Ichabod Washburn Young Alumni Award for Professional Achievement: 2003 Recipients
Maureen Sexton Horgan '83
Maureen Horgan, as a successful alumna, you are a source of great pride to Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
As an undergraduate, your leadership accomplishments included serving as editor of the yearbook, a member of Skull and a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. You graduated with honors from WPI's Computer Science Department in 1983.
You continued to serve your alma mater as corporate matching gifts agent for alumni at Accenture, as chair of the Alumni Association's Career Connections Program, as a member of your class's Reunion Committee, and as a member of both the Publications Committee and the Alumni Association Executive Committee-all leading to your receiving the John Boynton Young Alumni Award for Service to WPI in 1998.
In July 1983 you joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), fresh out of WPI. Since then you have worked in the company's Communications and High Tech, Government, and Products industry groups. For the past 10 years your work has focused on large enterprise application system implementations, helping your clients improve their business processes and gain operational efficiencies. In 1995 you were promoted to associate partner and helped establish Accenture's application management outsourcing practice in the Northeast.
You have worked with a variety of clients over the last 20 years, including Boston Scientific, Sony, GE Capital and Polaroid. You also helped recruit and mentor a number of successful WPI graduates at Accenture. In recognition of all your professional efforts, you were promoted to partner in June of 2001. Now based in Boston, you currently are responsible for sales and delivery of application management services for your clients in the Communications and High Tech industry group of Accenture. You are also responsible for Accenture's diversity and women's mentoring programs in Boston.
Maureen Horgan, it is an honor to present you with the Ichabod Washburn Young Alumni Award for Professional Achievement.
Sean D.S. Sebastian '83
Sean Sebastian, your hard work and commitment to investing in entrepreneurs in Western Pennsylvania has propelled your career as a leading venture capitalist.
As a mechanical engineering major, your leadership skills were honed while a member of the Air Force ROTC at WPI, and later at RPI, where you received your MBA. At General Electric Information Services you were introduced to the excitement of bringing cutting-edge technology to the market and helping launch new ventures.
You launched your own new venture-Telfor Group, Ltd., a technology-consulting firm-and served as its CEO. In 1996 you worked as assistant vice president of corporate finance for PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, and began your career in venture funding by taking over the management of Birchmere Investments. Four years later you launched another venture fund-Birchmere Ventures, one that has grown to over $135 million. Focusing on early-stage information technology and life sciences opportunities in the Mid-Atlantic region, your venture funds helped establish more than 20 companies. These have thrived despite the downturn in the economy.
The Pittsburgh Chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs recognized your support of entrepreneurial ventures in the Pittsburgh area last year; your colleagues named you the inaugural recipient of the Top Supporter of Entrepreneurship in the Pittsburgh area. As past president of the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association, a member of the Executive Committee of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, and a member of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, you see a bright future for entrepreneurs, noting that over $1 billion has been invested by venture capitalists in more than 100 western Pennsylvania companies since 2000. You credit much of your success to an ability to identify leaders-smart people who know technology, have a vision, and are able to inspire others.
Your success in the world of venture fund finance is only matched by your dedication to your community. Your compassion for your fellow citizens in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania has led you to take on leadership roles for United Way and the Boy Scouts of America, among others. Your philanthropic spirit is not limited to your hometown, however. A long-standing member of the President's Advisory Council, you have given back selflessly to your alma mater.
Your leadership, drive to succeed, and desire to help others launch successful businesses has distinguished you both as a leader in the venture capital world and as one of Pittsburgh's most outstanding citizens. WPI is fortunate to count you among its most successful alumni and is honored to present you with the Ichabod Washburn Young Alumni Award for Professional Achievement.
John J. West '88
John West, your hard work, leadership, entrepreneurial spirit and drive have distinguished you as a well-respected and sought-after management consultant.
Graduating from WPI with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1988, it didn't take you long to start your first entrepreneurial venture, Envirocorp, in 1989. Your success with the firm, later renamed ENSTRAT, earned you several prestigious honors, including Central Massachusetts Business Digest's Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1990, North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce Achievement Award for Job Creation in 1991, and U.S. Small Business Association's Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1993, providing you with the opportunity to visit the White House and meet President Clinton.
After earning your MBA from Harvard Business School, you decided to sell ENSTRAT and move to New York to accept the position of partner with Mitchell Madison Group, a prestigious global management-consulting firm, where you specialized in strategic sourcing for Fortune 500 companies. Your entrepreneurial spirit emerged once again and in 1999 you launched Silver Oak Partners, Inc. Headquartered in Boston with offices in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, the firm is a leader in providing high-impact solutions to improve clients' procurement of goods and services. Current clients include 30 private equity firms and several Fortune 1000 companies.
You credit much of your success to hard work, solid business plans, and surrounding yourself with good people. As a young entrepreneur, while your friends were at the beach, you were reading about business and talking with successful people. You once professed, "Business is my hobby."
Always appreciative of the education that WPI provided you, you have freely given of your time and resources to help strengthen your alma mater. As a member of the Alumni Funds Board and the President's Advisory Council in the mid-1990s, you led a crusade to increase participation of your contemporaries in the PAC, with dramatic results. In addition, you served on a number of career panels, offering advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.
John West, for your exemplary record of achievement, WPI is honored to present you with the Ichabod Washburn Young Alumni Award for Professional Achievement.
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