Alumna: Seton McFarland ’16
Major: Accounting
Profession: Analyst, UBS
Who/What inspired you to enter the business world? Both of my parents worked in business, so I definitely gravitated to what I was familiar with coming out of college. Within the business world, I chose to enter into the financial services industry because it complemented my strong interest in economics. Continue reading “Alumna Spotlight: Seton McFarland ’16”
Continue reading “Summer Internship Reflection: Caroline Babinski ’20”
Bill Abbott ’84
President & CEO of Crown Media Family Networks
“This is where being a major in English really comes in handy. I feel like I learned story, characters, and emotion and all the things that comprise great storytelling at Holy Cross.”
On March 29, 2019, Ciocca Center Student Intern Sarah Anderson ’20 interviewed Bill to learn about how he turned his English Major into a career in the entertainment industry. Bill is the President and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks.
What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always know you wanted to work in the entertainment industry? No, not at all. I was an English major, with a lot of political science classes mixed in there. I was really focused more either on law school or teaching when I was at school. But, after college I felt like more school wasn’t really where I wanted to be my first year out. So, I was fortunate enough to get a job in the media world, loved it from the beginning, and decided that’s what I would focus on. Entertainment is not something I intended on, but the liberal arts education provided me with a great backdrop for really anything I wanted to do because it teaches you and gives you a good sense of how to communicate and critically think and write. All of those are crucial aspects to any job. Continue reading “Ciocca Center Intern Interviews Bill Abbott ’84”
Business on campus at College of the Holy Cross is developing as the newly named Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society expands its offerings to students eager to learn about the industry. The business program at HC includes the following: Certificate in Business Fundamentals (with an optional track in finance and banking), Certificate in Entrepreneurship, and a minor in Business Ethics, and Society.
My name is Sarah Anderson ’20. I’m a junior at Holy Cross, majoring in English with a Religious Studies minor working towards my Certificate in Business Fundamentals. As the current chair of the annual Women in Business Conference, I am interested in learning more about different leadership styles and company dynamics within the workplace. For the Academic Internship Program, I am taking a seminar called “Boards and CEOs: Governing America’s Businesses” with Professor Dan Riccardi and interning at the Ciocca Center. My main project is crafting a blog featuring my research and interviews with HC alums that highlight current CEOs and board members of a variety of companies with a liberal arts education.
Check out the following blog posts to learn from HC alum CEOs and board members about their roles and how they got there!
“With the relaunch and the rebranding of the HC Startup group, there is also a renewed vision to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurial-minded folks. With the future of work dramatically changing the landscape, we need to prepare and support our students and alumni for this shift.” Ja-Naé Duane, EIR & Lecturer, Holy Cross
JOIN US for our winter networking event at T3 Advisors in Boston.
JANUARY 16, 2019 << Click to REGISTER.
Mark your calendars: the Holy Cross Entrepreneurs Group’s Alumni Networking Event is on Wednesday, October 7th!
The COES Pre-Business Office is presenting current students the opportunity to connect with alumni who are directly involved in start-ups or are involved with a business looking for start-ups as customers. Held at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the event will consist of a general networking period, allowing students to speak with alumni about their experiences, and a Q&A session with a panel of four Holy Cross alumni.
The COES Pre-Business Office offers at least one networking event per semester, and has been offering this particular event since 2007. Professor David Chu suggests creating a business card for yourself (including your name, class year, email address, and cell phone number), and that you bring a few copies of your resume. In Prof. Chu’s opinion, “the most important thing for a student to ask is, ‘What do you do, and how did you get there from Holy Cross?’” Take this opportunity to learn from people who were in your shoes not too long ago! This is a great chance for students to make connections with HC alumni and solidify their reception networking skills.
Looking for networking tips?
The event, titled Graduate School: Accelerating Your Entrepreneurial Trajectory, will run from 6:30-9:00pm on Wednesday, October 7th at MIT of Cambridge, MA. *Students can register for free! Dress is business casual – no jeans. Full details of the event and descriptions of the panelists can be found here. We hope to see you there!
Feel free to stop by the COES Pre-Business Office in Stein 129E or email dchu@holycross.edu with any questions.
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Thanks to Catherine Cote ’18, our Career Communications Liason student worker, for her detailed description of this upcoming networking event in Boston. Like she said, hope to see you there! As always – check out the new COES instapage @HCPrebusiness – and watch for future student write-ups of Pre-Business events.
Cassie Gevry
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies
What 5 traits empower entrepreneurs to create their own luck?
Ray just got off a call from Chennai, India. The call was from a business partner, who now wants to expand Ray’s book of business internationally. This good news came weeks prior to a different partners’ meeting, a meeting celebrating the past. The three original partners got back their most recent financials, and they blew their year-end goal out of the water.
Ray Jorgensen ‘91’s firm, PMG, Inc., is in the business of helping low income communities get access to affordable health care. This mission, inspired by “men and women for others”, has earned PMG the privilege of being a top Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) firm serving the Community Health Center (CHCs) market. He has written several books and teaches healthcare practitioners about how to maximize their revenue for the healthcare services they provide. And amidst the uncertainty of health care reform, Ray and his two business partners have grown the PMG team from 3 to nearly 300 people to capitalize on an underserved, yet growing, niche market.
This journey supports the modern myth that entrepreneurs can control what goes on around them. It presents a story that Ray knew what he wanted to do after his 1991 graduation. It conjures a narrative that he knew exactly how to capitalize on the health care overhaul. It creates a belief that he always intended to have a business partner in India.
In fact, the opposite is true.
After Holy Cross, Ray was rejected from every law school he applied to, a non-compete clause challenged his startup’s growth, and his professional musician dreams sank.
As a result of these challenges, Ray is constantly battling an illusion of control. He adapts to uncertainty in an ever-changing market. The first step to battle this illusion is his own awareness that he cannot change things out of his power. The second step is controllable; most importantly, attitude and effort. Ray cannot affect an evolving environment, so he focuses on how to react to change. And with enough perseverance and persistence, he believes he can create his own luck too.
So how has he battled the illusion of control? How has he created his own luck? And what clues can other entrepreneurs follow to improve their chances at success?
The items below outline 5 areas in which entrepreneurs can control and in doing so create their own luck.
1) Expertise: Be a top authority in your industry
Ray credits PMG’s success in the healthcare industry to focusing on CHCs. Before this commitment, his business was scattered across many medical subspecialties from chiropractors to anesthesiologists. Although the business was diversified, there were many competitors in these subspecialties with more expertise than PMG. By focusing on being a top CHC authority, no competitor knows more than Ray’s team. In fact, as the nation’s leading provider of for CHC’s, PMG’s articles are often the only result to his team’s CHC Google searches. Although this is easy for Ray to realize looking back, how can others identify how to be an authority?
2) Information Gaps: Fill the information gaps others have missed
In 2006, PMG made the difficult decision to release the two-thirds of their book of business that were not CHCs. Although this decision sounds crazy, Ray applied his Holy Cross history major to research their hypothesis. His team validated that the government hyper funds CHCs at a rate higher than traditional fee-for-service Medicaid. PMG discovered what the competition had not: CHCs are part of the government healthcare safety net with exceptional reimbursement despite typically undesirably elevated percentages of Medicaid patients. This insight allowed Ray’s team to identify an information gap, accessible knowledge that the rest of his competitors didn’t understand. Although their 2006 book of business included many medical subspecialties, this broad knowledge allowed PMG to identify the information imbalance, which ultimately led them to focus on only CHCs. This is easy to identify in hindsight, so how can others identify and bridge the information gap?
3) Mentorship: Find a mentor to learn from the best
Before Ray started his own firm, he was learning about the entire healthcare billing business while working for a New England start up. The startup, which specialized in the RCM, allowed him to receive first-hand experience from industry experts. This was more than a job; this was a mentorship that allowed him to develop key industry knowledge, while still paying the bills for his growing family. The intellectual capital he gained over this time period served as the foundation to later start PMG with his partners. Identifying information gaps and becoming an authority may appear difficult, but finding a mentorship can significantly reduce this time and effort. While Ray was fortunate to have come across this opportunity, how can others find mentors to learn industry knowledge?
4) Complex Industry: Enter an industry with growing opportunities
Shortly after graduation, Ray took a job at Blue Cross Blue Shield, before ultimately switching to the provider side to focus on compensation maximization. The healthcare industry, with its growing demand and legal complexities, provided him a fertile environment to develop intellectual capital. The ever-changing market created new problems for established organizations, but Ray saw this adversity as an opportunity. Although Ray and his partners never knew exactly how healthcare reform would affect his business, their ability to identify problems and perceive them as opportunities, has led their team to become a top billing specialist in the CHC space. How should others narrow their search for a growing industry?
5) Passion: Choose a profession with meaning
Ray believes that everyone, rich and poor, should have access to healthcare. The healthcare industry and the CHC subspecialty, empowers him to create change in the lives of people who need it most. Yes, billing may not sound glamorous, but PMG makes a real impact every day. Although his job hasn’t always been smooth sailing and he hasn’t always had control of the helm, finding a meaningful career has allowed him to weather the storm as he awaits calmer waters.
So how do you create your own luck and start on the path to successful business?
Ray believes the first step to battle the illusion of control is to be aware of it. The second step is to control what is controllable. So create your own luck: choose a career with meaning, identify growth areas, find a mentorship, fill the information gaps, and become a top authority at what you do. It has been a 20+ year journey for Ray, from the midnight shift at Blue Cross Blue Shield to being his own boss. During this journey, he has come to the conclusion, “Life works serendipitously, but the gradual persistent development of expertise is repeatable.”
At his team’s celebratory dinner last month, he made a toast. The toast was simple – “to the complexities of Healthcare.” Although PMG continues to blow their 2014 goals out of the water, it could be said that Ray actually prefers to be in the water. He gave up swimming against the ambiguity; in fact, Ray has grown fond of swimming with it.
Ray Jorgensen ‘91 has been President and CEO of Priority Management Group, Inc. (PMG) since 1998. Responsible for oversight of consulting operations strategic leadership, national speaking, and board work for PMG’s companies, Ray has personally trained thousands from all 50 states on coding, billing, and reimbursement in addition to authoring several books and dozens of articles.
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Thanks to our writer, Andrew Marzo ’14. He is an aspiring entrepreneur who believes that founders do not find their business, they create opportunities. He suggests that the prevalent entrepreneur narrative is a myth, and believes a new narrative is necessary. Through articles, conversations, and interviews, Andrew hopes to deconstruct this illusion and leave behind breadcrumbs for future entrepreneurs to discover on their own journey.
Check out the new COES instapage and follow us @HCPrebusiness
Watch for our next blog post…
Cassie Gevry
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies
Day 3 of ELW 2013 focused on leading a company and handling “ethical pitfalls”. Led by Tom Patton ’86, President and CEO of CASMED, and Carolyn Risoli ’86, former president of Marc by Marc Jacobs and current principal at CRisoli Consulting, the student teams spent the day reading real case studies that the executives had written and debating among themselves what the ethical questions were and how they should be decided.
The afternoon was particularly interesting as the students had to read a number of brief scenarios and then respond with how they would have acted. Tom and Carolyn started by posing the question of: If you take a company pen home from work, is that stealing? What about 5 pens? 10? A box? Your desk chair? The students quickly realized how tricky business ethics can become as most of them thought that taking a pen wasn’t necessarily stealing but saw their logic unravel as Tom challenged them to thinking about larger items. Another similar scenario dealt with the question of business reimbursements: If your company gives you a $7 cab ride home if you work until after 7 o’clock, is it ok to take that cab ride to a restaurant rather than home? What about going out with your friends and then getting the cab? The debate was lively, with lots of different points of view expressed, and Tom and Carolyn were able to weigh in with how they’ve actually navigated these situations in their roles as executives.
In addition to addressing business ethics, Tom and Carolyn talked to the students about the importance of being careful in business and how quickly things can change. Tom offered the advice that you need to be sure to live within your means, and be financially careful, because as quickly as things can get good, they can take a turn for the worse. Citing examples of young business people he knew, he cautioned the students against falling into the trap of wanting the biggest house and the flashiest car. “The BMW can wait until later,” he said.
The other big message of the day? Tom and Carolyn talked about how it’s easy to be ethical when things are good. What’s important is making sure to remain ethical even when it’s challenging to do so. They encouraged the students to think about two things: first, would you want to see your actions reported in the New York Times? And, second, would you be proud to tell the person you most admire – spouse, child, parent, friend, etc – about what you did? If you’re not comfortable with both, they said, you need to re-think what you’re doing.
Overall, another really interesting day and one that got the students thinking more about what to do when things aren’t going well and how important it is for a leader to be steadfast in what he or she believes is right!
Tonight the students are off to Boston for the HC Alumni Entrepreneur Group’s Networking Session. All of the students in ELW have been challenged to meet at least two new people tonight, so we’ll see how they do…
As always, don’t forget to “Like” us on FACEBOOK and look for our WIB, SBP and ELW groups on LinkedIN!
Helene Horan
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies
