Time Off: Precious Moments

After years of serving demanding clients, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Scott Haug assigned himself what could likely be described as the greatest challenge of his consulting career: To open a school and community center for autistic children in Southern California.
"I had a strong feel for market opportunity and what needed to happen, but candidly, I went into it a little blind," says Haug, the founder of Pyramid Autism Center in Huntington Beach, CA.
Throughout this special assignment, Haug would play the part of venture capitalist, CEO, real estate agent, recruiter, marketer, and fund-raiser. Today, he continues to serves as the center's chief operating officer
In the late 1990s, Haug, now 43 and the father of an 11-year-old autistic son, was becoming increasingly frustrated with the quality of educational alternatives in his area.
There are over 500,000 children affected with this neurological disorder in the U.S. and over 1,000 in Orange County, but most of the better schools are on the East Coast, according to Haug. He did some research on nonprofit business models, created a PowerPoint presentation of his vision, and pitched it to two renowned experts in the field of autism, Dr. Andrew Bondy and Lori Frost. Both agreed to provide clinical leadership and oversight.
Still, the center would need to overcome numerous hurdles and meet stringent regulatory standards. It made him realize that there are huge opportunities for consultants to lend their skills in meaningful ways.
"Failure was not really an option in my own mind. I just kind of said, 'I'm just going to do it,'" says Haug, a consultant of 15 years and a vice president in CGEY's strategy and transformation practice. He is also the Americas leader of the firm's customer and collaborative commerce strategy offers.
But the strategy consultant got a tough lesson on the realities of implementation. "I got dropped right in the middle of the pond, so I probably do have a much greater appreciation on how difficult it is to execute a strategy — even though this, obviously, is not the same as trying to get IBM to change course."
The school, which opened its first classroom two years ago, now has 16 students — including Haug's son, Justin — who are between the ages of five and 12. There are about 15 teachers.
The goal now is to develop the school's community center, modeled after The Boys' & Girls' Club, so that it will touch a broader community. The center has programs such as Sibshops for the siblings of autistic children. Haug also wants to make the school a leading-edge demonstration site to train teachers in the public sector. Its Web site is www.pyramidautismcenter.com .
"What's interesting is that all of this happened serendipitously at the time of the dot-com frenzy. The start-ups that most people were running to were the ones where you could make a gazillion dollars."
Of course, the irony is that most of those start-ups imploded, while his survived and is thriving. But he is building a different type of equity. "It's my heavenly bank account," he says. "I'm building karma."