Pursue The Passion
902 posts
I’ll try to give you the short version. I grew up around the game. My dad played minor league baseball and then scouted for the Cincinnati Reds for seventeen years. So I was born in Pennsylvania, and my dad had different areas around the country, so we moved around. I lived in Colorado, grew up…
Adrian’s thick British accent and his passion for entrepreneurship are the two most distinct characteristics that jumped out at us during our interview with the CEO and co-founder of Collectability. Collectability is Adrian’s fourth start-up in a ten-year period after coming to the U.S. a decade and a half ago. Adrian is from Guernsey, a…
(aka J. Foxx) had a biopsy performed on his right femur at the age of 13. His doctors were not sure what the mysterious growth in his leg could be, and were even more puzzled after the excavation. His bone sample was shipped from USC Medical Hospital in Los Angeles, CA to the…
is a Designer for the Nike’s Jordan Brand, and got to where he is today through a combination of persistence and determination. Growing up in Southside Chicago, Jason remembers sending letters and sketches to Nike as a little kid. If he saw an article he really liked, he would send a letter to…
When Jim was in the third grade, he wrote an essay about how he wanted to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school this dream never faded. That is, until he broke his wrist one year in high school and was unable to play. That year he…
Only one class away from graduating, Mark decided to move to the Czech Republic during the early ’90’s. He had grown tired of school and decided to rent out a place for the summer and travel around Eastern Europe. He didn’t know anyone nor could he communicate with the natives becuase he only spoke English.…
Brandyn was our tour guide for a day which would prove to be the most eventful and memorable experience of our whole trip. Brandyn introduced us to a variety of people and took us to the Nike basketball gym, the Jordan building, and the infamous Nike Kitchen (not the place where you cook food, but…
D’Wayne Edwards is the Design Director of Footwear for the Jordan Brand, probably one of the coolest jobs on the planet. He has designed the latest pair of Jordan’s, the XXI’s, Roy Jones boxing shoes, and the Melo shoes. He has been with Nike for over six years, and it is pretty clear that he…
Growing up in Wisconsin, Greg watched the Green Bay Packers play as a kid. He, like many other kids, dreamed of playing professional football one day. He played at the college level but there came a point in his career where he had to decide between his NFL aspirations or focusing on finding a career.…
Interview: How To Become an Account Executive Cory Shakarian is an Account Executive for the Los Angeles Clippers, after working for ten years with the San Francisco Giants. He has only been with the organization for a couple of months now and is getting a feel for the culture and how things are done around…
Jarrod is from Healdsburg, CA and attended Cardinal Newman High School before heading to the University of Oregon to play football. He did not know what he wanted to do while in college, but decided to give U of O’s excellent sports marketing program a try. Since he was a double major in English and…
is the Product Line Manager of Footwear for the Jordan Brand at Nike. As expected, his office smells like new shoes. But not just because it’s Nike, but because there are brand new shoes everywhere! I was reminded of my messy room back home. The only differences being, of course is that these…
is a risk-taker. He uses the notion of failure as motivation. He attended Cal State Northridge on scholarship while also working for UPS full-time. At the time, he was really into the rave scene and saw areas of opportunity in what these sound companies lacked. Boomboy and Shredder were the only two competing…
Lucas went to school at the University of Missouri and obtained a bachelor of computer science degree. Microsoft was his first interview out of college. When he visited Redmond that February, it was cold and rainy. To anyone else it might have been unattractive, but seeing as he was from Missouri, the fresh, new Microsoft…
Richard “Dick” Hamilton is a software engineer for the Microsoft Corporation. He has been in the software business for a long time and was brought into Microsoft because of his technical skills. He oversees a team of six programmers writing software for the company. His office is filled with Beatles memorabilia. Mainly our interview consisted…
Trey started at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and got a theatre degree. After graduation he moved to Los Angeles to pursued his acting dreams. After looking for his acting break, like so many others in the area, he stumbled across an opportunity. One day, Trey was playing the first Tony Hawk video game with a…
lives in the self-proclaimed, “Middle of Nowhere” Oregon. We managed to catch up with her about her passions and what she is currently working on. Her story is both inspirational and interesting. Please visit her website at www.brookshill.com Here is her story, in her own words: “I majored in music and theater in college…
Marc Fages is the Quality Assurance Specialist of Supplier Quality Management at Amgen, a bio-pharmaceutical company recently voted to Forbes’ list of “100 best places to work for.” Marc started out by going to UC Santa Barbara and almost didn’t finish college. He had A’s in his Marine Biology coursework but he felt that school…
Stewart was a Biological Sciences major in college with an emphasis on Marine Biology. Somehow he ended up in the wine business. At the time of his graduation, the opportunities were not there for marine biologistist. A lot of programs were being shut down, and when Stewart finished his dissertation, he was working part-time in…
has a statue of Bill Bowerman in office to always remind him of Bill’s motto of “what can I do for the athlete?” That is Tobie’s mentality when he designs in the Nike Innovative Kitchen, where the best shoe designers in the world gather their thoughts and come up with the next big…
First off, let me say that if we had an award to give out to a person that has pursued their passion to the fullest extent it would have to go to John Freedman. John was one of the most interesting people that we talked to on our 2006 tour. His story is one in…
Born and raised in San Jose, Faham attended Leland High School before enrolling at the University of Arizona to study Management Information Systems (MIS). He accepted a position, while in school, that pertained to his major and soon found that that he hated MIS! At that point, he thought that his decisions to pay out…
Oksana is a Russian born pianist and composer who has been playing the piano since the age of five. She pursued the American Dream of making it big as an independent artist in spite of the challenge of learning a different culture and language. She began her studies in Kazakhstan and won her first competition…
Rick Farmiloe draws for a living. He has worked on films for Disney and Dreamworks. He has truly pursued his animation passion since deciding that he wanted to draw at age 9. Under the mentorship of this animator, he started to really work at drawing by going to the park or the zoo everyday, and…
