Of Course Mama's Gonna Help Build the Wall

[ornoth]

Back in 1995, I left my job running a mainframe for a medical software company and joined a small but growing local IT consulting company. Their ambitious corporate tagline was: Changing the Way the World Works.

It’s not often that an individual can have that kind of impact, but earlier this month I was presented with photographic evidence that I found both deeply touching… and deeply humorous.

During my seven years with that consulting company—Sapient—we grew from 100 people to 3600, had a public IPO, and were named to the S&P 500. I was one of their first web developers, who helped them transition from just client-server IT projects to doing their first large-scale e-commerce, banking, and stock brokerage websites.

Today Sapient employs over 12,000 people globally, and (for whatever reason) they’ve chosen to sponsor the Boston Red Sox. While that tagline seemed awfully ambitious for a 100-person company back in 1995, one of the visible signs of Sapient’s success at “changing the way the world works” is the recent presence of their corporate logo adorning that most famous edifice in Major League Baseball: Fenway Park’s Green Monster.

That kinda freaks me out, but it is also a reminder that I had a part in something that really did have a major impact on the world.

During my tenure at Sapient, I started riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a fundraising bike ride for the Jimmy Fund. The PMC has been a partner of the Boston Red Sox since 2003, and each year they devote one game to recognizing the PMC and its riders. And in recent years, that has included unveiling a huge PMC logo on the Green Monster.

Having been part of the PMC for 14 years—in the process, raising over $100,000 for cancer research, treatment, and prevention—that recognition means a lot to me.

So I was pretty heartily amused when I saw the photos from this year’s PMC Day at Fenway Park. There in huge script for all to see are two of the biggest accomplishments of my life—the Pan-Mass Challenge and Sapient—right next to one another on the biggest billboard in professional sport.

Obviously, I can’t claim sole responsibility for those two organizations’ work, but I can take pride in having made a meaningful contribution to each, and that those contributions have helped create thriving organizations that will continue to have positive impacts on the world.

But I still think it’s funny as hell whenever I see those two logos out there in left field, right next to one another. Life sure is strange!