Pursue The Passion
908 posts
I’m Pat Gallagher. I’m the President of San Francisco Giants Enterprises. The question is where I was at 21 years old. I’ve had kind of an odd career path. Actually I was, well, I hate to admit this, but I’m a college drop out. I was an art student in college…went to San Diego State…
We met with “Hoss” in his office on W. 44th street in New York City, where he told us his story of how he ended up at Atlas talent agency. He described the whole thing in his “Mid-Atlantic” accent, which resembles that of Bond…James Bond. So if you can picture Pierce Brosnan telling the story…
Matt Klentak played baseball at Dartmouth all four years. He was the captain his senior year. “At the end of my junior year I got an internship at the Commissioner’s Office in the Baseball Operations Department. I got a chance to see, live, and breathe baseball all day. I totally drank the Kool-Aid.” I graduated…
I first saw Ford speak in September of ‘04, at a speech/workshop that I attended while a student at the University of Arizona. The workshop consisted of an enthusiastic Ford teaching writing basics to a majority crowd of journalism students, as well as talking about the New York Times. Somewhere during the speech he mentioned…
Keith is another one those people who was more than willing to talk to us about what they’ve learned in the pursuit of their current positions. We came to the New York Times to talk to Ford Burkhart. Ford took us on a tour and noted that Keith was also a UofA graduate as we…
Like a lot of children growing up, Dan had to share a room with a sibling. The only difference is that their room was actually the trunk of a Buick. Using that as a starting point, Dan has been motivated and determined to succeed in everything that he does. From his humble beginnings in Idaho,…
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…
