Learning by doing is at the core of the Kogod experience. While students build foundational skills and make connections in the classroom, there’s nothing quite like real-world experience to bring the lessons to life.
Kogod alum Michael Chavira (MSF ’11) echoed this same sentiment while recalling his first entrepreneurial endeavor—mowing lawns as a kid. “I learned that I could make more money if I mowed more yards,” he explains. “I remember making the realization that time was ultimately my limit–there are only so many hours a person can work in a day.” While Chavira had yet to receive any formal lessons in economics, he quickly internalized the foundational knowledge that would guide his later work.
“I could increase how much I charged for mowing yards, or I could hire other friends in my neighborhood to mow yards with me. Years later, and I’ve seen this same scenario play out throughout my career,” says Chavira, who is now the cofounder and managing partner at Axiologic Solutions, a DC-area company providing premier services in the intelligence community.
While immersed in his studies at Kogod, Chavira wrote the plan for Axiologic Solutions with the help of his friend and cofounder. “We felt that we could provide a better service at a better cost than some of the other competitors in the marketplace at that time,” he says. “We did our strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis, and we felt the barrier to entry was relatively low compared to other options we were discussing.”
Chavira was working full-time at Booz Allen Hamilton as a defense contractor while completing his MS in finance at Kogod, so in the evening, he would sit in the Kogod lobby and continue working on different aspects of his company. He asked himself questions like: How would we do accounting? How could we run payroll? How can we recruit employees?
“There were no wrong answers, but they all came at a cost–whether that was money or our own time,” says Chavira. His unique combination of professional experiences and formal education guided his decisions, which ultimately led to his dream company becoming a reality.