BAL22-Future

A New Worldview: Leeds Alumni Poised to Solve Tomorrow's Crises

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 06:00:00 +0000

A New Worldview: Leeds Alumni Poised to Solve Tomorrow's Crises Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/04/2022 - 00:00

From Business at Leeds 2022 | Full issue

The supply chain crisis has been joined by inflation and war as major concerns for business and consumers alike. But the interconnected nature of these challenges is what makes them so complex. Below right, Maggie Grout with a construction worker in Madagascar, where she built her first 3D-printed school, despite supply chain challenges.

The biggest challenges facing the world are interconnected. Leeds alumni are out there seeking solutions.

“I knew there would be uncertainties,” Maggie Grout said of starting her nonprofit business. “But I didn’t really expect most of the events that have unfolded since we started.”

You could forgive Grout (Management, Strat, Entr’21) for not predicting a war, increasing geopolitical conflict, a pandemic, surging inflation and tangled supply chains in 2015, when she first began pursuing Thinking Huts. The nonprofit, which builds 3D-printed schools in developing countries, opened its first school this spring, in Madagascar—and as you might expect, it was a learning experience.

“I may have been too optimistic in my planning,” she said. “The main takeaway for me, as we look to the next schools, is to make sure I’m giving myself enough room if things don’t go right, especially on the supply chain and shipping side.”

It’s a story that resonates with Leeds alumni, who are confronting seismic changes that have been uneven in their impact and hard to predict.

Making up for a late start

Ryan McMunn (Mktg, Mgt’02), owner and CEO of Tricam Industries, said tension between the United States and China forced the company to pivot its production operations.

“We got a late start on Southeast Asia,” said McMunn, whose company designs and sells consumer products like ladders and landscaping equipment. Pre-tariffs and pandemic, all its manufacturing was done in China, “but we opened up five factories in Southeast Asia, and we’ll probably be doing more there in the future.”

Ryan McMunn in his home office in Denver, which is filled with keepsakes from the years he spent living abroad. McMunn has diversified his company’s manufacturing operations in response to escalating tension between the United States and China. Below, a closeup of some of the items in his office.

“And even if the tariffs are dropped, there’s too much political turmoil within China,” he added. “When manufacturing comes back there, it won’t be the same.”

McMunn is hardly the only pessimist about U.S-China relations. Gurumurthi Ravishankar, faculty director of the master’s in supply chain management at Leeds, said he expects to see more manufacturing move to Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and even the United States—“but it’s easier said than done.”

“It makes for good press to say you’re moving manufacturing back to the U.S., but it’s not easy to accomplish,” he said. “You can’t abandon the investments and partnerships you’ve made around the world, and even when you do make an announcement, you’re still five or six years away from creating products—not to mention a $10 billion or $15 billion investment.”

And as the discussion around global operations expands into the policy arena—“People who didn’t know what this was two years ago, now they stop you on the street to tell you about their supply-chain problems,” Ravishankar said—it’s attracting attention from professionals who see this is an area ripe for innovation. Among them is Mike Cordano (Bus’87), who called himself “obsessed with technology as a catalyst to evolve companies, business, markets—the world.”

“We’re in a period of what I’d call accelerated evolution,” said Cordano, founder and partner of Prime Impact Capital. “The rate and pace of tech-driven change is creating a steeper slope of broader disruption around how people work—and the ways they work—worldwide.”

For the past 30 years, globalization was about driving down costs, he said. “But globalization as we knew it is being challenged by the broader geo-political environment in Asia and Europe. Based on those dynamics, we’re seeing pressure to modify trade relations, potentially leading to some level of decoupling of certain parts of the global economy.”

Chip away at the problem

As an example, Cordano pointed to the worldwide semiconductor shortage. Federal legislation aimed at domestic manufacturing has generated plenty of chatter, even though it’s yet to bear fruit.

“Making semiconductors here isn’t the lowest cost, most efficient way to do it, but there’s other concerns in play, from IP control to supply chains and continuing innovation,” he said.

MORE: Chips Ahoy? Federal Incentives No Guarantee of More U.S.-Made Semiconductors

Anna Fatelnig enrolled in the master’s program in supply chain management at Leeds because she saw the potential for innovation in the empty shelves of her local supermarket during quarantine.

“We need people who can step in and find ways to make the world more agile for the next event—because I don’t believe this was the last pandemic in my lifetime,” said Fatelnig (MSSCM’22), now a procurement coordinator at F. Schumacher & Co., in New York. “It’s an ever-changing world, and companies have to adapt and change as well.”

She said what she most appreciated about her classes was how relevant the assignments and cases were in a time of great disruption.

“Everything we talked about was presented with real examples that didn’t happen 20 years ago,” she said. “It was more like stuff from two weeks ago.”

Two weeks, of course, now feels like long-term planning when it comes to real estate investment, said Cyndi Thomas (MBA’01), managing director at RCLCO and a member of the advisory board to the CU Real Estate Center. The consulting and advisory firm, which serves clients around the world, revises its own guidance “probably every other week” in response to the forces shaping real estate.

“We need people who can step in and find ways to make the world more agile for the next event—because I don’t believe this was the last pandemic in my lifetime.”

Anna Fatelnig (MSSCM’22), procurement coordinator, F. Schumacher & Co.

“Traditionally, real estate is viewed as an inflation hedge, because it’s repriced on a somewhat regular basis,” especially asset classes like apartments, hotels and self-storage facilities with shorter-term leases, she said. “Currently, institutional investment activity for assets with longer-term leases, without the ability to increase revenue, is muted because of higher interest rates, resulting in the potential for negative leverage.” The bid-ask spread between sellers and buyers, she said, has widened.

The development side of the industry, meanwhile, has fallen victim to supply shortages, a labor crisis and high operations costs for projects like hotels, apartment communities or senior housing. That’s created a lot of scrambling so that Thomas can provide the right advice to the institutional investors she works with.

'We're in unknown territory'

“The pace of change over the past 90 to 120 days, in terms of what we’re seeing and how we’re advising people, has been shocking,” she said in summer, 2022. “We’re in unknown territory.”

It may sound bleak, but Thomas is optimistic about the caliber of young professionals coming up in real estate and business.

“What makes them special is their curiosity, which is so important in an interconnected world,” she said. “Being able to connect the dots from understanding what is happening over here, and what that means for my business and my personal life, is the big-picture perspective that the business world is going to need going forward.”

Business at Leeds magazine Graduate Programs Engage with Leeds

An Eye to the Future

With all the changes driven by how interconnected the business world is, how can alumni and aspiring leaders manage to stay nimble?

Mike Cordano says an ability to be adaptive will help set people apart.

“What is effective today, at whatever level you enter the workforce, will change as time and methodology changes,” he said. “More than particular skills, be willing to learn and persevere. Those are the things the environment will dictate will be required. Those attributes will serve you well.”

A few other future-focused ideas he shared:

Hybrid is here to stay. “Fully remote work is going to lack some of the creativity and culture building that humans strive for,” he said. But he said he likes the balance hybrid work offers and expects it to remain a long-term trend.
Global talent war. Related, of course, is how talent searches can now extend far beyond traditional boundaries. Interestingly, normalization of pay is going along with that, so Silicon Valley salaries may not translate for an engineer working out of state.
A.I. at work. Cordano said A.I.’s impact on work will look like the transition from an agrarian society after the Industrial Revolution. “It’s really going to drive adaptation to what kinds of work people do, and some work is very ripe for automation,” he said. “But at some point, there will be a dislocation in how people earn their living.”

A World Apart

Ryan McMunn knows the challenges of global business better than most: He lived in China for eight years, until 2012, with the goal of truly immersing himself in the language and culture of its people.

That helped him forge incredible relationships, and is a main reason he supports scholarships that create opportunities to have global experiences, such as studying abroad or pursuing a certificate in international business.

“While we do a lot right in our country, there’s opportunity to take some of the knowledge gained from overseas and bring that back to the U.S.,” he said. “I want people to get that experience—to give students opportunities to see what we’re missing in the States, and to understand that just because we do something a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way or the right way.”

At Leeds, that starts early. Beyond a goal of giving every student an international experience, the school offers the First-Year Global Experience course, giving freshmen exposure to global topics, case and consulting projects with foreign companies, and a visit to another country.

Quynh-Thi Nguyen said the First-Year Global Experience was a major selling point in choosing Leeds.

“Even coming from a diverse background, studying abroad gave me so much perspective,” said Nguyen (Fin, Econ’25), whose parents immigrated to the United States from Vietnam. This spring, Nguyen visited business and cultural sites in Iceland, which offered a chance to do case studies and meet leaders at companies working in the geothermal energy industry.

“It was one thing to learn about geothermal in class, and another thing to talk to businesses and see how much the country relies on it, and how creatively people have used it,” she said.

War, pandemic, supply crises, inflation: Leeds grads are taking on these interconnected challenges.

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On Inclusion, 'They're Not Going to Do Things the Old Way'

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 06:00:00 +0000

On Inclusion, 'They're Not Going to Do Things the Old Way' Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/04/2022 - 00:00

From Business at Leeds 2022 | Full issue

‘I don’t mince words when I say I am about helping people of color to build wealth—and real estate is a great way to do that,’ says Albus Brooks, a vice president at Milender White. In the background is the project site for Denver’s first integrated recuperative care center for the homeless, developed in partnership with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. The center opened earlier this year in the Arapahoe Square neighborhood.

Workplaces are going to change their practices around inclusivity—or they're not going to be able to recruit and retain the top talent coming out of business school.

Leave it to a college dropout to help a university rethink big ideas around diversity, equity and inclusion.

Mark Goldberg said he never felt cut out for school, “so I ended up getting a lot of non-academic experience in the U.S. Navy” during the Vietnam War.

Today, he said, a story like his—rising to become president of his own full-service real estate firm, Goldberg Properties, despite not having a degree—is increasingly unlikely. That doesn’t bring him any pride.

“As business gets more sophisticated, there are going to be fewer opportunities for people like me to get ahead,” said Goldberg, who sits on the board of advisors of Leeds’ CU Real Estate Center. “Higher education is a place where we can make an immediate and impactful change, to show people from underserved communities the possibilities a business career can create.”

In discussing the future of industry, business leaders and business schools alike understand that today’s students and young professionals—late millennials and early Generation Zers—envision a very different workplace for the future, owing to their attitudes around DEI and their belief that opportunity shouldn’t be limited based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status or sexual orientation.

“For businesses, our society and our country to succeed, we need to reflect what the makeup of the country is by including people who haven’t been brought into the realm of business,” Goldberg said. “And young people are ahead of the game—we’re just trying to get them to a place where they have access to these opportunities.”

“Young people ... they’re realizing that if they’re going to spend 40 to 60 hours a week doing something, they want it to matter.”

Albus Brooks (RelSt, PolSci’00), vice president, Milender White

To that end, Goldberg and his wife, Dit, have supported a scholarship program, Changing the Face of Real Estate, that invites students from underrepresented groups to CUREC and the real estate profession.

A hunger for increased inclusion

Scholarships were part of the equation for Albus Brooks (RelSt, PolSci’00), a scholar-athlete who played safety as a Buff. The former Denver city councilman also is a CUREC board member; coming to CU Boulder from Claremont, California, was “a culture shock,” he said.

“Being on the football team makes you a high-profile person, but if not for my athletic skills, I would not have been included or had the opportunities I did,” Brooks said. “That experience created in me a hunger for inclusive practices everywhere.”

It’s a perspective he’s brought to his work as a vice president at Milender White, where he tries to create opportunities for minorities to build wealth through real estate. He’s heartened when he sees the same determination in today’s students.

“Young people today, this is their revolution—they’re not going to do things the old way,” Brooks said. “They’re asking what companies are doing around ESG (environmental, social and governance), they’re asking why the racial makeup of a company doesn’t reflect the community it’s in—and they’re realizing that if they’re going to spend 40 to 60 hours a week doing something, they want it to matter.”

That’s a perspective Ruby Batalla sees as director of the Office of Diversity Affairs at Leeds—and as an alumna who attended CU Boulder at a time when most universities were playing catch-up on equity.

“I was lucky to be part of a precollege experience that introduced me to peers who I anchored myself to once I arrived on campus,” said Batalla (Span, Psych’05; MEdu’22). “To have seen those programs grow at Leeds, to see larger and larger cohorts in our EXCEL Scholars Program, is awesome.”

Those precollege programs introduce students not just to Leeds, but to one another, creating relationships that help future generations of students look for work. Batalla told the story of one recent graduate who left her job after less than a year.

“She said, ‘I’m the only woman, the only Latina, I don’t feel welcome in this environment,’” Batalla said. “Our grads have so many options, they can go anywhere—and if they don’t feel that they belong, they will.”

The reverse, though, is also true. Batalla said as more companies make efforts to build out diverse pipelines, interns and new hires are eager to share which companies are authentic when it comes to inclusion. Isha Batra (Bus’25) completed an internship with Deloitte in July, and said she felt incredibly welcomed as a first-generation student on the company’s Dallas campus.

“It’s such a huge company that I was not expecting it to be diverse,” said Batra, who plans to focus on finance and operations management while minoring in creative technology and design. “But the first event I went to had maybe the most diverse group of students I’ve ever seen in one place before. I looked around and it just felt like home—it was the start of a great internship experience.”

Gen Z ‘more open about their struggles’

Gen Z is also much more serious, and open, about mental health, said Matt Vogl, co-founder and executive director of the National Mental Health Innovation Center at CU Anschutz.

“This generation is more open about their struggles,” Vogl said. “That means they’re going to expect resources from their workplaces, which have a lot of catching up to do.”

Vogl’s center—which addresses challenges facing mental healthcare, including access to services and eliminating stigma—was designed to be more responsive to innovations from industry, to help breakthroughs get to market more quickly. It’s why he engaged teams of Leeds undergrads in a case competition to help solve specific workplace problems around mental health.

Matt Vogl’s home office is wall-to-wall movie posters, LPs and other memorabilia, to balance his interests against the stresses of work. Younger professionals, he says, are more open about their mental health struggles—and the need for solutions. Above, Isha Batra at a park overlooking the Deloitte building and Denver skyline.

“The students’ enthusiasm sent a pretty powerful message about how important mental health is to this generation, and how vocal they’re going to be about it,” Vogl said.

MORE: The Great Resignation resonates for one Leeds board member

A big surprise, he said, was their appetite for tech-based solutions to these challenges. This tracks with his own interactions with industry, which is keen on mobile apps and virtual reality to improve patient care. That’s important, Vogl said, to help reduce demand for overworked therapists.

Equally important was the students’ enthusiasm for changing the conversation around mental health.

“If I have a backache, I call out sick and say my back hurts. If I’m having a panic attack, I call out sick and say my back hurts,” Vogl said. “We haven’t made the workplace safe enough for that kind of honesty. But Gen Z is not going to put up with workplace attitudes like that—they’re going to go somewhere else, because what they want is to really work hard, but also to have balance.”

Gregory Hinton (Bus’77) could tell you plenty about safety. He called his own experience coming out as a gay man traumatic; as a student, he was bullied off campus, and wound up dropping out for a semester.

A lack of support

“That support system wasn’t there for me—there was no one who could help,” said Hinton, an author and historian who founded Out West, a national museum program series exploring the contributions of LGBTQ communities to Western American history. The series comes on the heels of a successful career as a novelist, film producer and business manager.

One of the things he most enjoys about Out West is the opportunity to connect with today’s students—especially in places like Wyoming, Idaho and Montana that, outside of college towns, have been less welcoming to the LGBTQ community.

“I’ve met so many wonderful younger people doing Out West—we are so much better off than we were in 2008, 2009, when I started doing this,” he said. “To meet with people who want to understand the history of our community and who consider our story to be important is heartening—and says quite a lot about the younger generation.”

Business at Leeds magazine DEI at Leeds Engage with Leeds

Paying lip service to DEI, mental health and other issues? You may run the risk of losing tomorrow’s leaders.

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A Brave New World of Business, Where Change is Faster Than Constant

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 06:00:00 +0000

A Brave New World of Business, Where Change is Faster Than Constant Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/04/2022 - 00:00

From Business at Leeds 2022 | Full issue

As the lines blur between business and business schools, Leeds' innovation and adaptability are keeping alumni in the driver's seat.

In the business world, change was once said to be constant.

Today, that word fails to capture the relentless pace of disruption, one in which a company’s fortunes can change seemingly overnight as a result of an innovation that unlocks a new market, enables new ways to connect to customers, or radically realigns established industry categories.

Businesses have been forced to find new ways to be agile, to anticipate change and to rethink risk as they navigate this new world. A core piece of their strategy is finding ways to partner with business schools, which have created and revamped programs to ensure graduates add value the moment they start work.

With its emphases on entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and analytics, it’s no surprise Leeds is a frequent partner of companies seeking nimble professionals.

“The field is always moving so fast—something new comes up every year,” said Dan Zhang, interim chair of Leeds’ strategy, entrepreneurship and operations division. He brings his extensive consulting experience to bear in refreshing his Advanced Data Analytics course each summer, and “if you do not do regular updates, you can’t keep up to date with industry. It’s a necessity.”

‘Data are not going away’

Industry, meanwhile, is appreciative of Leeds’ willingness to anticipate the new skills businesses will need in the years to come. Libby Duane Adams, chief advocacy officer at Alteryx, has had a front-row seat to the changes in industry since she and Dean Stoecker (IntBus’79) co-founded the software company. As Alteryx has grown, it’s begun offering scholarships to schools like Leeds to ensure graduates have the right set of skills for a workplace driven by change.

“Data are not going away,” she said. “The ability to work with data is a required skill now—and the more students invest in that skill set, and develop their ability to work with data, the richer their career opportunities are.”

Alteryx also co-sponsored a conference at Leeds over the summer that brought the directors of business analytics programs together to address and begin solving some of their shared challenges. The two-day event, which attracted representatives from nearly two dozen programs nationwide, also featured industry input through panel discussions and a keynote. Kai R. Larsen, faculty director of the master’s in business analytics at Leeds, said industry involvement showcased the scale and pace of change that has disrupted companies across the spectrum.

Poet warrior, meet Python

“Every time we ask chief information officers what they want in a recent grad, it’s always the same thing. They want a poet warrior,” Larsen said. “But in reality, they want a warrior who also knows how to program Python, and that’s what they test for in their entry interviews.”

Data and analytics are, of course, driving conversations in business. But that’s not all you need to stay current. Tim Weiss (MBA’16), co-founder and chief operating officer of Boulder-based Optera, said in his industry, new regulations and changing attitudes around climate are keying rising interest in the sustainability management software provider’s services.

“Leeds taught me new business skills and how to market myself for prospective opportunities, as well as become better engaged with the Boulder community,” Weiss said. He added, “I don’t know of any programs that specifically teach what you need to know for this industry. It’s moving too quickly.”

Faces of Leeds: Meet Tim Weiss

That said, a glance at the company’s roster shows more than a few CU Boulder alumni. “When we recruit, we try to hire the full package—which means ensuring we have fundamentally good people, for whom values are not optional,” Weiss said. “There’s a lot of great people from CU Boulder who fit that mold. We do have to train them in sustainability, but they come out with the skills needed to quickly adapt.”

Finding good people

Wanting to hire good people—not just skilled people—is an important consideration against the backdrop of shifting workplace attitudes toward ethics, said Joshua Nunziato, a teaching assistant professor in Leeds’ Social Responsibility and Sustainability Division and director of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program. Increasingly, professionals want to work for companies that value their values; just ask Theranos, Facebook or Uber, which have all landed in hot water for conduct coming out of their C-suites.

In Nunziato’s classes, he sees a subset of students with a deep desire to make a positive social and environmental impact.

“But what interests me are those students who instead see sustainability and ethical leadership as inseparable from their own career ambitions,” he said. “It’s exciting to teach them, because they understand that ethical leadership is not an either-or choice.”

A focus on values helped Jenny Gerson (EBio’06; MBA’14) transition from working as an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service to creating a sustainability role at Zayo Group.

She’s now director of sustainability at DataBank; the company’s data centers enable the kind of cloud storage and computing power that have put data within reach at so many companies.

Too much information

“One of the ways I’ve stayed current with all the changes going on in my industry is something I learned at Leeds—networking,” she said. She started a group for sustainability professionals which numbers more than 100 people—including more than a few Leeds alumni—mainly at small to midsize tech companies in the Denver area.

“When you have a network like that, any time a question comes up, you can immediately go to someone and get a different perspective on what it means for own your work,” Gerson said. “There’s so much information out there—too much, really—and having peers who can help you focus is incredibly valuable.”

“Work has become almost a continuation of business school. Things come at you quickly, and you have to figure out how to prioritize them, solve problems and plan ahead.”

Jenny Gerson (EBio’06, MBA’14), director of sustainability, DataBank

Leeds is listening to its network, too, which helps shape its approach to academic programs. For instance, the school recently created an MBA pathway in natural and organic products in response to the needs of both small local businesses and large internationals seeking insights in an organics stronghold like Boulder. Students in this pathway spent their summers interning at companies like Jack & Annie’s, Danone and Clorox—proof that the perspective taught in the program is sought at companies of all sizes.

“Because natural and organics has become so competitive, it’s much more difficult to turn a passion project into a thriving business,” said Heather Kennedy, a teaching assistant professor and consumer marketing specialist who’s held marketing leadership roles at Whole Foods and Kraft. “These entrepreneurs need business acumen, so they can get their products to market. On the flip side, large consumer packaged goods companies see the growth of the natural industry and realize that, to stay competitive, they need to move in this direction.”

That, of course, speaks to the blurred boundaries between business and business school.

“Work has become almost a continuation of business school,” Gerson said. “Things come at you quickly, and you have to figure out how to prioritize them, solve problems and plan ahead.”

Business at Leeds magazine Graduate Programs Engage with Leeds

Curricular Updates

At Leeds, faculty leverage relationships in industry to ensure that when curricular changes are considered, they meet both current and future needs of the workplace.

Joshua Neil, faculty director of the accounting and taxation master’s program, said input from both the Big Four professional services companies and changing requirements for the CPA exam drove Leeds to add more technical courses to the curriculum.

“The accounting firms have been asking us what we’re doing in this space, probably for the last five years,” Neil said. “For students that were analytically inclined, we were able to steer them into some specialized elective courses. But data have become more mainstream in the last 18 to 24 months—you’re seeing textbooks now with tools like Tableau embedded in them, you hear from our students that they’re asked to use tools like Alteryx on their internships.”

This fall, an analytics course offered by Kai Larsen is being modified for accounting master’s students, with an emphasis on bringing in people from industry to show how these skills are used to help accountants do their jobs better.

“The CPA is doing the same thing—they’re responding to the industry, saying we need a license track in this area,” Neil said. “We’ve gone from what was a novel intersection to realizing we’re going to need a lot of jobs in this space, and you might be at a real competitive disadvantage if you don’t have these tools.”

Leeds also is increasingly intentional about hiring industry-qualified instructors, who bring real-world knowledge around topics like licensing requirements and disclosures—which may change faster than a textbook can reflect.

Ahead of the Curve

Close connections to industry and a roster of top faculty have helped Leeds create programs that meet—or anticipate—real-world demands. A few examples:

BASE. The sophomore year capstone each Leeds student completes, BASE—or B-core Applied Semester Experience—follows industry-intensive dives into each business discipline. Students learn to combine lessons from those disciplines on a real-world project that helps them determine their areas of emphasis as upperclassmen.

Business+Engineering. Much of the change driving the business world comes from technology and engineering. This program—symbolized by the new Rustandy Building—offers structured cross-collaborative opportunities between business and engineering students and faculty.

Buffs With a Brand. Developed by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship in partnership with CU’s Athletics Department, this program gives scholar-athletes tools to help them navigate the new rules around name, image and likeness use. That foresight helped CU roll out a partnership with INFLCR to create the Buffs NIL Exchange.

The pace of change has gone from constant to relentless. Leeds has the agility to provide leadership amid transformation.

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The Great Reflection

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 06:00:00 +0000

The Great Reflection Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/03/2022 - 00:00

From Business at Leeds 2022 | Full issue

Ashish Kothari decided to leave his job during the pandemic, becoming one of the millions of Americans to participate in the Great Recession. His book, 'Hardwired for Happiness,' published this fall.

One man's journey from high-powered exec to happiness guru.

Triggered by COVID-19, more than 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021—a mass exodus from the job market without precedent, generally known as the Great Resignation. The reasons were varied: dissatisfaction with working conditions, compensation, flexibility and balance, for starters. Some chose to retire early, care for loved ones or avoid on-the-job exposure to the virus. Still others had been unhappy with their jobs for years and saw this as an impetus to (finally) improve their situation.

On a deeper level, people were asking big questions about their purpose, wondering if it was the time for a life-changing shift.

Whether you call it the Great Resignation, Great Rethink, Great Retirement or Great Reshuffle, the pandemic dramatically changed the labor market, putting workers in the driver’s seat for the first time and giving them the opportunity to reassess their situations.

By his mid-forties, Ashish Kothari had achieved everything he thought he needed for a happy life. He was a partner at one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world; he had a wife, son, and wonderful network of friends; and he lived in beautiful, affluent Boulder.

But one day, in 2015, he realized, “I should have been blissfully happy and satisfied, yet I was continuing to hustle faster, harder and longer.”

“For 20 years I had been executing a script that was written by society, and I found myself having everything, but still living in a constant state of anxiety and stress,” he said.

Long hours, low satisfaction

Throughout his consulting tenure, he put in long hours, traveled extensively and often had little time to spend with his family. He had gained weight and wasn’t sleeping well. And he worked in a functional discipline that no longer brought him joy. But he was frozen in place by his fear of change.

So he embarked on a journey of self-discovery, studying ontological coaching, neurosciences and ancient wisdom traditions. He brought his insights to work and started facilitating workshops and coaching sessions for colleagues and clients. Kothari encouraged them to start relying on their internal compasses for joy, health, love and meaning.

Then, COVID shut down the world.

“It was the first time in 25 years that I stopped,” he said. “Sometimes, to truly transform, you have to stop what you’re doing and to let the wisdom from within guide you.”

“Sometimes, to truly transform, you have to stop doing and to let the wisdom from within guide you.”

Ashish Kothari, Happiness Squad founder and Leeds board member

As he began grounding himself in nature and spending more time with his family, he also had more energy to put toward what had become a true passion: pursuing his inward journey and helping others with theirs. He engaged in a learning journey across the disciplines of spirituality, psychology and neuroscience to uncover how to live his best life.

“The fire had been there for a while, but there was never enough oxygen. When I stopped and allowed space for it, the flame turned into an inferno,” he said.

During the pandemic, he wrote a book, “Hardwired for Happiness: 9 Proven Practices to Overcome Stress and Live Your Best Life.” Once he finished writing, he made the decision to leave the firm—three years earlier than he’d originally planned; he resigned in May 2022.

“COVID absolutely accelerated my departure when I saw the massive scale of the silent burnout epidemic unfolding. I couldn’t ignore my calling anymore,” he said.

Looking ahead, Kothari plans to create a “happiness foundations class” for mass consumption. He also plans to partner with leaders to transform organizations into cultures where humans can flourish.

His ultimate goal is for people to learn the lesson he discovered the hard way: “Once you stop pursuing external happiness and go inward, you will find that happiness was there all along.”

“Hardwired for Happiness” published in October. To learn more about the book and Kothari’s mission, and join the hardwired for happiness community, please visit www.happinesssquad.com.

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How the pandemic encouraged professionals to consider life-changing career shifts.

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