2009 40 Under Forty: Michael Gondek
Michael Gondek
Age: 35
Title: Chairman & CEO
Company: Strategic Labor Inc.
Company location: Worcester
Residence: Spencer
College: Assumption College and Providence College
Career highlights: I have a master’s degree in East European history, so my path is a little different. I started the company in 2003 with my brother, a brilliant technologist, and my father, an operations expert. Together we bought out a defunct software technology that we thought had great market potential. With my brother leading technology and me leading sales and marketing, we have greatly extended the product features to solve very complex workforce scheduling problems, have sold the solution worldwide to customers like MGM-Mirage, Sunoco, and BC Ferries, and have grown sales by more than 1,000 percent over the past three years.
Community involvement: I am a classical/musical-theatre singer and often perform in benefit concerts to help raise money for nonprofit organizations. One of my favorite events is the annual Carriage House Concert, which raises money for Children’s Friend. Concerts like these can have an exponential impact, meaning that when I make a donation, that’s fine, but if I perform in a concert that brings in 100 people who make the same donation, that has 100-times the impact. More importantly, if we volunteer doing what we love, then it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, and we tend to volunteer in the community more often.
Biggest professional success: My biggest success has been hiring the right people for Strategic Labor. We can’t afford any “misses” when it comes to staff, so we need to hire smart, funny, hard-working, well-rounded people who rise to every challenge. We also break the mold where it makes sense—for example, our customer support lead is not an IT specialist, but a trained psychologist. The fact we’re six years into this is a testimony to them, not me.
Dream job: The Sovereign Prince of Monaco. It’s Monaco, and I think I’d like doing sovereign, princely things, whatever they may be.
Businessperson he admires most and why: Jeff Bezos, whom everyone knows as the founder of Amazon.com, but whom I admire for founding Blue Origin, a company that strives to make space travel affordable. He could have lived a very, very, very comfortable life, with the success of Amazon.com, but he decided to pursue space exploration, which is not at all easy. I hope it’s successful, because a trip to outer space would be a really cool birthday present someday (hint, hint).
If you weren’t doing the job you’re doing now, what would you do? I spent the first six years of my career in the classroom as a high school history and politics teacher. I love the academic environment, but also enjoy running a business, so I think working in a university development office would be challenging and exciting.
Favorite movie: Young Frankenstein — it was the first-date movie on went on with my wife.
If you were stuck on a desert island what book would you want to have with you? Assuming Rachel Ray didn’t publish a book called 365 Great Sand Recipes I would have to go with the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The complexity of the different themes he explores, and the depth of his characters should keep me entertained until I run out of interesting sand recipes.
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