Welcome back, graduate students!

We're kicking off the new school year with a little something different. Usually, the September issue of Future 411 is the first of the academic year, but this time we're starting the career planning a little early with a bonus August issue to greet you upon your return.

This year starts with changes and new energy. In addition to coming off the bench early publication-wise, Annie Piatt also officially begins her position as the new career counselor for Graduate Career Services. Please drop by our offices and meet her! Annie Sugar is pleased to return for a second year as Future 411's editor. To celebrate new beginnings and new ventures, we've chosen entrepreneurship as the theme for this month's issue. Our colleague and both alumni interviews all offer rich advice and insight into how to go into business for yourself and blaze your own trail after you finish your degree -- and how to plan for that career path as a student. This month's articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education and Science Careers both address academic entrepreneurship, while our offering from Inside Higher Ed is a podcast discussing the resolute link between social isolation and creative thinking. 

We hope you will find the information in this newsletter interesting and informative, but it's just the tip of the resources iceberg Career Services offers whether you plan to seek a job or create one after graduation. Please come visit our offices at the Center for Community and find out what we can do for you. It's never too early to start thinking about making your career goals a reality!

Brian Pignanelli received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Architecture from Tulane University.  He is currently pursuing an MBA at CU-Boulder's Leeds School of Business. 

Please tell us a little about your business? What does it do, and how did it get started? Is it your first entrepreneurial business venture? After I graduated from Tulane, I moved to Venezuela for six months to learn Spanish and then landed my first architecture job in Vail, CO. From there, my architecture career took me to New York, where I worked for other people until I couldn't be someone else's employee anymore, which is what eventually lead me to founding my first company. I'm a licensed architect and had two businesses designing and importing high-end Italian and German furnishings and cabinetry. I wound down my last import enterprise as the failing economy started to negatively impact the housing market in 2008-09 and shifted my business strategy to building cabinetry in the United States. 

What made you decide to return to school for your graduate degrees, and why an MBA and an MS ENVS? 

My son was born October 2008, and his arrival caused me to reconsider my work and the contribution it made to the future world he would inherit. I also spend some time researching the root causes of the economic crisis to understand what happened. The environmental economists I read made sense to me when they described a planet that was pushing against its limitations as an ecosphere. Cumulatively, this all lead me back to school in pursuit of new tools I could use to further my entrepreneurial efforts while making some kind of sustainable impact. I applied to CU-Boulder's Leeds MBA and Masters of Science in Environmental Studies (MS ENVS) dual degree program with the intention to acquire further business acumen while learning the intricacies of policy. 

My initial goal was to combine the two degrees and my experience to bring new clean technologies to the market. That goal hasn't changed, but I recently withdrew from the MS ENVS portion of the degree after my work for a clean tech this summer helped me realize that my strengths and passion were deeply rooted in strategy, analytics, and finance rather than policy. I made the decision in order to streamline my education and advance my overall entrepreneurial mission because time spent in the classroom is time spent not working on a business; it is important to understand and balance the tradeoffs of opportunity and cost. 

How did your work as an architect prepare you for graduate school? How did it make you an entrepreneur? 

Being an architect has always been in my blood, and I think that translates to building things, be it buildings, environments, or companies. I'm focused on building companies now because building houses just wasn't big enough for my ambitions and didn't reach enough people. One house doesn't move the needle the way an amazing clean technology might with the right strategies applied. Throughout my business experience, the common threads of strategic thinking and analysis -- the kind that enables good ideas to become great businesses -- have driven me. 

What are your sources of business knowledge and career advice beyond the academic world, and how do you network? 

In building my own businesses, I've had great experiences with people both domestically and internationally. People in Ohio do business differently than people in California or Italy, but in the end they have many of the same motivations. Developing empathy and learning to understand other people's motivations has been key for me. I've always been a poor networker and, in many ways, I came back to school to learn that skill. Once you start your degree, you just have to get busy, not worry about grades, and get to events and activities. That's really what business is about -- knowing people, building relationships, and then capitalizing on them to everyone's mutual benefit. If you want to start a business, you better know people.  

What advice or resources would you suggest to graduate students looking to go into business for themselves when they finish their degrees? 

It's kind of one or the other -- just do it or work for others first. Itching to start a business but being unprepared is the killer. A degree does not automatically qualify you to be an entrepreneur. People start successful businesses all the time without any higher education. School is not the key. If you don't have the idea, understand where to get the resources, and have the pig-headed determination and motivation to launch your business here and now, then get in with the people and company that will situate you and teach you the skills you need. Work hard for them and learn, absorb their knowledge like a sponge, until you can't take it anymore and you have to do it on your own. Then do it. And if that point never comes, enjoy working with what you've already found.

Academics are charged with two responsibilities: creating new knowledge and transferring existing knowledge. Most of us would regard those lofty, idealized goals as something quite distinct from the mundane, profit-driven pursuits of the business world.

But in fact, the realities of a faculty career bear many similarities to the business world, and, in particular, to the world of the entrepreneur. After all, one of the principle attractions of both is the chance to be your own boss, at least intellectually.

So what exactly is a "professorial entrepreneur?"

I don't use that term in the same sense as the phrase, "academic entrepreneur," which describes a faculty member who starts a for-profit business, often as an extension of his or her research or expertise. Instead, I introduce the term, "professorial entrepreneur," to indicate the spirit of building something from nothing ("bootstrapping," as it is known to entrepreneurs). Read more