
Some managers even do something called “job crafting,” trying to balance their needs with the employee’s skills and goals. “The employer comes to the employee and says, ‘Here are the expectations,’” Ladge explains. “‘Now let’s hear about your goals and talk about how to craft the job to align with those.’ You want to make sure elements of people’s skill sets are embedded in their roles.”
These kinds of managers also acknowledge that employees, even the best, have lives out-
side of work. They encourage their people to be open about their lives because that enables them to “leverage their skills and knowledge from outside of work,” says Ladge, who has written a book, Maternal Optimism, on navigating the challenges of motherhood and work. “That helps people do their jobs better.”
Ladge added that, even in a world of more flexible job definitions, being a truly ideal worker entails diligence. “You have to put in the effort. Nobody deserves to get a raise without putting in the effort.” The work may not all happen at the office or during typical business hours, but sufficient time still must be devoted and deadlines met.
Conzon, for her part, noted that one thing overlooked in discussions of ideal employees is context. Her research has been highly contextual, involving interviews with 72 professionals in three different workplaces—scientists at a pharmaceutical company, scientists and engineers at a professional services organization, and untenured professors at a university.
As she has found, the qualities of the best worker are likely to vary with the job. A corporate lawyer, for example, might need to be available 24/7 to clients and colleagues, but a caregiver working with Alzheimer’s patients might be better judged on how empathetic and emotionally supportive they are. “Different contexts have different expectations for ideal workers,” Conzon points out. In other words, by holding fast to generic notions of this ideal, we might well overlook some of the most devoted workers among us.
Luke Mairo ’17 launched Voltpost to make EV charging more accessible for city drivers, using chargers that attach to existing street-side lampposts. With the post and electrical connection already in place, installation takes less than an hour.
12 CARROLL CAPITAL 2025
Ventures Enterprise
ALL CHARGED UP
ALUMNI ECO-ENTREPRENEURS ARE MAKING IT EASIER TO BE GREEN IN THE CITY.
BY TIM GRAY
Luke Mairo ’17 has lived the problem his company, Voltpost, was created to solve. Though he’s an environmentalist, for years he held off on buying an electric car because he wasn’t sure where he’d plug one in. “It was a struggle to see where I’d be able to charge a car on the street. There were so few curbside charging options,” says Mairo, who made do with public transportation and ride shares in San Francisco.
Four years ago, Mairo and cofounder Jeff Prosserman launched Voltpost to make EV charging much more accessible to city drivers. A lack of chargers has slowed the uptake of EVs in cities. Voltpost’s chargers can be joined to existing street-side lampposts. Since the post and its electrical connection already exist, installation takes less than an hour.
As societies respond to a warming world, the development of established green technologies like EV charging will matter as much as the quest for spectacular breakthroughs such as emissionsfree air travel. Mairo and other eco-entrepreneurs—including Essa Al-Saleh, MBA ’98, and Elliott Bennett ’21—are helping to make those sorts of technologies accessible to the masses.
Voltpost addresses several of the bedevilments of city charging. Connecting to the power grid via lampposts eliminates the need for digging up sidewalks and parking lots—“which is really expensive,”
says Mairo, who studied finance and business analytics at the Carroll School. Voltpost’s chargers are also modular, built from a series of standardized components that can be easily swapped. That enhances reliability and prevents costly, time-consuming repairs. A repairperson can just pull out an old module and pop in a new one.
Now introducing its chargers on both coasts and several states in between, Voltpost employs about 20 people. Mairo, who bought a Tesla last year, says, “I hope to soon just plug into a lamppost outside of my apartment.”
A similarly tough urban environmental challenge is local truck delivery. City delivery would seem an ideal application of electric trucks—they can return to a warehouse to charge, and their daily mileage tends to be low, alleviating “range anxiety.” (EVs typically have shorter ranges than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles.)
But delivery companies have been slow to embrace EVs, says Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks in London. “Electric commercial vehicles are where EV passenger vehicles were 15 years ago,” says Al-Saleh. The upfront price for an electric truck is about twice that of its petrol-powered counterpart. So sticker shock can discourage potential buyers, even though an EV’s lifetime cost of ownership will be lower than that of a traditional truck.
The design of Volta’s truck, the Zero, responds to several worries of delivery companies. It has ample range: “The average distance covered in Europe is 75 to 100 kilometers a day, and our battery has a capacity of up to 300 kilometers,” says Al-Saleh, who formerly ran a multinational logistics company called Agility.
Just as important, the Zero is safer than the typical truck. Battery power eliminates the need for a large upfront engine. So Volta created a cab that prioritizes ergonomics and the driver’s field of vision; the Zero’s cab is lower, and its entry and driver’s seat are much closer to the ground. That helps prevent knee and ankle injuries when hopping out of a high cab. A lower floor also allows room for a bigger front windshield, which expands the outward view. And a Zero’s driver sits in the center of the cab, not to the far left or right, improving sight lines. That makes driving safer.
Volta had to restructure when its US-based battery supplier, Proterra, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The company, which employs about 150 people, is now raising money again and focusing on selling Zeros in several European countries.
Responsibly disposing of food waste is yet another challenge for those seeking to broaden the application of existing technologies. Apartments and office buildings often don’t have space for composting. Even when they do, neighbors may complain. Ecotone
Renewables, founded by Elliott Bennett and his childhood friend, Dylan Lew, has devised a way to digest large quantities of food waste while keeping the messiness out of sight. Their digester— called the ZEUS (Zero Emissions Upcycling System)—uses an anaerobic process that breaks down the waste inside an 8-by-20-foot shipping container.
“Businesses and organizations are paying to send thousands of pounds of food waste to landfills every week,” says Bennett, whose Carroll School concentrations were finance and marketing. His company is paring down that waste. Users dump their food into a chute in the side of the container, and ZEUS breaks it down, producing methane and a liquid fertilizer called Soil Sauce. The methane powers the digester, and Ecotone sells the fertilizer.
Started in 2019, Ecotone has leased its digesters to customers in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Ohio. The 12-person company runs them for customers—who just have to encourage their residents or employees to use them.
“We live in a world where we can sometimes, maybe often, feel bombarded and overwhelmed by the climate crisis,” says Bennett (who, like Mairo, made the 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 list). “I believe the best way to tackle a big problem is to pick a part of the puzzle and go as deep as possible to solve that part. It’s what I see us doing every day at Ecotone.”
Luke Mairo ’17, who bought a Tesla last year, says, “I hope to soon just plug into a lamppost outside of my apartment.”
TAKE THIS TEST, IF YOU DARE
IF YOU’RE GRADUATING FROM THE CARROLL SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, OR GRADUATED SOME TIME AGO, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO REMEMBER FROM YOUR COURSEWORK? WHAT SHOULD YOU REMEMBER?
BY WILLIAM BOLE
Six years ago, Carroll School faculty and deans began tackling these questions and crafted answers—in the form of a rigorous assessment given to seniors in their final semester. The test, administered once every three years, consists of 100 questions derived from the management core curriculum.
“We don’t want our courses to be a checklist for students— ‘We took the class, we’re done, and we don’t have to think about it anymore,’” says Ethan Sullivan, senior associate dean for the undergraduate program. “So we came up with the senior assessment, which is basically the things we want all of our students to know when they graduate.”
The (ungraded) exam reflects the school’s chief learning goals. Those are to make sure that students, upon graduation, are ethical reasoners, team players, and critical thinkers, as well as adept in quantitative analysis and knowledgeable about both general business concepts and specific disciplines.
What follows is a 12-question version of the assessment.
1. “Creative destruction” refers to:
A. The elimination of entire industries because of new ones created by technology
B. The destruction of jobs due to the creation of new industries
C. Value creation of better quality and lower prices due to innovation
D. All of these answers
2. Which case could qualify today as a disruptive innovation?
A. Laptops vs. desktops
B. Streaming vs. DVDs
C. Trains vs. trucks for cargo
D. Uber vs. traditional taxis
3. Jessica Springer, a Pascal’s Bank sales executive, is upset at the way her manager, Ella Womack, always calls her in for one-on-one meetings to discuss Springer’s underperformance. Though Springer makes a higher number of sales calls and works longer hours than last year, her sales figures are still low. Springer knows that the main reason behind her underperformance is the country’s economic downturn. However, her manager, Womack, believes that Springer’s underperformance is the result of her laid-back attitude, not the economy. Womack’s beliefs are BEST characterized by .
A. Escalation of commitment
B. Availability bias
C. Fundamental attribution error
D. Contrast effect
4. Why do online grocers have a competitive advantage over traditional grocery stores?
A. Online grocers offer more products than traditional grocers.
B. Online grocers are more efficient at grocery delivery.
C. Online grocers prioritize the needs of customers more than traditional grocers.
D. Online grocers collect data to customize the shopping experience.
5. Dani’s just paid an annual dividend of $6 per share. What is the dividend expected to be in five years if the growth rate is 4.2%?
A. $7.37
B. $7.14
C. $7.07
D. $7.44
6. What is the effect on the financial statements when a company fails to adjust the prepaid insurance expense account at year end for insurance cover- age that has been used?
A. Expenses are understated and net income is understated.
B. Net income is overstated and assets are overstated.
C. Net income is overstated and stockholders’ equity is understated.
D. None of these answers.
7. Imagine you are conducting an analysis of beverage products. You know from visiting a Walmart store that Coca-Cola is priced at $0.45 per can, while a competing product labeled simply “Cola” is priced at $0.20 per can. Taste tests have shown that American consumers cannot tell the difference between Coca-Cola and the generic cola. A beverage industry data- base indicates that 100 million cans of Coca-Cola are sold every year. What is the brand equity of Coca-Cola based on one year of sales?
A. $20 million
B. $65 million
C. $45 million
D. $25 million
8. During the current year, Rock Company’s cash balance increased from $79,000 to $91,300. Rock’s net cash inflow from operating activities was $37,300, and its net cash inflow from financing activities was $11,100. How much was Rock’s net cash flow from investing activities?
A. A net cash outflow of $60,700
B. A net cash inflow of $42,900
C. A net cash outflow of $36,100
D. A net cash inflow of $60,700
9. Hermès is a well-known luxury brand that special- izes in selling beautiful silk scarves. Their boxes are always a particular color of orange that is trademarked by the company. Carla’s, also a store that sells women’s fashion accessories, decides to package their products in bright orange bags. Hermès sues for a violation of its trademark. What is the result?
A. Hermès will lose because orange is not novel.
B. Hermès will win only if it can prove it is losing customers to Carla’s.
C. Hermès will lose because orange is not distinctive.
D. Hermès will win if it can prove that a customer is likely to be deceived by the orange bags.
10. Which of the following are costs associated with holding inventory?
I. Opportunity cost of capital
II. Insurance (for theft, damage, devaluation, obsolescence, etc.)
III. Warehousing
A. II only
B. III only
C. I, II, and III
D. II and III
11. In business, it is common for management to make decisions that aim to produce the greatest happiness, or least pain, for the greatest number of people. If they do, they would be:
A. Following deontology
B. Practicing conscious capitalism
C. Applying utilitarian philosophy
D. Using virtue ethics
12. Which of these changes indicates an improvement in a firm’s asset management efficiency?
A. An increase in the amount of assets per dollar of sales
B. An increase in the inventory turnover rate
C. An increase in the average days in inventory
D. A decrease in the receivables turnover rate
Breaking Loose
With its roots in classical literature, the phrase “Ever to Excel” has captured the spirit of Boston College’s rise in prominence.
But can the University’s motto also guide leaders today as they search for excellence and help shape the future of their organizations? Yes, if they tap into the “Ever to Excel” habits and break free of organizational constraints.
BY Dean Andy Boynton
ILLUSTRATION BY Bryce Wymer
Ithad been a particularly gruesome day in Troy, circa 1100 b.c., as told in Homer’s Iliad, a legendary account of the Trojan War. Two valiant soldiers on opposite sides of the war—Glaucus, a Trojan ally, and Diomedes, the Greek— come face to face in the twilight of battle. They indulge in some rhetorical combat, informing each other of their imminent demise. But they keep talking. Glaucus says that his father sent him to Troy with strict instructions: “Ever to excel, to do better than others, and to bring glory to your forebears.” The two quickly realize that their grandfathers were friends who extended warm hospitality to each other. They step down from their chariots, take each other by the hand, and vow friendship. “There are enough Trojans left for me to kill,” says Diomedes, less sentimentally.
Switch scenes to Chestnut Hill, 1914: Boston College has created a new college seal. Depicted in the center is an open book with the Greek words aien aristeuein—“Ever to Excel”—across the pages. Those words remain the motto of Boston College, a fitting description of a school that began as a commuter “streetcar” college for the sons of Irish immigrants, and journeyed toward becoming a leading national research university.
Today, “Ever to Excel” can also serve as a powerful mantra for managers and leaders everywhere. The message: Don’t get comfortable. Wake up each morning feeling constructively dissatisfied with the status quo, no matter how well things seem to be going. Look for ways to consistently “do better,” as Glaucus’s father instructed. This mindset isn’t about perfectionism; it’s about a commitment to progress—for ourselves and our organizations.
Now let’s look at the daunting reality.
What often stands in the way of continuous improvement is nothing more or less than our normal workday. At any given time, we’re consumed by routine and random tasks: checking emails, attending meeting after meeting,
reacting to surprises and urgent situations, and advancing existing projects. All necessary work, to be sure. But what about the crucial habits that lead us and our organizations to get better and better, to elevate performance, to sustain excellence through innovations both big and small?
These are habits of learning in the broadest sense: hunting for meaningful ideas, reaching across unfamiliar boundaries to intentionally collide with diverse and contrasting opinions, and experimenting to assess the value of new ideas for change. Each of these practices requires an investment of time dedicated to learning that creates the future.
The problem is that we, as leaders, are often trapped by the present world around us. Leadership’s attention is more often than not prescribed by the organizations we live in, as the esteemed scholar and strategist William Ocasio described in his seminal paper, “Towards an Attention-Based View of the Firm.” Our priorities, opportunities, and challenges are lashed to the collective ecosystem of information flows, systems, routines, processes, and communication channels. All too often, we find ourselves inside an “iron cage” that prevents us from stepping beyond the day-to-day to seek fresh perspectives. I quote here the great German sociologist Max Weber, who used the cage metaphor to describe how leaders become captives of bureaucratic capitalism. Caught within rigid systems, they can easily lose their freedom and creativity, Weber explained in his 1904 classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Weber asked, “Who will bend the bars of this cage?” My answer: Each one of us can and should, by developing “Ever to Excel” habits for leaders, which help us respond to not just immediate and well-trodden concerns but also tomorrow’s unknowable challenges. These are ways that we put the “ever” in “Ever to Excel.”
Some of the busiest people have made a point of protecting their time for learning. One of my favorite examples is Charlie Munger, best known as Warren Buffett’s business partner at Berkshire Hathaway, but also a modern-day sage in his own right. Munger (who died two years ago, just before his 100th birthday) hit upon one strategy when he was a young lawyer. He would, as he put it, “sell the best hour of the day to myself.” All the incentives and pressures of his job were driving him to take on more billable time, but he shaped his own learning flow by taking that valuable (monetary) time and dedicating it to something even more valuable, his own reflection and learning. “And only after improving my mind—only after I’d used my best hour improving myself—would I sell my time to my professional clients,” he said at a shareholder’s meeting some years ago.
In a commencement speech back in 2007, Munger said of his friend and partner, “If Warren had stopped learning early on, his record would be a shadow of what it’s been.” Munger noted that Buffett’s investment skills had increased markedly in the 12 years since he turned 65, due to habits including daily reading and conversations geared to future possibilities. “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent,” he told UCLA law graduates. “But they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up.”
“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent. But they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up.”
Charlie Munger
We do face the realities of the clock, the calendar, the schedule. As my friend and colleague Howard Weinberg (also a member of my Carroll School advisory board) has repeatedly emphasized: “Time is our scarcest resource.” How we allocate that time is an often-ignored “strategic” decision we all face. A past boss of mine, Peter Lorange, now president emeritus of IMD (International Institute for Management Development) in Lausanne, Switzerland, often reminded a much younger me: “Andy, you are all over the map. Remember, your strategy is choice.” In other words, our own personal strategy as leaders and professionals is made up of both implicit and explicit choices we make each day about how to spend our time. Is that decision too
often dictated by the relentless organizational ecosystem that surrounds us (as Ocasio insightfully surmises)? Alternatively, can we much more effectively take control and manage our time, making choices that allot parts of our day to identifying and learning new ideas?
I sometimes find myself shuffling papers, sitting in optional meetings, managing my inbox, and performing other tasks that are not absolutely necessary or don’t need to be done now. I suspect many leaders share this experience. Organizations have a way of consuming our schedule, which is precisely why we must be extraordinarily intentional and even courageous with our time, taking back that scarce resource and using it for our own and our organization’s learning. We can decline invitations, reduce email time, delegate tasks, and question “false deadlines” by asking ourselves whether something is truly urgent. We can find proactive ways to break out of the iron cage.
Part of this liberation is to go outside the organization for new insights, inspiration, and ideas—outside of our well-established teams, social networks, and our fields of specialization. Decades of research have demonstrated that project teams that remain together for extended periods without meaningful changes in their composition (bringing in people with different backgrounds and experiences) are less likely to generate innovative ideas. Why? Because members of long-running teams habitually draw ideas from a narrow band of sources: each other. They seldom communicate with people working on different projects in other departments, or at least don’t rely on them for ideas. So their ideas keep recirculating within the group, making fresh solutions harder to discover.
In his studies reported widely in both academic journals and popular media, the sociologist Ronald S. Burt has found that, on the other hand, standout ideas come from managers who forge conversations with people outside their immediate circles. Those people span what Burt refers to as “structural holes,” gaps between different groups of professionals—between, say, sales and engineering staffs. And why are ideas so critical and powerful in the first place? As a daily reminder, all I have to do is walk down the hall in Fulton and by the office of Seidner University Professor Paul Romer. He won a Nobel Prize in economics for demonstrating how ideas propel innovation and growth, and he looks for ideas in all places, something we encourage every student to do.
There are ways to find new ideas that shape the future without huge investments in time. Being a careful observer of everyday life around us is a critical habit of the “Ever to Excel” leader. Countless innovations have resulted
from simply following baseball legend Yogi Berra’s offbeat wisdom—“You can observe a lot just by watching.” Take frozen foods, for example.
In the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people journeyed far to take part in the Canadian fur trade. Many saw how inhabitants of the northerly regions stored their food in the winter—by burying meats and vegetables in the snow. But probably few of them entertained thoughts about how this custom might relate to other fields of endeavor. One who did was a young man named Clarence Birdseye, who spent four years on a fur-trading expedition. He was amazed to find that freshly caught fish and duck, frozen quickly in such a fashion, retained their taste and texture. He wondered: Why can’t we sell food in the United States that operates on the same basic principle? With such thoughts, an industry was born.
Birdseye developed the means of freezing foods rapidly and then sold his ideas and processes to General Foods in 1930. (He later developed inexpensive freezer displays that enabled a system of distribution.) His name—adapted for brand purposes as Birds Eye—is still seen by all who open freezer doors in supermarkets.
Good observers are equally attentive to their own experiences. Consider Natalie White ’20, who grew up playing basketball and experienced the discomfort of wearing sneakers designed typically for men’s feet, which puts women at greater risk of knee, ankle, and leg injuries. The realization crystallized when she saw an advertisement featuring WNBA players holding sneakers named after NBA players. “You can be the best in your game, but at the peak of your career, you’ll still be promoting products made for someone else,” she recalls thinking.
Most basketball sneakers marketed to women are basically smaller versions of men’s footwear, not designed for the slimmer width, narrower heel, and other features of women’s feet. As a student, White began collaborating with freelance shoe designers and tested early prototypes with members of BC’s varsity women’s basketball team. Her brand of basketball shoes, Moolah Kicks, is now sold in stores nationwide.
Getting ideas is one thing; storing those ideas and keeping them within reach is another essential practice. While spreadsheets and digital documents work well, many creative professionals prefer tactile approaches. Renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp begins each project with a cardboard box labeled with the project name. “As the piece progresses, I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance,” she explains in The Creative Habit. She keeps notebooks, news clippings, books, photographs, art objects, even toys in these boxes. The materials for Movin’ Out, a dance musical set to Billy Joel’s hits, filled twelve boxes.
I once interviewed Ronald L. Sargent when he was chairman and CEO of Staples (he is now interim CEO of Kroger and serves on the Carroll School’s advisory board), and I mentioned the importance of filing away ideas rather than letting them evaporate. He responded instantly, “I don’t file it. I carry it.” Sargent then pulled out a thick file folder containing active ideas, including a clipping from The Wall Street Journal, a note written to himself while on a flight, a hard copy of a PowerPoint presentation, and other useful material. “I carry it with me. All the time,” he said. A file folder of ideas in the days of digitalization? It may sound arcane, but I think not. Whatever works quickly, easily, and effectively is the best idea-system for you.
Ideas also need testing: Even those we think are fabulous at first can turn out to be duds. For that reason, experimentation is an indispensable skill of leadership and learning, and a highly underrated one. Prototyping is one form of experimentation and can be as simple as soliciting verbal feedback from people, preferably including those outside your usual circles, or putting the idea in the form of a memo, a visualization on paper, or a sketch of a new process.
Experimentation goes further. We run experiments on a regular basis at the Carroll School, which include piloting new courses and programs. In that way, teams of any kind not only test but also develop ideas, regardless of how promising they were to begin with, as Michael Schrage details in his book The Innovator’s Hypothesis:
While on a fur-trading expedition, Clarence Birdseye observed that rapidly frozen fish retained their freshness—an insight that sparked the birth of the frozen food industry.
Birdseye: Bettmann; Tharp: Bob Berg/Getty Images
“I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance.”
Renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp stores her ideas in a cardboard box, and as each project develops:
“What’d you get inside the camera’s frame? That’s all I care about.”
Academy Award–winning filmmaker Ron Howard
data, reports, and conversations—all aimed at making sure our faculty’s teaching and research, our curriculum, and our student support are infused with new ideas and experiments in the spirit of “Ever to Excel.”
Jim Collins, in his book Built to Last, refers to these kinds of efforts as “Clock Building.” With a commitment to change and a bit of discomfort, leaders can build organizational “clocks”—processes, systems, routines, calendars, and culture—that alter the organization’s relationship to time. That encourages a healthy flow of attention to new ideas for learning along the path of excellence.
Ultimately, leadership for tomorrow requires clarity about what matters most, what we should learn about, and what doesn’t deserve our attention. Academy Award–winning director Ron Howard, who gave the keynote at our annual Finance Conference in May, says that at the end of the day, what matters to him is not how big his crews are or how much equipment he has. “What’d you get inside the [camera’s] frame? That’s all I care about,” he says, explaining that what he sees through the lens is the story he’s trying to tell.
How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More Than Good Ideas. Leaders need both the confidence to put ideas to the test and the humility to quickly acknowledge when plans fall short.
The best organizations are built for this kind of productive experimentation, and yes, failure. One of my favorite statements by a chief executive was Jeff Bezos’s letter to Amazon shareholders in 2016, in which he stated: “I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins.” Experimentation makes that a triplet. I think of the Carroll School as a place that encourages students to experiment with different ideas, approaches, and disciplines. For one thing, we require all of our students to venture into the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences to take a substantial number of non-management courses, beyond Boston College’s core curriculum. Not all of their experiments will work out, and failure itself offers lessons equal to success (though they might be a bit more painful to endure).
Engaging in the varied habits of learning takes more than good intentions. Leaders need to become architects of time, creating the processes, routines, and systems that will yield forward-looking ideas and possibilities. At the Carroll School, I have worked with my team to bake these practices into our daily, weekly, and monthly management lives. This means creating a variety of information flows, including
What do we, as leaders, see through our leadership frames? Every leader needs a clear perspective and focus, and everything that kind of matters or is sometimes important or that’s for show and tell can’t be inside that frame. We must identify what truly matters and maintain our strategic focus. Perhaps it’s creating exceptional customer experiences, recruiting and developing great talent, or advancing breakthrough innovations. Other aspects of our work remain important, but staying alert to our fundamental priorities is essential. What will your organization look like three, five, 10 years from now? How will you continue to develop yourself and your team to think broadly, creatively, and analytically, as we seek to do with every one of our students? Where will you find the ideas that help you to always “do better” and excel into the future?
The ancient imperative “Ever to Excel” remains as relevant today as it was on the plains of Troy. It reminds us that leadership isn’t about having arrived at excellence— it’s about the perpetual journey toward it. By breaking free from the imposed cage of the present, letting loose our time for learning, seeking diverse perspectives, observing carefully, capturing ideas, and embracing experimentation, we nurture the conditions for sustained excellence in whatever field we lead.
As you reflect on your leadership journey, ask yourself: What will you do tomorrow to bend the bars of your cage? How will you invest in the future while managing the present? The answers to these questions will help write your own story of excellence—one that continues to unfold, day after day, year after year.
Author Jim Collins calls it “Clock Building”—shaping a culture that drives sustained progress. The concept calls for creating systems and routines that foster new ideas in pursuit of excellence.
NOT SHYING AWAY
Shavel’le Olivier ’14 would tell you that she has always been a bit of an introvert. Now, as executive director of Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, she’s forging her own style of leadership and drawing accolades for her urban innovations in a lively though marginalized neighborhood of Boston.
BY Jaclyn Jermyn
BY
Kelly Davidson
PHOTOGRAPHS
In2019, Shavel’le Olivier ’14 decided she was going to do something she would never have thought to do before: She was going to bike 400 miles from Boston to Montreal with the Boston Cyclists Union. “I can be very scared of doing things,” she says. As much as she loved biking around the city, she had never consistently rode as much as the trip would require. Still, she was determined to push herself. It was a grueling quest. The first four days, she was one of the very last people in the group to finish, exhausted beyond belief. But by the fifth and last day, she was no longer trail-
ing behind—she was surging ahead. “I know it’s cliche, but what I really learned from that trip is that I can do things if I put my mind to it,” Olivier explains, her face breaking into a wide smile.
It’s with this same quiet determination that Olivier has risen up the ranks of Boston grassroots organization Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition (MFFC) over the past 15 years to become executive director. Now, the self-described introvert is gaining wide attention for her leadership as a social entrepreneur in the community she calls home, while also connecting her alma mater to one of the city’s most disenfranchised neighborhoods.
Olivier was 17 when she went looking for a job at MFFC, which encourages healthy living through access to nourishing food and promotion of physical activity in Mattapan. “I didn’t want to ask my dad for money,” she says, adding that she saw how hard her father worked—as director of environmental services, grounds, and laundry at the nowclosed Carney Hospital—to provide for her and her twin sister. “I just wanted to be responsible.”
At the time, the organization was looking to collect feedback from community residents about improvements they would like to see in this diverse and vibrant but historically marginalized section of Boston. Around 94 percent of the neighborhood’s residents are nonwhite, and a 2023 report by the city found that Mattapan has the lowest life expectancy of any Boston neighborhood at 77.3 years.
MFFC brought on a group of teens, including Olivier, to do outreach and gather data. She had lived in Mattapan for five years, but it had yet to feel like home. “When you’re young, you’re not able to really explore the neighborhood on your own,” she explains. “When I joined MFFC, I got to explore the neighborhood’s challenges and assets, and learn who was who.”
Even when their project wrapped up, the recently hired teens stayed involved. They named themselves the Vigorous Youth and embedded themselves into the organization’s DNA—Vigorous Youth remains the name of MFFC’s leadership and development program for 14-to-21-year-olds.
During the warmer months, the teens would work the MFFCsponsored Mattapan Square farmers market and an MFFC farm stand, and maintain local community gardens. Then they started thinking bigger. Olivier and the Vigorous Youth spearheaded the launch of Mattapan on Wheels, an annual neighborhood biking day, now in its 15th year.
The event loans bikes to community members and gets them pedaling on paths like the verdant and winding Neponset River Greenway Trail. MFFC helped to successfully advocate for the development and extension of the trail through Mattapan, and now, Mattapan on Wheels has gained enough traction to draw past participants like city councilors, state representatives, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. It also crystallized Olivier’s passion for transportation advocacy. “[Mattapan on Wheels] confirmed my love for creating things,” she says. “I’m really good at taking things from idea to reality. That’s my special power.”
While she was learning on the job, Olivier also found the community she had been craving. The women on the organization’s advisory board quickly became mentors, and took any opportunity to support and nurture her. One of those women was Vivien Morris, a public health specialist, MFFC’s founder and chair, and former community engagement manager for the Carroll School’s Joseph E. Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action.
“She was a leader from the beginning, but a very shy leader,” says Morris, who started MFFC in 2006. “It was clear that she was doing quite a
bit of thinking about what could be done to support others. Her shyness never stopped her from having the impact that she was hoping to have.”
Even when she began at Boston College (studying marketing as well as management and leadership), Olivier commuted from her campus dorm back to Mattapan most weekends to continue working on MFFC projects. By then, the neighborhood did feel like home because of the relationships she had been able to cultivate there. MFFC was “a safe place for me to take risks,” she says. “Being here gave me the opportunity to go at my own pace and feel valued.” At the same time, her Carroll School experience was starting to shape the kind of leader she could be.
Olivier credits classes like “Leadership,” taught by Judith Clair, a management and organization professor and William S. McKiernan ’78 Family Faculty Fellow, with teaching her that there’s no one way to be a leader. “I wasn’t some [extroverted] person, I wasn’t white, and I wasn’t a man,” she says, ticking off examples of prototypical leaders on her fingers. “But I was just me and I was making a contribution to the community, and people valued that.”
She joined AmeriCorps after graduation, working with youth in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood as part of the DREAM Program nonprofit. She then took a job as the executive assistant to the CEO of Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center, where she got a crash course in nonprofit governance. With each volunteer role and job, Olivier was learning something new she could bring back to her work at MFFC.
While participating in AmeriCorps, Olivier became MFFC’s co-chair— alongside her mentor Morris—in 2015, and later, the Youth Program Manager, a position she developed herself. She was helping the group set itself up for the future. One of the biggest items on MFFC’s wishlist was trying to secure the funding to hire an executive director. Olivier knew just the person for the job.
“I knew in my heart that I wanted to be executive director, but I was so scared,” she says. But when she finally expressed her interest to the advisory board, she was met with instant approval. “I had no experience being ED—the only thing that I had was passion,” she adds. “They had a lot of trust in me.”
The way Morris tells it, Olivier’s desire to become executive director didn’t surprise her at all. “I had her in mind already—the question was really going to be ‘was she interested?’” she says. “Maybe I’ve never exactly said that to her, but I actually went out and looked for the funding with her in mind.”
Olivier stepped into the role during summer 2019, and from MFFC’s yellow-walled, second floor office on a bustling stretch of Blue Hill Avenue, she has spent that time slowly but steadily growing the organization, “so we no longer have to struggle,” she says. This includes adding staff, securing more funding and community partners, and expanding programming. She has also been growing her own knowledge base: She received a
“Mattapan on Wheels confirmed my love for creating things. I’m really good at taking things from idea to reality. That’s my special power.”
Shavel’le Olivier ’14
master’s degree from Northeastern University in Nonprofit Management in 2019. Since then, she has also completed certificate programs in public health and management at Boston University and Harvard Business School Online.
In 2020, Olivier started Transportation Talks, a series bringing together people from neighborhoods like Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury to engage in conversations about equity and accessibility in transportation. After catching the attention of the Boston Transportation Department, Olivier and former MFFC coworker Chavella Lee-Pacheco were brought on as youth engagement consultants. The experience inspired them to start community engagement firm Consult LeLa in 2021 to invite more young people into high-level conversations about urban planning and development.
The Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action has been collaborating with MFFC for nearly a decade, especially through the center’s highly competitive summer internship program. The center’s executive director, Neil McCullagh, says MFFC is now enjoying the fruits of Olivier’s long-term goal setting. “She’s engaged in much more than just food and fitness,” he says, referring to her advocacy on such issues as transportation. “In Mattapan, she is such a force.”
In 2024, Oliver was named one of Boston Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” for her impact in the Boston area. She was also awarded the inaugural Emerging Leaders Award at the City of Boston’s EmpowerHer Black Women’s Health Conference. “Shavel’le is always thinking about the future and planning ahead,” says Abby Morgan ’26, who interned with MFFC last summer through the Corcoran Center’s partnership. She adds that these qualities showed up in every aspect of Olivier’s work, down to the care she put into emails. “I learned the importance of proactive outreach and meaningful connections. One small act can make someone’s day.”
Building authentic relationships is an essential part of Olivier’s leadership evolution—at Boston College she has also collaborated with classes like “Leading for Social Impact” and supported student-led projects at MFFC—but she says it still catches her off guard when people call her a mentor. “I’m 33 and sometimes I still have self-doubt. I’m still learning. So I am giving back to people like me so they can also see themselves in this type of role.”
As MFFC prepares for its 20th anniversary in 2026, Olivier has ended up right back where she started: surveying Mattapan residents about what they really want from a community organization committed to their health and well-being. She also wants to make sure that the work of the organization’s forebears has not gone in vain. “They gave so much to me. I do this to continue their legacy,” she says, looking around at the children’s drawings, project todo lists, and bikes awaiting repair that fill the office. “You hear about jobs where you go in, make your money, leave, and don’t do anything else. That is not what this is for me. This is what I was meant to do.”
Join
While making friends and belting R&B songs,
Toni Martin ’27 has also been able to flex her management muscles by overseeing the BC BEATS budget as the group’s treasurer.
the Club
Pressure is mounting for students to craft the perfect resumes and snag their dream jobs, and co-curricular experiences on campus have evolved to align closely with these career goals. Intense application processes and exclusivity are now expected realities of some of the most popular management clubs. So what’s a student to do? Carve out your own path, say career advisors.
BY Mason Braasch
BY Christopher Churchill
PHOTOGRAPHS
Onthe first Friday of the fall semester, the green lawns of Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus are dotted with white tents and folding tables. From one corner of the quad, a speaker blasts a recording of a student a cappella group’s latest performance, while a laptop on a different table plays a video of a dance team at last year’s Showdown dance competition. Members of the ultimate frisbee club team throw neon discs across the lawn as other representatives of the more than 300 student organizations hand out candy and flyers to interested underclassmen. At one table, Thomas Galvin ’25 is holding up a handwritten poster that reads “Are you a freshman in CSOM?”
As the vice president of the Fulton Leadership Society (FLS), this is Galvin’s chance to recruit a new class of firstyear students for the organization. During last September’s involvement fair, Galvin and his fellow club members talked to more than 200 students expressing interest in FLS, which offers members opportunities to strengthen their personal and professional development and gain leadership experience.
Following the fair, an intense process begins. Out of the 160 applicants the club received in Fall 2024, around half moved on to the first round of interviews with a few group members. Another 50 percent were cut before the second round of interviews. By the end of September, 27 first-year students received personal phone calls from FLS seniors officially welcoming them into the organization.
This arduous system is not unique to FLS: Many of the management-oriented student clubs on campus require members to submit applications and participate in interviews for membership or special mentorship programs, often within the first weeks of the semester. “There is a pressure to join as many clubs as you can,” says Galvin, who has also been a member of the Finance Academy, Accounting Academy, and the Boston College Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. “Making cuts is the hardest part of the process for us—we know how stressful it is as a freshman. It can feel like your life is over if you get rejected.”
The whole thrust of student clubs has been shifting in recent years. As recruiting timelines for summer internships get more aggressive and job searches become even more competitive, there is a growing feeling among management students everywhere, not just at Boston College, that clubs are simply a tool to build one’s resume. At the same time, some students are also channeling an older idea of clubs—that they’re simply interesting and fun, and may offer students a chance to stretch themselves and broaden their perspective. That makes sense both personally and professionally, according to advice given to students at the Carroll School of Management.
Career advisors say that a list of exclusive and competitive clubs on the resume isn’t specifically what employers are looking for. They’re looking for leadership, accountability, and ambition—skills that can be nurtured in any club at Boston College, sometimes especially those that are off the beaten path. “On-campus involvement is one of the most impactful components of a student’s formation during their time on the Heights,” says Amy Donegan, assistant dean for undergraduate career advising, noting the influence that activities have on the undergraduate experience. It’s up to students to seek that meaning within any group they get involved with.
When Toni Martin ’27 arrived on campus, many of her first encounters with fellow first-years were questions about which clubs she planned to apply for. After moving across the country from California, she wanted to find a supportive community, but the competitive environment surrounding these clubs made her hesitant. “Having those conversations with people that I didn’t really know made it seem like they were only interested in getting into these exclusive groups and not connecting with the people around them,” she says.
Donegan explains that when underclassmen see their older peers scoring their dream jobs or succeeding in their careers, they often feel the need to follow the exact path. “A lot of pressure exists within the Carroll School bubble,” she says. “It’s really hard to get away from the gravitational pull of feeling like there’s a right and a wrong way to do things.”
Many clubs offer general membership as an option for students who just want to attend club-wide events like panels or informational sessions, but these meetings can sometimes bring out enough students to fill a lecture hall, making it hard for those seeking friendship or community to find their footing. “When I attended those meetings, I found they were just too big for me to really engage and make personal connections,” says Martin. Instead, she joined the a cappella group Black Experience in America Through Song, or BC BEATS, and became part of a tight-knit group that shares her love of performing.
At a rehearsal in April, the 12 BEATS members are sitting in a circle, discussing everything from their upcoming exams to what fruit each person would be. As they move to the front of the room, now standing in a tight circle, Martin leads vocal warm-ups and everyone jokes and giggles between their do re mis. “The best part about being in a creative or cultural group is that people feel like they can be themselves,” she says. “I feel more deeply connected to my peers as a person [rather] than whatever they’re doing professionally.”
While making friends and belting R&B songs, she has also been able
to flex her management muscles by overseeing the BEATS budget as the group’s treasurer. “I see my financial knowledge as a way to enable my organization to do the things we want to do,” says Martin, who is studying information systems and entrepreneurship. She adds that being on the club’s executive board has also strengthened her leadership and communications skills.
She’s not the only one trying to blend her co-curricular activities with both her management education and other passions. Sophia Kaiser ’26, an accounting and information systems student, is the current treasurer for BC On Tap, a student-run performing arts group ded-
“There is a pressure to join as many clubs as you can. Making cuts is the hardest part of the process for us—we know how stressful it is as a freshman. It can feel like your life is over if you get rejected.”
Thomas Galvin ’25, vice president of the Fulton Leadership Society
icated to teaching and showcasing modern and traditional styles of tap dancing. Kaiser joined On Tap to continue participating in an activity she has been doing her whole life, but her time on the team has also become a way to reflect and to manage outside pressures. “Tapping is something that lets me let out everything that happened during the day,” she says. “It’s kind of like a meditation.”
Kaiser is also involved in management clubs like Women in Business, Women in STEM, and Accounting Academy, but she explains that outside of classes, BC On Tap is her main priority. On top of rehearsing with the group 10 hours each week, Kaiser says she can spend hours “working behind the scenes” on her treasurer responsibilities, which include making an annual budget, buying costumes and equipment, and consulting with other members of the team’s executive board on the best ways to utilize their funds. “Before taking on the role, I didn’t have any experience actually putting my accounting and business knowledge to use outside of the classroom,” she adds.
In any student organization, there are opportunities to strengthen management and leadership skills. “Leadership is where you have impact. It’s not what your title is or how many applications you filled out to get there,” says Donegan, adding that it can sometimes be easier for students to take initiative in clubs that are not as densely populated. “Impact is impact. It doesn’t matter whether the setting is an investment association, a religious group, or a cooking club.”
Management clubs are a valuable resource for students at the Carroll School and offer them unique opportunities to connect with professionals and build upon the skills they learn in the classroom. But for students with other interests, passions, or even the desire to try something new, clubs that don’t fall into a desired career path can be just as effective at capturing the attention of a potential employer.
As the founder of Boston College’s perfume and cologne club, Eau de Boston, Elisa Cha ’27 has found herself talking fragrance during interviews for summer internships at top accounting firms. One hiring manager even floated the idea of Cha leading a fragrance-themed, team-bonding workshop, should she come on board. Kaiser too has found herself breaking from the script during interviews. “Even when I would mention my other clubs, the interviewers always ended up asking me about On Tap,” she says, adding that the discussions paid off—she accepted a summer auditing internship with PwC. “It was nice to be able to talk about something besides business. I think it makes you more of an interesting person to interview.”
This comes as no surprise to career counselors. “The people who are viewing you as a candidate are not a monolith,” says Donegan, pointing out that clubs can
“Tapping is something that lets me let out everything that happened during the day. It’s kind of like a meditation.”
Sophia Kaiser ’26, treasurer for BC On Tap
also provide meaningful experiences for students to share when they are asked behavioral-based questions, like how they navigate delegating tasks or manage their extracurricular responsibilities amid heavy course loads.
Clubs also facilitate environments to explore new things with relatively low stakes, like for Owen Amir-Arjomand ’28, who joined one of BC’s Latin dance teams without any prior experience. He had played basketball throughout high school, but when he was deciding whether to join the club basketball team or the dance team, he opted for the group that would offer him new experiences. “When I met with the Latin dance team at the involvement fair, they seemed like such a great group that I thought, ‘Why not take a risk and try something new?” he says. “I’m not great [at dancing], but the fun thing about the team is that there’s not a lot of pressure to be amazing right away. It’s a great place to learn.”
Other students use clubs to explore different career options. “When I first came to college I had no idea what I wanted to do, but attending clubs’ panels and information sessions helped me figure out what path I wanted to follow,” says Galvin, who eventually decided to pursue concentrations in finance and accounting for CPAs. “Talking to upperclassmen and alumni exposed me to different possible routes that I didn’t know existed before I joined the clubs.” One of these upperclassmen mentors from FLS even led Galvin to his full-time job on KPMG’s Financial Due Diligence team.
None of this means that students should steer away from the highly competitive, career-focused clubs, if that’s what excites them.
Emma Mooney ’28 isn’t currently a part of any non-management clubs, and that’s just fine with her. “I’ve found a good community and it doesn’t feel stressful,” she says. She was part of her high school’s business club, so she already had an idea of the management clubs she wanted to join when she arrived on the Heights. She quickly signed up for Women in Business and applied for an analyst position in the BC Investment Club. On a whim, she also applied for the Start@Shea Freshman Innovation Program, a yearlong commitment through the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship that facilitates workshops, mentorship, and hands-on experiences for those interested in the discipline. Later that year, she took home first place at the center’s Elevator Pitch and Strakosch Venture competitions with an idea she developed within the first months of the program.
“Entrepreneurship was always something that I was interested in, but joining the Freshman Innovation Program made me realize how much I loved it,” she says. “It’s had a huge impact on how I’m spending my time and how I want to approach my future.”
Likewise, Galvin understands that any club can be a “fun” one if you’re passionate about what you’re doing. “To me, Fulton Leadership Society is not a resume booster. It’s actually meaningful,” he says, adding that he was motivated to take on a leadership role and give back to the FLS community during his senior year since it had such a profound impact on him early in his college experience. “Once I found what I wanted to do, I wanted to help the freshmen in the same way that upperclassmen helped me.”
And some students take their own routes to careercentric activities. Amir-Arjomand joined the below-theradar Business Analytics Academy (BAA) during the first weeks of his freshman year. He was hesitant to devote his time to the rigorous application processes of clubs that many of his peers were gravitating toward, and realized he might be able to make more of an impact in a group that was smaller or less well-known. “I noticed a gap between the amount of students studying business analytics and the amount of opportunities available for them outside the classroom,” says Amir-Arjomand, referring to alumni speakers and opportunities to gain hands-on industry experience, which the BAA lacked in comparison to clubs geared toward finance or investment banking students. “As I started to get more involved, I realized that there was a big opportunity for me to rise to the occasion and try to provide more resources for this club.” Amir-Arjomand shared his ideas for making the club more accessible for students studying other management concentrations, and by the second semester of his freshman year, he was selected as one of BAA’s co-presidents.
The future is top of mind for many Carroll School students as they navigate their time on campus, but their advisors are also quick to remind them that college is an important time of personal growth, regardless of what they pursue after graduation. Student formation is a cornerstone of the Boston College experience, and co-curricular programs are a big part of that puzzle. “When you look back at your time at BC, the way that you choose to spend your time outside of the classroom is going to have so much impact in terms of how you feel about this place,” says Donegan. “It’s smart to take advantage of these opportunities, and use your engagement as a way to expand your network and your learning.”
For Cha, the most rewarding aspect of Eau de Boston has been to share her passion with other students, in part by leading perfume-making workshops on campus. “My favorite part has been seeing how happy people are when they make their own fragrance,” she says. “I really like providing other students with an experience that might not be accessible to them anywhere else.” The boost that the club adds to her resume, along with the conversations that it prompts during interviews with employers, is just an added bonus.
Assets
Meet My Financial Advisor, the Robot
Robo-advising can help manage your money, but at a price.
As anyone who accepts suggestions from Netflix or Spotify knows, technology can make you lazy: You passively take the tips instead of searching yourself. So it goes too with personal financial technology (fintech), according to research by Carroll School Associate Professor of Finance Jonathan Reuter. Reuter and colleagues have shown that computer-generated recommendations—so-called robo-advice— can help people reduce their debts faster. Those who take the advice avoid late fees and extinguish their costliest loans first. But in a multi-part experiment, the researchers also found robo-advice recipients didn’t improve their money-management skills. When later asked to work through debt problems on
their own, study recipients who had earlier received robo-advice made common mistakes. “They’d send an equal amount of money to each credit card—if the two loans have different interest rates, you should pay more toward the one with the higher rate,” Reuter says. “Or they’d pay off a smaller balance first, even if it had a lower rate, just because they’d feel good about having paid something off.” They had learned little. But one group did improve—folks who didn’t receive any robo-advice and had to work through debt problems on their own as part of the study. The researchers concluded that automated guidance “crowds out learning by doing,” something to consider the next time you log onto ChatGPT. TIM GRAY
A RETURN ON INVESTMENT
ONE MBA STUDENT’S PERSONAL STORY REFLECTS A BROADER DESIRE TO GIVE BACK AMONG CARROLL SCHOOL STUDENTS.
BY JACLYN JERMYN
Leaning against the wood-paneled wall of a McElroy Commons conference room, Jake Smith, MBA ’25, watches as 13 middle schoolers drop their backpacks and crowd around circular tables. He’s here to run an Invest ’N Kids tutoring session. “It’s my favorite part of the week,” Smith says, as snippets of conversations on Greek gods, exponents, and upcoming state standardized tests swirl around him.
For more than 25 years, Invest ’N Kids (INK) has been pairing Carroll School of Management graduate students with Brookline middle schoolers on Thursday evenings for tutoring assistance, financial literacy games, and dinner. Smith knows the routine well—he was once one of those middle schoolers.
“It’s very full circle for me,” he says. Smith started attending INK as a preteen through the program Steps to Success, which provides low-income Brookline children and teens with educational and social opportunities. He credits Steps with showing him programs like INK that changed the trajectory of his life. Once he started his part-time MBA program in 2021, joining INK as a volunteer tutor was a “no-brainer,” says Smith, who works in the marketing industry. After two years of involvement, he stepped up as co-president of the Carroll School–sponsored service group.
Graduate students at the school are required to complete a certain number of community service hours during their programs: 20 hours for full- and part-time MBA students, and 10 for the other masters programs. “The thought was that this would make us stand out to prospective students, and it would attract a certain kind of person that wanted to be in the community and help others,” says Marilyn Eckelman, the Carroll School’s associate dean of graduate programs. To her knowledge, this is a unique requirement among graduate management programs, but other schools have expressed an interest in establishing their own guidelines.
Since getting involved with INK again, Smith knows he’s in the unique position of understanding these students. While talking with one middle schooler from the William H. Lincoln School—where Smith also went—he
Jake Smith, MBA ’25
shares a story about once beating her teacher in a badminton game. When others restlessly avoid pulling out their homework, he admits he used to do the same. “I talk to them about how we’re so lucky to have this time where you can get help,” Smith says.
Even late in the spring semester, a graduate student is getting onboarded as a new tutor. She immediately dives in, pulling up a chair next to a student. A new tutor in the group also allows for each table to have a Carroll School student, or two, as resources. “I think the students like to do things together,” says Eckelman. The graduate office frequently sends out information on volunteer opportunities to its more than 800 students.
For the wider Boston College community, there is a Volunteer and Service Learning Center database. While the Carroll School’s undergraduate students are not required to volunteer, this desire to give back remains pervasive. Roughly 43 percent of undergraduate management students engage in community service during a typical week, according to a University survey.
“Something that drew me to BC was the service culture,” says Erin Doherty ’25. Early on in her Boston College experience, the finance and business analytics student got involved with the University’s Christian Life Community and completed the PULSE service learning program where she regularly engaged in volunteer projects.
During her last winter break as a college student, Doherty traveled to Puebla, Mexico, as part of Arrupe International Encounters, one of Boston College’s signature faith, peace, and justice programs.
“I choose to surround myself with people who want to understand other people’s perspectives,” Doherty explains, noting that Arrupe is all about thoughtfully engaging with different communities around the world.
The Puebla trip was themed around sustainability, and while Doherty and other group members worked on farming projects, they learned about the challenges facing local farmers. They also spoke with community members including migrants who had landed in Puebla from other South and Central American countries.
She knows that at the end of the day, being in Mexico wasn’t really about farming—she quips that the farmers can do that quite well without her—but it was about restoring human dignity. “People can look down on farmers or look down on migrants,” she says. “The thing I got out of the trip was that everyone’s a human. The joy of togetherness was very universal.”
“The one thing we always try to do is to show that BC has a soul. We’re always looking for ways to show [students] a better way to live as a contributing human being,” says Eckelman, adding that as students leave the University, she hopes they don’t forget to “look behind you and see who you can help.”
Smith also feels that joy of togetherness when working with the young students of INK. Some will tell him it’s now their dream to go to Boston College. “What’s two hours of my time to help somebody go down the same path as me? It’s really as simple as that,” he says. “I get to give other people the opportunity to have the opportunities I was given.”
What’s the Buzz?
If you were to get a bird’s-eye view of Fulton Hall, beyond the classic green tile roofing and skylight filling the atrium with sun on clear days, you would also be able to spot something more unusual: a worn, wooden box set on cinder blocks and full of bees.
No, Fulton Hall isn’t dealing with a bee infestation. This beehive has called Fulton’s roof home since 2016, thanks to a donation from Donna and Fred Seigel, P ’13, ’19, and coordination by the University’s Office of Sustainability. Boston-based beekeeping company Best Bees maintains the hive and ensures its residents are thriving.
Not unlike the Carroll School students and professors floors below, “The bees really do most of the magic themselves. The beekeepers just make sure that they’re set up for success,” says Best Bees Creative Director Paige Mulhern. Beyond regular hive maintenance, beekeepers also provide reports on hive health and harvest any honey. That honey is then processed, put into jars with custom “Honey from the Heights” labels, and given to the Office of Sustainability to distribute or gift. If you’re lucky, you may even find it at BC Dining’s Farmers Market.
While the honey produced is a sweet bonus, overall the Office of Sustainability considers the hive primarily a biodiversity effort. In the US alone, honeybees pollinate $15 billion in crops annually, according to the USDA, but researchers also report a steep decline in bee populations since 2007. Urban beekeeping can help get those numbers on the rise again. “As we see our pollinators start to dwindle in numbers, it’s great to be cheerleaders and get more people involved in repopulating,” Mulhern says.
So what makes the Heights an ideal place for a beehive? It has a lot to do with the meticulous campus landscaping. Bees will forage for pollen and nectar up to five miles from their hives, but they especially enjoy the clover plants and oak trees that dot our campuses.
While the hive isn’t publicly accessible for safety reasons, Mulhern hopes spreading awareness about the project will still inspire change. “[Hives] can spark a lot of curiosity on a campus. It’s a great way to get the next generation excited about sustainability,” she says—Carroll School students might even consider how to push sustainability at their future companies. “This program can inspire them to be movers and shakers.” JACLYN JERMYN
Assets Community
Wild Cards
YOU MAY KNOW THEM AS MEMBERS OF THE CARROLL SCHOOL’S WORLD-CLASS FACULTY. BUT OFF THE HEIGHTS, THEY’RE FOLK MUSICIANS, MOUNTAINEERS, DANCERS, POKER PLAYERS, AND MORE—AND THERE’S MORE OVERLAP THAN YOU THINK.
BY JACLYN JERMYN
Jeffrey Pontiff always looks forward to his next poker game, especially the ones he plays annually in Las Vegas as part of the Financial Research Association conference. “It’s a real rush,” the Seidner Department of Finance professor says of the poker tournament, a standout event of the conference Pontiff cofounded. He could tell you stories of the two times he’s won the competition, beating finance academics from around the world, or perhaps the time a University of British Columbia professor learned how to play the game the night before, only to take the top prize.
He likens poker to playing a game of chicken. “Are they going to swerve left or right? And you have to think about the probability of them swerving [at all],” says Pontiff, who is also the James F. Cleary ’50, DBA H ’93 Chair in Finance. “Poker is like that—if you always bluff, you will lose. If you never bluff, you will lose.” He’s gotten the hang of the game over the 30 years he’s been playing, but it still finds ways to surprise him.
Plenty of Carroll School faculty members have hobbies they enjoy off the Heights—Portico Professor Christine Rojcewicz loves to surf, Accounting Professor Douglas (DJ) Stockbridge likes studying old maps, just to name a couple—but some are also choosing to explore the ways their personal hobbies and academia weave together.
“A mentor once said to me, ‘read outside your field, that’s where the interesting stuff is,’” says Sandra Waddock, the Thomas J. Galligan Chair and Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility. “Songwriting [for me] is part of the interesting stuff.” Waddock’s longtime love of music became a way to “read” outside of her research field of system transformation and corporate citizenship—she has even released two albums of original folk songs—but that doesn’t mean the two
worlds don’t overlap. She parlayed her regular jam sessions with local musicians into a paper, “Jamming for System Change: Towards Wellbeing and Flourishing for All,” published in the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion.
She’s not the only one taking this tack. Henrik Hagtvedt, chair of the Marketing Department and the Michael A. Gooch Family Faculty Fellow, studied art in addition to management, and worked as a painter for years—an experience that helped inspire his book Money and Marketing in the Art World, released last year. Juan Montes, an associate professor of the practice in the Management and Organization Department, drew on his experience of climbing the treacherous Kangshung Face of Mount Everest to illustrate building organizational resilience in research he published with colleagues in Organization Science and Harvard Business Review
So do these skills show up in the classroom too? Absolutely, says Pontiff. “I think a lot of the skills that a good finance professor has are skills that good poker players have,” he explains. He looks to pass along these skills to his students as they consider their future careers. “Imagine someone who’s an equity analyst who not only has to figure out what something’s worth using formulas and numbers, but also might get an assessment of what the future of this company looks like by a twitch that the CEO has whenever he talks about future revenue projections.”
Angela Ma, an assistant professor of finance, started taking ballet lessons at the age of four, even training with the prestigious Pa-
cific Northwest Ballet in Seattle for a summer in high school. “Part of my teaching philosophy that comes from dance is that you try to rehearse and thoroughly prepare beforehand so that it kind of gets into your bones,” says Ma. “Having an intuitive understanding of the material makes it such that you can have productive spontaneity in a live performance, like in the classroom.”
When a particular lesson isn’t clicking with students, she is able to change up her choreography on the fly, but she also sees the value of uncertainty that students might feel, over everything from financial concepts to their future careers. To her, uncertainty is necessary for curiosity.
“It’s like being a novice or an amateur at various things,” Ma says—recently she has been trying out salsa and swing dancing. “There is not just one thing we can do in life.” She adds that in a different universe she might have been an investment banker or a ballerina, but in another—this universe—“I’m really grateful to be teaching and doing research.”
In Montes’s classes, he’s just as likely to share stories of his mountaineering adventures as he is to talk about his time as a consultant, the CEO of a salmon production company, or the governor of the Los Lagos region of his native Chile. “Students, especially this generation, demand things that have meaning. Having a good life, a good salary, a good position, is very important, but everybody’s searching for meaning and meaningful things to do,” he says. “I’m not saying that you need to climb Mount Everest, but you need to find out what your Everest is.”
Clearing ESG for Takeoff
The aviation industry is responsible for 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions, so what was a former industry CEO like Rich Corrado, MBA ’92, doing lecturing about implementing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies? He knows a thing or two about creating change.
After reading last summer about Professor and Joseph L. Sweeney Chair Mary Ellen Carter’s undergraduate class, “ESG Reporting and Analysis: Accounting for a Changing World,” Corrado realized his experience establishing an ESG program as CEO of Air Transport Services Group (ATSG) could be useful to students learning about the concept. He has since spoken to two of Carter’s classes, offering real-life insights from a shifting industry.
Back in 2021, ATSG—an Ohio-based aviation company that leases planes and facilitates air cargo transportation for companies like Amazon—had been looking to amplify their sustainability efforts due to growing stakeholder interest. At the same time, companies in the International Air Transport Association, including ATSG, committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. “The environmental side of aviation is a very difficult space to mitigate,” Corrado says. He still wanted to make progress at ATSG, however incrementally, while the industry developed the technology needed for more sweeping changes.
Within a year, ATSG released its first sustainability report outlining a broad strategy. “People look at ESG, and focus on environment, but the S and the G are just as important,” he explains. On the governance side, the company diversified its board of directors, making a conscious effort to hire women and people of color. On the social side, ATSG instituted a parental leave policy, built an on-site health clinic for employees, and worked with the Ohio governor’s office to open a vaccination site at its headquarters during the pandemic.
While hopeful that future industry-wide advancements would help scale back carbon emissions, Corrado and his team looked for improvements they could make right away. Alongside investing in technologies to cut fuel usage, ATSG took steps like installing LED lighting in its two 400,000square-foot hangars—which saved enough energy to power 600 homes for a year. “You look at that number and you feel like you’re doing something right,” he says.
Corrado left the company in 2023. Now semiretired in Chestnut Hill—he has a consulting business and does some private equity work—he is sharing his experience to help students envision the real-world possibilities of their lessons. “What they’re learning is not just words on the page of a textbook,” he says. “Everybody’s going to have to deal with [ESG] one way or another.”
MASON BRAASCH
Assets Research
Faculty Findings
Carroll School researchers have lately investigated business questions ranging from the micro—how does one maintain a career identity amid life’s unpredictability? —to the macro—do companies avoid mergers that could annoy their customers? If anything unites this work, it’s the idea that the business world seldom operates as you’d expect.
TIM GRAY AND WILLIAM BOLE
Making Sweet Music of Messy Careers
Careers, like our messy lives, are complicated. A career might be summarized in a tidy narrative, yet can come with side gigs, sabbaticals, and second acts. Put simply, it can change, and that creates tension as someone puzzles out a career identity. In a paper published in the Academy of Management Review, Management and Organization Professor Jamie Ladge and colleagues put forward a theory that reconciles the anchoring effect of an enduring identity with the day-to-day reality of unexpected events and evolving skills. Under their
formulation, people continually both maintain and modify their career identity. They mentally balance whatever they see as their career through line with new opportunities and unexpected detours. This process—called career identifying—“allows individuals to adapt and accommodate a wide variety of careerrelated thoughts and actions while also holding a stable enough self-definition to serve as a reference point,” the coauthors write.
The Dirty Business of Being Green Companies are like people: They want to look good. If they can do that easily, so much the better. For example, Coughlin Family Professor of Finance Ran Duchin and colleagues have shown that, when pressured to be more sustainable, public companies don’t necessarily cut their pollution. Instead they sometimes just sell off
their polluting plants to their suppliers. And sure, the sellers do end up seeming greener—their operations appear less polluting since the dirty plants move off their books—but the world remains just as smoggy as before. Duchin and coauthors write in the Journal of Finance that this conduct smacks of greenwashing, in which companies try to look more sustainable without making real changes, so their “divestment of pollutive plants reflects a cosmetic redrawing of firm boundaries.” The researchers also find that corporate greenwashers can be shameless: Sellers will often talk up their commitment to sustainability in conference calls with investors after they’ve sold off polluting plants.
Putting Words in Their Mouths
If a friend were to post on social media about a brand experience they had, you’d probably think the content was their own. Think again. Some companies are now creating content for consumers to share—going beyond the standard practice of simply asking consumers to post about their experience. That can work remarkably well, according to an article by Accenture Professor of Marketing Katherine N. Lemon and coauthors in the Journal of Marketing. They refer to this as “firm-generated user content,” or FGUC—crafted for consumers “to share as
their own.” In one of several lab and field studies, the researchers compared a typical request for consumergenerated content—“Please consider posting about us on Twitter [X]”—with an FGUC that commended the product or service. The basic findings: Provided content “increases the likelihood that consumers share a post about their experience, by making the sharing process easier,” while also tempering negative opinions and thus lessening the chances of dissatisfied consumers sharing posts.
Does Pay Complexity Intoxicate CEOs?
With alcoholic beverages, moderation is key. That goes also for the features of executive pay plans, as Joseph L. Sweeney Chair and Professor of Accounting Mary Ellen Carter and colleagues find. With too many pay-plan features, as with too many drinks, CEOs can lose their bearings. Yet corporate pay plans are becoming ever more complicated, Carter and coauthors report in the Journal of Accounting and Economics. From 2006 to 2019, corporate boards added more of everything— kinds of pay (stock options, restricted stock, etc.), performance targets and measurement periods, and benchmarks. They were trying to better link pay to performance, but companies mostly ended up doing worse as CEOs paid attention to too many metrics and lost sight of what’s important. The researchers offer a warning: “Our study suggests that compensation contracts that include features that may be optimal individually can become suboptimal overall when many features are aggregated.”
Don’t Let a Crisis Go to Waste
A big data breach doesn’t just embarrass a company. It also says its IT systems can’t ward off hackers. When firms learn that, they do the sensible thing and hire more cybersecurity experts, especially in management and monitoring roles, according to Business Analytics Professor Sebastian Steffen and colleagues. Breached firms bring in more public relations staffers, too, the researchers find in an MIS Quarterly paper—which underscores the reputational damage that big hacks can cause. Interestingly, the PR hires happen quickly—perhaps as companies scramble to reassure customers and investors amid a crisis—while
Joseph L. Sweeney Chair and Professor of Accounting Mary Ellen Carter, below, studies how overly complex executive pay plans can backfire— causing CEOs to lose focus and companies to underperform.
the cybersecurity ones don’t come till several months later. Little research had examined hiring after big hacks because data was scarce. By combining information from several sources, Steffen and coauthors were able to link breaches and companies’ staffing responses.
Keep Your Friends Close and Your Customers Closer
Not annoying your customers would seem a commandment of business. Yet that simple idea can manifest in surprising ways. Take mergers and acquisitions. Accounting Professor and Clark Family Fellow Benjamin Yost, with colleagues including Farzana Afrin, PhD ’22, show that firms don’t just consider themselves when pondering mergers and acquisitions. They also think about their customers—not consumers, but companies they do business with. Yost and his coauthors find that companies avoid pairing up with customers’ rivals or the suppliers to those rivals, because these mergers would put their customers at a competitive disadvantage. Mergers entail extensive exchange of information between the parties, and sensitive details about the customers could be shared—which the rivals or suppliers then could use to undercut the customer. “Suppliers who undertake such mergers risk damaging or losing their existing relationships with their customers,” the researchers write in the Journal of Accounting Research.
This Free Advice May Cost You
In the world of corporate governance, proxy advisory firms loom large. They produce reports on public companies’ governance and make recommendations about how shareholders should vote in corporate elections on questions like who should serve on the board. Investors and researchers have long debated the worth of their reports and advice. Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow Andrey Malenko, Wargo Family Faculty Fellow Nadya Malenko, and a colleague argue in the Journal of Finance that proxy advisors’ reports do have value, but their voting recommendations should be interpreted in light of their desire to sell those reports. Advisors, the finance professors say, want to stir up controversy because doing that creates greater demand for their reports. So they’ll often make voting recommendations, which they give away for free, that contradict a corporate vote’s likely outcome (typically the one favored by management of the company holding the vote). In short, they’ll use their voting tips to gin up sales of their reports. Visit bc.edu/csom-research for more faculty research.
Assets Impact
A Principal Challenge
SCHOOL LEADERS COME TO CARROLL SCHOOL ACADEMY TO HONE THEIR MANAGEMENT SKILLS.
BY DANNA LORCH
Melissa Melendez was born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and got pregnant as a teen. “My school counselor told me I would never amount to anything,” Melendez says, shaking her head.
Determined to prove that prediction dead wrong, she became a school counselor herself—connecting with and helping teenagers in her underserved community for 20 years before being promoted to ninth-grade principal at Lawrence High School in 2021.
Overnight, she became responsible for leading more than 100 educators and 700 students. Because she lacked formal experience as a classroom teacher, Melendez doubted her ability to guide and inspire them effectively. Her own limiting beliefs became her biggest roadblock to success. But everything changed after she leaned into the Lynch Leadership Academy (LLA) at Boston College for support.
Since its founding 15 years ago, LLA has helped more than 1,500 principals from Massachusetts-based public, Catholic, and charter schools unlock their management abilities, strengthen their school communities, implement successful systems, and anchor their work in educational equity for all students. They’re piloting a program in Ohio as well.
Melendez received an LLA Fellowship in 2021 and joined a select cohort of around 30 school leaders for a 14-month intensive program. The training involves 150 hours of professional development on campus at Boston College, combined with four hours per month of one-on-one leadership coaching on-site at their respective schools. The coaching continues for those, like Melendez, whose schools sponsor the additional cost of time.
“A principal’s biggest challenge is that students need them to be good at their jobs from day one, and they make major decisions every day. We are helping them to learn the skills needed to move a community through ongoing change with great care and thought,” says LLA Executive Director Jenne Colasacco.
LLA was established with funding from philanthropists Peter Lynch ’65, H ’95, P ’01, and his late wife, Carolyn Lynch, H ’09, P ’01. For Carolyn, the program was personal. Her father worked as a school principal, and Colasacco says, “She often spoke about how much respect she had for his work but also how lonely it could be. To her, it felt
Melissa Melendez and LLA Leadership Coach Cristin Berry Pizzimenti meet monthly at Lawrence High School.
incredibly important to create a support network.” So far, LLA has impacted more than 250,000 students’ lives, partnering with school leaders in 70 communities.
The Carroll School of Management sponsors the academy in keeping with its broad conception of management education, which John and Linda Powers Family Dean Andy Boynton distinguishes from a narrow “business” focus. “We want to help people to become great leaders and managers wherever they are, not just in business but also in education, healthcare, nonprofits, and other sectors,” he explains.
Leadership skills—and spirit—are what Eileen McLaughlin, LSEHD ’98, felt she needed most when she became a fellow. “LLA taught me that leadership is not a burden—it’s a joy,” says McLaughlin, who began the program as a Catholic school principal, then became an LLA coach, and is now the Archdiocese of Boston’s superintendent of schools. “School success is really about leadership success. I learned how to strengthen my teachers and administrators and position them as leaders, too.”
For her part, Melendez says that by stepping outside her day-to-day life, she was able to thoughtfully read texts, learn new theories, and lean on her cohort. And she was matched with Cristin Berry Pizzimenti, an LLA alum, former charter school principal, and full-time LLA Leadership
Coach to around 80 educators annually. Berry Pizzimenti coaches her and other principals at Lawrence High (the school is so large, with 3,500 students, that it has multiple academies with a principal for each one). She and Melendez have met monthly at Lawrence High for three years now.
On a winter afternoon, the two are huddled over a laptop in a conference room. Even with the door closed, it’s easy to hear kids’ voices and rushed footsteps during class transitions. At the top of a whiteboard behind Melendez are these words she’s written out, reflecting her vision: “Each member of our school community is an intellectual achiever. Instruction is engaging, rigorous, collaborative, learnercentered, socially aware, and joyful.”
Ninth grade is uniquely challenging because students are pivoting from middle school to a new environment with more rigorous academic and behavioral expectations. In business terms, Melendez is basically trying to pull off a merger every school year, folding hundreds of new kids into the existing student population.
Melendez and her coach bend over an Excel spreadsheet to digest last semester’s results. Fifty-two students are in danger of failing. Melendez’s goal for their two-hour session is to strategize how to improve the passing rate, in part by offering students a path to making up missed or unsatisfactory classwork. By the end of the session, the principal has crafted a solid implementation plan.
Before closing, they discuss the challenge of selecting students for a limited number of honors and AP slots and what a fair system might look like. “Equity is a through line that connects everything we do at LLA,” Berry Pizzimenti says. They brainstorm how to make an excellent education available to every student regardless of background.
“Equity is a through line that connects everything we do at LLA.”
Cristin Berry Pizzimenti
LLA ALUM AND LEADERSHIP COACH
Berry Pizzimenti has seen Melendez go from 0 to 100 in confidence. As the coach walks out of the conference room, everyone from students to staff waves at her. She disappears down a long, crowded hallway, rushing off to her next session at Lawrence High.
Around the Centers
Beyond the Lynch Leadership Academy, the Carroll School’s centers are bettering the BC community and the world.
BY OLIVIA JUSTICE ’25 AND SCANLON MELLOWES ’26
Center for Retirement Research is a national leader in retirement policy, connecting academics with public and private sector decisionmakers. Through research, data analysis, and scholarly training, the center drives conversations that shape policy and is a go-to resource on retirement’s most pressing challenges.
Boston College Chief Executives Club attracts top business leaders to its speaking forums, fostering high-level discussions and idea exchange among peers across industries. Designed as a hub for lifelong learning, the CEO Club serves as a vital link between the Carroll School and the broader business community.
Center for Corporate Citizenship offers actionable research, executive education, and the premier Corporate Citizenship Conference to its more than 10,000 members. One of the largest centers of its kind, CCC serves as Boston College’s hub for corporate social responsibility.
Center for Work & Family is a preferred source for corporations and organizations navigating today’s evolving workplace, providing research and education on work-life flexibility, employee well-being, talent management, and workplace belonging.
Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship fuels a culture of innovation at Boston College, engaging more than 1,000 students through events and programming. From a startup incubator to business pitch competitions, the center embeds entrepreneurial thinking into every stage of the college experience.
Joseph E. Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action inspires the next generation of ethical real estate professionals through courses, experiential learning opportunities, and industry engagement. Students gain real-world insights and expertise from top professionals in the field, all with the goal of fostering community transformation.
Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics engages the Boston College community in intellectual exploration of leadership and ethics in business and society through student programs and events featuring high-profile speakers.
Visit bc.edu/csom-centers for more information.
MINOR MIRACLE
CAN A HANDFUL OF MANAGEMENT COURSES ALTER THE TRAJECTORY OF AN ARTS AND SCIENCES STUDENT?
BY WILLIAM BOLE AND MASON BRAASCH
Samantha Wood, MCAS ’25, recalls that when she applied to Boston College, she wasn’t “completely sold” on pursuing a management education. So she opted for the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, hoping to discover her passions through the undergraduate core curriculum.
Ryan Barcy, MCAS ’25, was double-majoring in music and biology with an eye toward medical school. But by the end of his junior year, he was questioning whether he’d be happy pursuing a career in either of those disciplines.
Emily Ahern, MCAS ’27, began Boston College as a philosophy student, aspiring to the study of law, before declaring herself as an English major. She’s still interested in the law, but now other opportunities are beckoning.
All three of them proceeded in the spirit of a liberal arts education, looking to learn broadly and stay open to different paths forward. And each one was able to reshape their studies and career prospects without having to leave behind the arts and sciences. They did so by taking on a minor at the Carroll School of
Ryan Barcy, MCAS ’25
Management, part of Boston College’s distinctive approach to integrating University schools and blending liberal arts with professional education.
“I do think that’s a very unique thing about BC,” says Wood, whose explorations led her to an economics major at Morrissey and a finance minor at the Carroll School. She noted that during her Summer 2024 internship at Piper Sandler, an investment banking firm, “the kids that studied business just studied business. But at BC, I think people aren’t as afraid to dip into things they’re interested in.”
That goes equally for Carroll School students: About half are graduating with an additional major or minor at Morrissey, and the management curriculum is now structured so that students overall are taking at least as many credits in the arts and sciences as in management disciplines. For Morrissey students like Wood, Barcy, and Ahern, the path to Fulton Hall was paved primarily by an expanded selection of minors created in recent years exclusively for students at other Boston College schools.
More than 1,500 of those students are now enrolled in seven management minors—representing the largest expansion in the Carroll School’s history. The seven are: Accounting for CPAs; Accounting for Finance and Con-
sulting; Finance; General Business; Management and Leadership; Managing for Social Impact and the Public Good; and Marketing. The requirements for fulfilling these minors are identical to those of Carroll School students in each discipline, and the students attend classes in Fulton together with their Carroll School counterparts.
Take finance, for example (by far the most popular minor at Boston College, with more than 650 students). The finance concentration at the Carroll School consists of six required courses, all of which must be taken by students enrolled in the minor.
“Same classes. Same professors. That’s what gives them the confidence to go out and apply for the internship or the job, and then, when they get the job, to move forward with the work,” says Carroll School undergraduate dean Ethan Sullivan, noting that few if any schools offer minors to non-management students that are so thoroughly integrated into the management curriculum or the functional areas of business.
On the ground, multidisciplinary life calls for some agility, especially if you’re toggling between subjects as palpably different as, say, physiology and fintech, or music theory and capital markets. Barcy, the biology and music major, explains that in the Fall 2024 semester, he would be im-
“I was expecting to be in a room with a bunch of stockbrokers and people yelling and stuff and just being super technical. But it was a really great integration process.” Ryan Barcy, MCAS ’25
mersed in music of the medieval era at one moment, and then suddenly in corporate finance class. “I was literally sitting in Burns Library, studying this 12th-century music book, flipping through the pages, which are made out of animal skin or something,” says Barcy, who minored in finance. “I leave this dusty room and go straight to corporate finance in Fulton. I had to switch to my business brain.”
Apart from that, Barcy says he had a smooth entry into Fulton. “I was expecting to be in a room with a bunch of stockbrokers and people yelling and stuff and just being super technical,” he says, conjuring up images of traders on the securities exchange floor. “But it was a really great integration process.” He says he was able to bring an arts and sciences perspective into management, and a management perspective into his Morrissey classes. One example running both ways had to do with the work of pharmaceutical companies, which surfaced in management and biology classroom discussions.
Indeed, part of the idea of the minors, aside from opening up the Carroll School to large influxes of liberal arts students, was to expose management students to the ways that, say, a theatre or history major may look at a problem. “That kind of crosspollination has really made for a rich classroom experience,” Sullivan points out.
Barcy and many other minors began their management journeys through the Carroll School’s intensive, eight-week Summer Management Catalyst Program, which is geared exclusively to
non-management students and involves three graded courses together with a career practicum. By design, Catalyst also prepares the way for a summer internship in the business world; Barcy’s was with a boutique investment bank in Los Angeles. The California native is now setting his sights on a career in investment banking, hopefully using his science and fine arts background to provide services to the healthcare and entertainment industries.
Ahern, who added a marketing minor to her English major, says her combination of management and the humanities has led her to ponder a future role with a nonprofit, even as she keeps open the option of law school. “If you’re trying to end world hunger or do anything, you still need to raise awareness. You need marketing,” says Ahern, who is also a faith, peace, and justice minor at Morrissey.
For her part, Wood says Carroll School faculty members like her investment banking professor, Darren Kisgen, made her realize she could thrive in the financial world and connected her with alumni and others in the field. Upon graduation, she was heading back to Piper Sandler, where she had interned, to begin a fulltime job as an analyst.
“I thought you had to be in the Carroll School to get a job in banking or consulting, but the minor gave me the confidence to go into the industry. And it gave me the skills I needed to be successful once I hit the desk,” says Wood, who also took Catalyst after her sophomore year. “Without that, I’d probably be doing something completely different now.”
Assets Distinctions
Walk This Way
LAUDED FOR HIS EFFORTS TO END HOMELESSNESS, GORDON WAYNE SAYS IT’S “JUST THE START.”
BY WILLIAM BOLE
Professors, parents, and others naturally have high hopes for students and young alums, but the expectations surrounding Gordon Wayne ’23 are something else. “We hope you will work and thrive—and end this problem,” said Anna Bissonnette, founder of Hearth, a Boston-based nonprofit. She was presenting the organization’s annual award to Wayne, and the problem she believes he could end is nothing less than the ongoing horror of homelessness in America.
Wayne accepted the award at a downtown gala hosted in October by Hearth, which seeks to combat elder homelessness in Greater Boston. He received the honor because of his personal story, his uncommon ability to inspire action, and his two feet.
Now a student at University of Georgia School of Law, the young man strode into the national spotlight in August 2020 as he journeyed to Boston to begin his studies at the Carroll School. Wayne was making the 550-mile trek from his home in rural Virginia—on foot—to call out the plight of the unhoused. “Home” is a word used loosely in this context. He
had been living out of his car for 15 months, working full-time as a pizza delivery driver and loading up on courses at a community college.
Wayne was plunged into homelessness soon after finishing high school, a consequence of what he gently refers to as a “family collapse,” not wanting to broadcast the hair-raising details. He used all of his savings to purchase a 2002 Honda Civic, foraged for food in dumpsters, showered at the YMCA, and worked 60-hour weeks at an amusement park. “I felt worthless, beneath everyone else,” Wayne says in his unhurried drawl. A believing Catholic, he says it was prayer that pulled him through—that, and the satisfaction of earning his associate’s degree in one year. He then applied to four-year colleges.
“I still needed a miracle,” he recalls, which materialized as an email from his dream school. Boston College accepted him with a financial aid package covering tuition, room, and board—the only school that believed in him enough to do so.
Elated, Wayne considered what he could do for those left behind. “I’ll walk to Boston,” he decided. As he crossed from Maryland into Pennsylvania on bruised and blistered feet, a married couple stopped to help, heard his story, and called the local television news station. Then came national media coverage, and money poured into his GoFundMe campaign. He
raised $180,000 for the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which parceled out grants to organizations including Habitat for Humanity’s Boston College chapter.
At the Carroll School, Wayne’s concentrations were leadership and marketing. He gravitated to the Joseph E. Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action, which granted him a prized summer internship at Boston’s Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition. There, he “refined his skills in community mobilization,” says Neil McCullagh, Corcoran’s executive director. Through the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics and other campus groups, he spearheaded efforts to provide direct aid to homeless families. “He brought his mission to BC, and the students ran with it,” says Winston director Monetta Edwards.
After graduation, Wayne walked again—notching 570 miles from Virginia to his law school in Georgia and raising another $27,000. This past spring, he did a semester in practice at the Washington-based Urban Land Institute, laying the groundwork for 10 principles on how the real estate industry could help end homelessness.
Wayne says he now wants to use his lawyering skills rather than his feet to advocate for “my people,” those without homes. “It’s mind-blowing,” he says, reflecting on how far he has come since his sleepless nights in the Civic, “but I think this is just the start.”
Wayne was plunged into homelessness soon after finishing high school, a consequence of what he gently refers to as a “family collapse.”
Gordon Wayne ’23
Serious Fun
How two students turned late nights and shared values into a national ethics case competition win.
BY OLIVIA JUSTICE ’25
Sophia Salamy ’27 and Aradhya Garg ’27 admit that it took many late nights to prepare the presentation that clinched them second place in the 2024 Collegiate Ethics Case Competition, but don’t worry—they had a lot of fun doing it. “You’re with people you like, so you don’t even notice,” Salamy says. “Sure, we could sleep two hours earlier, but when something clicks—when an idea hits—it’s exciting.”
That excitement followed them to the case competition, hosted by the University of Arizona Eller College of Management last fall, where they competed with 24 other teams from universities across the US and Canada. Acting as representatives for a hypothetical lab-grown meat company, each group was tasked with arguing whether lab-grown meat would be good for the state of Arizona, economically as well as legally and ethically. Not currently
sold in the US but under development, the meat is produced by cultivating animal cells in a controlled environment.
Salamy and Garg’s journey to their second-place finish began when they were first-year students. After bonding as members of the Fulton Leadership Society, the new friends won the Carroll School’s Klein Ethics Case Competition later that year, which qualified them for the national competition. “Sophia and Aradhya had great chemistry,” says Carroll School academic advisor Josephine Xiong, who helped them prepare for Arizona. “There’s a level of trust there that helps to create strong team cohesion.”
That cohesion became a cornerstone of their success. “We were able to have fun,” Garg says. “The audience and judges saw that we weren’t stressed. It made our presentation smoother.” Their presentation also integrated elements of ethical leadership and sustainability, concepts they learned about in Portico, including “how your operations could impact the world positively,” he added. They framed Arizona as a potential trendsetter, an especially fun task for Salamy, who grew up in the state. Their research showed that lab-grown meat could save billions of gallons of water, reduce emissions, and position Arizona as a leader in biotech innovation—details that clearly impressed the judges.
While they’re thrilled about the results, Salamy and Garg are most grateful they got to work together. “These presentations are not just about the work that you do, but the relationships you build,” Salamy says.
Awards and Accolades
Hanyi (Livia) Yi, an assistant professor in the Seidner Department of Finance, and colleagues received the Best Paper Award at the 2024 Fintech and Financial Institutions Research Conference for their paper “Algorithmic Underwriting in High-Risk Mortgage Markets.”
Michael Pratt, the O’Connor Chair and professor of management and organization, was recognized by the Academy of Management with the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division’s Distinguished Service Award. The award honored Pratt’s 12 years of service to the organization’s annual publicationreviewing workshop for doctoral students and junior faculty, Reviewing in the Rough.
Gergana Nenkov, professor of marketing, will serve as an associate editor of the recently established Journal of Sustainable Marketing
Jean Bartunek, the Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris Professor of management and organization, was honored as the 2024 Distinguished International Scholar by the Irish Academy of Management for her scholarship and contributions to management practice.
Ronnie Sadka, senior associate dean for faculty, Haub Family Professor, and chair of the Seidner Department of Finance, and colleagues received the firstprize research award from IQAM Research, DekaBank’s institute for capital market research, for their paper “Narrative Attention Pricing.” In the same contest, Miao Liu, an assistant professor of accounting, and coauthors were awarded the second-place prize for their paper “Hedging Climate Change Risk: A Real-time Market Response Approach.”
Visit bc.edu/csom-research for more faculty news and distinctions.
FACULTY
Bottom Line
Paying It Forward
Born in Australia and raised in Montreal before moving to New Jersey— how did you find your way to Boston College? During summers, my family would rent out a place on the Cape, and we always made a stop in Boston. I just developed a love for the city, its history, culture, architecture. I wanted to go to college in Boston, and when it came time, Boston College took a chance on me.
And you were, in today’s parlance, a First-Gen? Yes—first member of my family to have a college experience. I majored in economics, and professors like Joe Quinn, Catherine Schneider, and Dick Tresch instilled in me a passion for lifelong learning and inspired me to pursue a career in global asset management. The teaching, the formative education, the ideals—all that gave me the toolkit to succeed, personally and professionally. Being able to pay that back and pay it forward is very important to me.
Marc Seidner, MCAS ’88, P ’24
CIO Non-traditional Strategies, PIMCO, University Trustee
What do you see when you look at BC and its students today? In many ways, it’s what I saw back then. You know, you could spot a BC kid a mile away. They know the principles, like the notion of men and women for others. They’ve been formed by the whole experience and the core curriculum. It creates these unbelievably poised, eloquent, thoughtful professionals that I think are cast differently than others. I really do, and it’s the same with many of the folks I graduated with.
What has changed? One thing is the connectivity at Boston College. I’m thinking of the bridge that Andy [Boynton, the Carroll School’s John and Linda Powers Family Dean] and Father Greg [Kalscheur, SJ, Dean of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences] have created—the bridge between management and the liberal arts. There was connectivity between the schools when I was there, but the integration and the sheer numbers of students crossing that bridge today is truly remarkable.
Marc Seidner, MCAS ’88, P ’24, is one of the most illustrious Boston College alumni in the field of finance, and now his name is affixed to the Carroll School of Management’s most illustrious discipline. At the start of the 2024–2025 academic year, the Finance Department was renamed the Seidner Department of Finance, in recognition of an unprecedented gift made by him and his family—the largest in the history of the Carroll School. Seidner is a managing director and the chief investment officer for non-traditional strategies at PIMCO, one of the world’s largest global investment firms. He is also a University Trustee. In this interview, Seidner speaks of his love affair with Boston College, why the finance profession could use Jesuit values, and how he can spot a BC student “a mile away.”
WILLIAM BOLE
Fast forward to 2020: You become a BC parent. Did that alter your perspective in any way? I’d say it refreshed my perspective. To see a place I love through the eyes of another person I love gave me a new sense of purpose and commitment. This past Christmas, Lexi [Alexis Seidner ’24] gave me a personal book. She went back to a bunch of my BC friends and roommates and asked them for photos of us together on campus in our own time, and she included photos of her and her friends in their time on the Heights. On the last page, she wrote: “BC is truly a special place, one that will always hold some of my favorite memories.” And I realized: I would have written the same thing 37 years ago.
What are your hopes for BC and finance education? I hope that Boston College can turn out more and more people who hold to Jesuit ideals of critical thinking, care for the whole person, and commitment to social justice. It’s easy to think of asset returns as just a number, but every basis point is real money—money to invest in and empower people, to provide safety and security for the future. If those values are instilled in students, along with the necessary technical training, they’ll understand what finance is really about, and the finance industry would be better served for generations.
write the next chapter
Every buy-a-brick effort, every shovel in the ground, every scholarship created, every professorship established, every step forward BC has taken was because of the legacy of alumni and supporters who believed in all that this University could become.
Soaring Higher: The Campaign for Boston College follows in the footsteps of those who built our University. The campaign is an opportunity for today’s benefactors to help BC realize its potential as the greatest Jesuit, Catholic university in the world and to further the Carroll School of Management’s reputation as one of the preeminent schools of management. With your support, Soaring Higher will provide an unparalleled formative experience to every student. And its legacy will live on “’til the echoes ring again.”
$3B campaign goal 60% undergraduate alumni participation goal
$1.15B goal for academics Learn more about the Soaring Higher campaign at campaign.bc.edu.
