Northeast Alumni Panel & Networking
Taking a Non-Traditional Career Path After Graduation
CU Engineers are known for their problem-solving mindset and adaptability - skills that are valued in many different fields. Join us for this interactive event as we hear from an incredible panel of CU Engineering alumni who took the non-traditional career path after earning their degrees. Our alumni panelists come to us from cities in the Northeast where they have found success in industries such as law and patent law, defense, and marketing. You'll hear about their journeys after CU, how they dealt with transitions along their career path, and advice they'd offer to their fellow alumni. After the panel discussion, there will be an opportunity to network in small groups with the panelists and your fellow alumni in the Northeast area and beyond. We hope you'll be able to join us!
Thursday, October 15, 2020
5 p.m. ET
While this interactive event will feature a panel of alumni from the Northeast region, all alumni are welcome to participate. Learn more about our speakers below. We hope to see you there!
Enterprise Account Executive at Highspot, Inc.
While some may say that Tommy Benning took an unusual path from engineering into sales, he'll tell you that he took a more common path than most may realize. He graduated from CU with a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and a Certificate in Entrepreneurship in August 2011. He was very social as an undergrad and got involved in everything from student government to student clubs centered around entrepreneurship.
Knowing that he didn't want to go the traditional engineering route, he started his career as a sales associate at a local Boulder startup, Gnip, which sold access to the online, publicly available conversation via social media data. It was at Gnip (co-founded by Jud Valeski, BA Computer Science, '96) where he discovered the value of the problem solving skills he had learned as an engineer and how they could be applied to solve customers' problems. Gnip was acquired by Twitter in 2014 which prompted Tommy to transition from sales into sales enablement where he spent a little over a year as the Global Program Manager, Sales Skills, before leaving Twitter for, the then pre-IPO, MongoDB as a Technical Sales Enablement Manager. It was at MongoDB where he combined his love for solving customer problems with his technical problem solving skills to find ways to increase sales rep efficiency and effectiveness (measured in shorter deal cycles, and increased deal sizes) and decrease sales rep ramp time (time to first deal) by 33%. Not long after he decreased the number of content repositories by 75% and implemented a sales enablement platform that helped sales reps find the content they needed in minutes instead of hours, he made the transition back into Sales for Highspot, the industry leading sales enablement platform (and same one he had implemented at MongoDB).
As a current member of the College of Engineering and Applied Science GOLD (Graduates Of the Last Decade) Board, and someone who has met and worked with many engineers who have taken non-traditional career paths, he's excited to moderate this session and highlight some of the many reasons why engineers are often successful in non-traditional career paths.
Vice President for Business Strategy at Savantage Solutions
Dale Farrand is the Vice President for Business Strategy for Savantage Solutions, a financial services and information technologies consulting company. Dale oversees the company’s work at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the United States Army, supporting strategic initiatives in the areas of business development and client service delivery.
Prior to joining Savantage, Dale served in the United States Army for 25 years. Dale is a 1993 graduate of the University of Colorado with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and has earned two advanced degrees in Military Arts & Science and National Resource Strategy. While in the Army, Dale served as a missile maintenance platoon leader and company commander, and led teams numbering 50 to 1,500 managing supply chains around the globe, including combat deployments to the Balkans and the Middle East. Dale’s culminating position in the Army was the Director of Customer Operations for DLA, the $35 billion-dollar annual business unit within the Department of Defense.
Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of Advance
Michael D. Fricklas became Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of Advance in April 2018. From 1993 to 2017, Mike was one of the top executives at Viacom, for 19 years as EVP, General Counsel and Secretary, reporting to the CEO and COO. Fricklas received a B.S.E.E. from the University of Colorado’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 1981 and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Boston University School of Law in 1984.
After graduating from CU, Mike focused his studies on the law related to technology businesses, and started practicing in Palo Alto, California in the areas of venture capital financing, initial public offerings, and technology licensing. He later focused on mergers and acquisitions in New York and accepted a position to return to Colorado as general counsel of the North American business of a global mining concern before returning to New York to accept a position as deputy general counsel of Viacom.
Fricklas was past president of the Association of General Counsel and he serves in a variety of other professional and community activities, including as a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston University; as Secretary and a member of the Board of Jazz at Lincoln Center; and as co-chair of the UJA entertainment and media group. He also serves as a member of New York’s Permanent Commission on Access to Justice, as a member of the Board of Counsellors of Equal Justice Works, and a leader of the group “No Labels”.
Principal Attorney at Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds
A Colorado native, Mary Lou earned a B.S. in Applied Math from the University of Colorado Boulder and a J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. She has over 30 years of experience in private practice in IP law where she represents inventors before the US Patent Office in the technical arts of: imaging, video applications, medical systems, business or transactional methods, bio/chemical analysis, alternative energy, social networks, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and electro-mechanical devices.
In 2018, 2019, and 2020, Mary Lou received the distinction of Best Lawyers in America® for her patent law expertise. She is a proud member of the Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society. Mary Lou currently resides in New Hampshire.