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\Ê ohn Domolky ’06 HE WAS THE FIRST DIRECTOR OF SALES AT A STARTUP CAR COMPANY THAT’S BROKEN THE MOLD FOR AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN. HE’S SPOKEN ON PRIZE-DRIVEN INNOVATION AT THE MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT. AND HE’S A JUNIOR IN COLLEGE. John Domolky was not to be stopped. It was his final year at Tabor Academy, and it was time to choose a senior project. Other students were working on art installations, writing plays, interning at labs. John himself had plans to intern at the district attorney’s office in New Bedford. Then one day he read an article in The Boston Globe about a brand new car company called Local Motors with a revolutionary plan for automotive design, assembly, and retail. He was hooked. A longtime car enthusiast who had once built a Factory Five Roadster from scratch at a build school in Michigan, he was intrigued by the Local Motors model and realized that an internship at the company would be a perfect fit with his interests.
10 | Fay Magazine 2011
“I looked up John Rogers, the Local Motors CEO, in the phone book,� John remembers. “I was persistent. I kept calling him every day until he agreed to interview me. We talked on the phone for an hour the next morning at 6:30 a.m., and it turned out that he and I had a quite a lot in common.� Local Motors took on John as an intern, and he joined the company’s eight employees at a small facility in Wareham, Massachusetts. It was a perfect fit. The same drive and persistence that got John his internship soon led him to a leadership role in the company, and the CEO asked him to stay on and kick off the sales effort. As Local Motors’ first director of sales, John sold the first 23 deposits for their first production car, the