Columbia MBAs Change Careers and Prove Some Fish Thrive Out of Water
The image of the Wall Street headhunter ditching his/her mid-life crisis Maserati and Battery Park penthouse to run a lemonade stand in Pennsylvania Dutch Country is the stuff of 80s “fish-out-of-water” comedy fodder. But the drastic career overhaul is actually not as far-fetched or uncommon as one might think.
Columbia Business School’s blog recently published an article written by Abigail Beshkin and Agatha Bordonaro that surveyed compelling examples of career reinvention among CBS alumni. The common thread among all the examples, according to CBS Career Management Center Senior Associate Director Jennifer Anderson Merchant ’01, is a combination of “flexibility, adaptability, curiosity, and a willingness to dive into something…”
Ron Simons ’89 had two passions as a nascent Columbia undergrad: acting and programming. “The two things that would keep me awake at night were reading scripts and poring over code,” he explains.
Simons opted to take the more pragmatic route, working as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard and Intellicorp. He earned an MBA and then assumed “high-level marketing roles” at Microsoft.
On his 38th birthday, he pivoted—Simons quit his job, buoyed by healthy Microsoft stock, and began acting in regional theater. He caught a break as part of a 1997 Seattle Repertory Theatre production of The Cider House Rules, which led him to film and TV credits. Spurred by a “hunger to learn about people,” Simons founded SimonSays Entertainment in 2009 to “tell the stories of underrepresented communities.”
Hiromi Shimazu ’93 managed a “multinational fashion house” during the week while concocting her own designs on nights and weekends. She was tight-lipped about her personal projects partially out of humility but also to avoid a conflict of interest with her employer. “I was pursuing my passion as a hobby,” she explains in the article.
After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Shimazu took stock of the split between her livelihood and her passion. She opted to leave her job and launch Princess Hiromi, a clothing line that “blends simple, sophisticated silhouettes with colorful flair…to dress women with more authority.” Shimazu explains that women in Japanese business culture “tend to look more submissive” with executives sporting knit sets “like assistants.”
According to the article, Princess Hiromi “will soon be permanently available at Matsuya Ginza, Japan’s equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue.”
Ron Getto ’86 was perfectly content, for 14 years, to pursue investment banking as part of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette — where he oversaw “hundreds of IPOs,” — and Cantor Fitzgerald, where he built an “asset management business.” After Cantor Fitzgerald shuttered its division and let Getto go in 2008, he took a long look around to mount his next play, which, ironically, was bowling.
Getto elaborates on the pivot, “You need very little working capital. You don’t have to deal with inventory, sizes, colors, seasonality. Bowling is the number one participatory sport in America, and no one was paying attention.”
Getto eventually took over the 16-lane alley Starlite Lanes in Flagstaff, Arizona—“an old family-run bowling alley.” Within a year, Getto “grew revenues 16-fold” and now “employs 22 people, eight full-time, and is proud that he is able to offer them healthcare and benefits,” according to the article.
Now firmly planted in Flagstaff, Getto is making the most of his adopted hometown. He periodically lectures on business at Northern Arizona University and oversees Four Peaks Wealth Management, a local investment-management firm he co-founded.
Reflecting on his Wall Street tenure, Getto muses, “It’s not about the last penny. It’s about having fun and enjoying what I do.”
You can read about other stories of CBS alumni shifting career gears here.
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
