Changing Careers

Manganiello was working as a sports writer for the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times when Blaise called him to discuss his decision to take the LSAT exam for law school.

“It blew my mind,” Manganiello said. “It felt like my life changed in that moment, too. Blaise explained how he could take what we learned at Oswego and combine it with what he’d learn at law school to be even more marketable. It changed how I thought about my own path.” (Manganiello ended up enrolling in Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, and today, he is an account executive at the WNBA’s New York Liberty in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.)

Hill said he thought law school could open up the door to becoming a sports agent. So, rewind back, to prepping for the law school exam.

Journalist turns lawyer to help people with their final plans

“How do you eat an entire airplane?” Blaise Hill ’15 asked.

“One bite at a time.”

Referencing the late French entertainer Michel Lolito—who is perhaps better known as the man who ate an entire airplane (bit by bit over the course of two years), Hill explained that is how he approaches any major life change.

“Well, OK maybe we all can’t eat an airplane, but we can accomplish what might be, at first, impossible to fathom,” he said. It takes a bit of planning and deconstructing and, of course, the willingness to take that first small step.

For Hill, that meant hopping onto Amazon.com and buying an LSAT prep book.

If he wanted to change careers from journalism to law, he would first have to take the exam needed to apply to law school. At the time in 2016, he was working as the technical director at WPEC CBS-12 in West Palm Beach, Fla., and he wasn’t finding the career as fulfilling as he anticipated when he entered the field as a fresh graduate of the journalism program.

Until that point, he had loved his experiences in journalism and broadcasting.

When he arrived at SUNY Oswego in fall 2011, Hill threw himself into all that the university had to offer—getting involved immediately with WTOP-10, calling wom- en’s basketball games and hosting his own TV show in his first semester.

Hill said he was hooked.

“Every semester just got better and better because you feel more entrenched in this community,” he said. “You meet more people, you make more friends, you have more opportunities, and you’re continuing your education.”

Share Your Change

“Break down these career ambitions, these life goals or major changes into smaller steps—as small as possible. That makes it so much easier to digest, not only in terms of starting to take concrete steps toward your goals, but also it can help you from feeling overwhelmed.”

~ Blaise Hill ’15, trusts and estates attorney

After graduating, Hill accepted a position as the technical director at WRGB CBS-6 in Albany, N.Y. His good friends, Joe Manganiello ’14 and Sebastian Edmond ’14, both pursued similar careers in sports journalism.

“I figured if I bombed the test, that would mean that law school wasn’t meant for me,” he said. “I did fine. So, then I applied to law school. If I didn’t get accepted, well, then, that’s not the right path for me. And that’s just kind of how I made the change— step by step.”

He enrolled at Syracuse University College of Law expecting to become a sports agent, but in his second semester of law school during a property law course, he said he had an epiphany.

“I just had this gut feeling like, ’This is what I want to do with the rest of my life,’” he recalled. “And here I am now in my office in Bethesda, Maryland, working as a trusts and estates attorney less than five years later.”

Today, as a trusts and estates attorney with Pasternak & Fidis P.C., he helps his clients deal with a subject most people like to avoid in polite conversation—death. It’s the airplane we all have to eat—impossible as it may seem. He helps deconstruct it and make it more manageable.

His Oswego pals said this new career choice makes sense and plays to Blaise’s strengths—intelligence, compassion, kindness, loyalty and attentiveness.

“I want to help people through difficult times and help them be happy and achieve their goals,” Hill said. “So, that’s what trusts and estates work is. Let’s do what we can to make sure that when this eventual and inevitable thing happens, you and your family are prepared for that. We can sleep well at night knowing that everything will happen the way we want it to happen.”