A Jet Ski, A Shark and a Vivid Imagination
Did you hear about the crazy principal who had a business analyst killed rather than give him a reference? Ben Smith did — and imagine his surprise when he found out he was the alleged villain.
Smith, 31, a senior principal at A.T. Kearney, was driving a carload of summer associates to a party when he heard the tale.
The story went like this: The analyst asked the senior principal to write him a reference for his business school application. Instead, the principal took him jet skiing, where the analyst fell into the ocean and was eaten by sharks.
"While there are elements of truth to the story, it didn't happen exactly that way," laughs Smith, who works in the global high technology and electronics practice in the firm's Santa Clara office. Actually, Smith and the analyst, Doug Kilponen — who was attacked by a shark years ago as a child — were out for a morning jet-ski ride in San Francisco Bay. They rode past the Golden Gate Bridge and were somewhere between Alcatraz and Pier 39 — an area alledged to be populated by sharks — when Kilponen's engine blew up. The jet ski started to take on water, but the pair managed to hook it up to Smith's jet ski and tow it to shore. A tourist, seeing the unmanned jet ski, concluded someone had drowned and called the U.S. Coast Guard. Imaginations take it from there.
"I've always loved the water, and I've always loved racing motorcycles," says Smith."The one advantage to the jet ski is that if you take it to the extreme and you fall off, you don't hurt yourself — at least most of the time."
Once Smith — who has been jet skiing for five years — had honed his skills, he decided to test them by racing in the amateur circuit in Florida two years ago. How did he do? "I didn't kill myself," jokes Smith. This summer, he plans to take two months off to approach the amateur circuit more seriously. At A.T. Kearney, Smith has taken so many business analysts out jet skiing that it's said to be part of the unofficial initiation into the firm. You can just see the fear in their eyes.
The Rugby Player Wore Tails
There are two very different facets to John Treacy. There's the gentleman, who helps to organize a black-tie ball every fall for the Irish community in Chicago. Then there is the rugby player who has had his nose broken six times in the course of athletic combat.
"It's the closest thing to war that you can get," says Treacy, 27, a consultant in Sibson & Co./Nextera's Chicago office since 1997. "They always say about rugby, 'It's a hooligan sport played by gentlemen.'"
In 1997, he joined the local rugby club, the Chicago Griffins. Treacy, who plays the number eight position on the team, has been playing rugby since he was an eight-year-old lad. The Dublin native moved to Chicago five years ago after graduating from University College, Dublin. When Treacy started to miss Ireland, he and three other UCD graduates decided to rejuvenate the Chicago chapter of his alma mater's alumni association.
"It was set up 15 years ago, but it was just dead," says Treacy. "For such a big Irish community, there was no real event that they could associate themselves with."
The group set to work organizing social activities such as attending ball games and theater. But the main event is a black-tie evening called the Fall Ball, for which Treacy and his friends spend months preparing. The work has paid off. About 250 people have attended each of the balls, a number rivaling that for the ball in London, where the largest alumni chapter is based.
2,000 Perennials and Counting
From Mark Stadler's point of view, it was inevitable that he would grow up to have a green thumb.
"I was the youngest of six boys, and somebody had to mow the lawn," says Stadler, 45, the managing partner of William M. Mercer's Chicago office. "I decided then that if I had to do it, I'd better learn to love it."
As a 12-year-old growing up in Southern California, he used his horticultural prowess to plant flowers wherever he could — including in old wagons. Now a father of four, Stadler is still the one tending to the lawn, but this time it's his own three acres. He has torn up the underbrush, planted more than 2,000 perennials and 3,000 bulbs, and worked with arborists to place his trees in healthy, uncrowded positions. He is also nurturing a plot that originally had been landscaped by a master gardener but allowed to overgrow.
"I like watching how the seasons change the yard," says Stadler, who envisions his daughter getting married in the garden. "My goal is to have a haven where I can go at all times of the day and that will be an integral part of my home."
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