Olympic Mettle

Tim Massucco ‘03 Spins a Career Dream

When alum Tim Massucco ‘03 has a bad day at work, the consequences can be dire. The U.S. Ski Team aerials competitor -- one of those skiers who flies off ramps and sails through the air doing flips and twists then, hopefully landing upright on two skis -- learned that lesson the hard way in 2002 when he broke his neck trying to execute a maneuver. Yet he returned to the sport he loves. “I’m not going to lie,” he says. “It does hurt once in a while.”

Having just missed qualifying for the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy, Massucco is already making tracks toward competing in the 2010 games in Vancouver. While the Torino games were under way, he won the North American Grand Prix title in February, which earned him an invitation to compete in a World Cup event in British Columbia in March. World Cup events award points toward a skier’s Olympic qualifying bid.

The Otis, Massachusetts, native remembers his Champlain College years as almost as hectic as his sport is dangerous. His study regimen often involved cracking the books on the ferry from Burlington to Port Kent, New York, so he could train in Lake Placid. After receiving his A.S. in Accounting from Champlain in December ’03, he began devoting himself full-time to ski competition.

Massucco’s daily schedule looks pretty full these days -- scary full. “Right now, I’m doing lay-full-full,” he says. That’s a double-twisting triple back flip, a move Massucco calls “not too difficult.” In World Cup competition it’s probably a warm-up jump, he adds. “Right now my goal is to get a full-double-full-full -- or four twists and three flips. Once I get to there, the goal will be probably full-double-full-double-full -- five twists and three flips, with one twist in the first flip, two twists in the second flip, and two in the third. And then the next few years I’ll spend perfecting those difficult tricks.”

After all that aerial accounting is done, the 22-year-old will be in his prime come 2010 in Vancouver. “With what’s involved in my sport, I’m one of the younger guys on the team,” he says. “It takes a little while to get up to the triples. You’ve got to be a big boy to go off the jump because out of all the acrobatic sports, we go the highest. A triple will take you about 60 feet in the air.”
For now, survival in Massucco’s sport draws on the accounting skills he developed at Champlain, not just what he learned by virtue of the College’s proximity to ski slopes. His job as an Olympic hopeful is not exactly a paid position, he notes, adding that while ski team sponsorship -- from the likes of Visa, Charles Schwab, Tommy Hilfiger, and his own sponsors Stratton Mountain Resort, Elan, and Dolomite -- makes it possible for him to live and train in Park City, Utah, he is “always worried about money and finances.” He budgets well, he says, and keeps his priorities straight. “Right now, I’m just starting out, so I’m living like a ski bum.”

Massucco’s career path may be one of the least likely recommendations a student will hear from Champlain’s career advisors -- or anyone concerned for a student’s safety -- but it still prompts the familiar phrase, “Nice work if you can get it.” Here’s to a safe landing. Track Massucco’s career at www.tmskiing.com.

Ad Pro Runs the Gamut and Remembers Her Roots

If ever there were an Information Age job title, alumna Amy Crouch has it: Idea Executive. The Irasburg, Vermont, native earned her B.S. in Business Administration from Champlain College in 2000 and now works for Triad, an advertising agency in Canton, Massachusetts. Her position involves managing accounts, as she says, “from one extreme to the other.”

One end of those “extremes” is the college-age demographic of The Dovetail Companies. Based in Athens, Georgia, the firm is pioneering niche housing developments for students. At the other extreme is Resources for Senior Living, a company out of Charlotte, North Carolina, specializing in senior housing residences for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

For Crouch, the extremes of her client portfolio, which also includes Brandeis University graduate schools and pharmaceutical heavyweight Pfizer, are part of her job’s appeal. “I have national accounts, accounts in tons of different industries,” she says. “It’s been a very fast-paced launch into a great career.”

As a student, Crouch already had a penchant for varied responsibilities, helping out in Admissions, at Career Planning, and in the Advising and Registration Center (ARC). She was a peer mentor and a resident assistant, and she directed a summer orientation with [ARC Director] Katie Hawley. “I was involved in absolutely everything,” she says. “My experience has not only impacted my life academically but all around.”

Her first job out of Champlain was with Chittenden Bank. She joined Triad roughly two years ago. In the interim, she spearheaded an Americorps project she called “Northeast Kingdom’s Promise,” a multifaceted initiative addressing youth traffic fatalities. The effort generated statewide publicity and earned Crouch a Governor’s Certificate of Merit from Howard Dean.

Crouch returned to her academic roots at Champlain College over the fall 2005 semester, when she visited an advertising class taught by Jay McKee and Joe O’Grady. Looking back, she credits her Champlain instructors with teaching her important advertising fundamentals. “When you’re talking about a business or industry, you have to learn how to think analytically about what makes that thing different, what makes it tick,” she says. “At Champlain, you look at things from every angle.”

Survival also depends on quick thinking and follow-through: “You have to learn quickly how to adapt to any situation,” Crouch says. “If you say you’re going to do something, you have to get it done, you have to make it happen.”

In other words, while she may be an idea executive, Amy Crouch can put a plan into action.

Queen of the Hill

Alum Bags a Career Peak at Mt. Snow Resort

Sure, many Champlain College students walk into Career Planning thinking, You know, I’d just like to keep skiing for the rest of my life. But how many walk out of there and actually do it? Kelley Pawlak ’85, for one -- for two decades and counting.

Pawlak recently reached one of many summits in her 20-year career with American Skiing Company with her promotion to managing director of Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vermont. Praised in a recent news report for her enthusiasm, passion, and professionalism as well as her operations and marketing expertise and community involvement, she now stands at the helm of what even the seasoned ski-resort veteran concedes is “a really big facility.” With roughly 1,300 staff members, 19 chairlifts, 104 trails, and resort lodgings amounting to roughly 360 rooms -- not including the 60 condominium units under her management -- Mount Snow rivals in size and complexity the very institution where Pawlak earned her degree.

The trail connecting the two is clear to her and lined with fond memories. As a Champlain College student during the era of intercollegiate athletics, Pawlak was very involved in sports -- field hockey for one year but primarily skiing. “My ski team experience at Champlain is one of the fondest experiences of my life,” she says. “I wasn’t very good, but I had a wonderful time. When I graduated, I was like, ’Oh my goodness. I have to buy my own season’s pass. You know what, I’m just going to go to a ski area and work there.’”

Fortunately, her student years furnished her with plenty of skills for a run at success off the slopes. “Certainly some of the courses I use all the time,” she notes, citing marketing, advertising, and accounting. Her effectiveness as a manager shows in the structure of her workday. “How many people can go to work, get a few runs in, sell tickets, pick up lunch trays, have a meeting about this or that, and go out skiing if they want?” she asks. “It’s not like that every day, you don’t always get out to the hill, but I try.”

Earning the top spot at Mount Snow is an achievement of which Pawlak is understandably proud. Looking back, this mother of a nine-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy sees only one major turn she might have taken differently: not returning to school to get her bachelor’s degree sooner. “I came here with the passion for skiing, and it turned very quickly into my passion for work,” she says. “I just want to make it better every time. Unfortunately, it got in the way of my education.” Pawlak resumed undergraduate studies at Southern Vermont College in 2000 and is now considering options, Champlain’s online programs among them, for completing her degree. “Once I have that bachelor’s, just to say I have it, I’m going to feel a lot better,” she adds.

From the vantage point of two successful decades in the ski industry, she also sees that some management lessons she picked up along the way came not from textbooks or courses but from her experiences as an athlete. “Really, you don’t fire a lot of people because of their skills,” she says. “Usually people don’t make it because they don’t play well with others."