Bentley University News

I am a risk taker, and I urge others to take risks too.

That doesn’t mean I encourage hasty or reckless decisions. Mine have actually been pretty well thought out. But I do say: trust your instincts, listen to your gut, and take chances.

It is something that has worked for me, although it has also raised some eyebrows. Take my first job out of college. I went on countless interviews and turned down multiple offers. My family was about to have a meltdown. I remember my 94-year-old grandmother’s advice to “ … just accept something already.”

When Bentley senior Aaron Pinet walked in to a job interview at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the first question he got wasn’t about his grade point average or accounting courses. The conversation starter was his service-learning work: presenting policy-related research on energy literacy to congressmen on Capitol Hill, or developing a financial literacy curriculum for prospective college students.

As part of Bentley's PreparedU Project, Barbara Stevens, Hall of Fame coach of the Bentley women's basketball team, shares how the principles for success on the court translate to success on the job. 

Sports are a great platform. And they help teach students and prepare them for the world that awaits upon graduation. What you learn on the basketball court, for example, extends far beyond the X’s and O’s. So, as a coach, my mission is to give my players all they need to be successful in their future careers.

As the 11th employee of Waltham-based startup Care.com, reporting directly to CEO Sheila Marcelo, I had a front-row seat to the company’s early history and its mission to create a bias-free, progressive corporate culture where every single employee — regardless of gender, age or diversity — could thrive.

In November 2013, when Bentley University collaborated with the Bloomberg Business Summit in Chicago to present initial PreparedU top-line findings, panelist Shama Hyder made this astute observation about millennials and their career preferences: “Business in general has a branding problem. Most students still think of commerce as synonymous with Wall Street greed and Enron-like fiascos.

The Boston Globe's 11/19/12 feature on selling hospice care to the public focused on the most benign aspects of that process. While it is true that hospice care in America was built through the commendable efforts of committed volunteers and grossly underpaid health care professionals, the current industry has morphed into the fastest growing “product” purchased with Medicare dollars.