A Publication for West Coast Alumni and Friends
Vol. 2, No. 2 / August 2003

Technology and Society Converge in Halstedt's Career

"WPI was like intellectual boot camp then. In that regard, everything has been a lot easier since I graduated!"

As Steven C. Halstedt '68 approached his senior year at WPI, the university was still a few years away from changing from a traditionally rigid engineering school to a model of educational innovation. "WPI was like intellectual boot camp then," says the WPI trustee and co-founder of Denver-based Centennial Ventures. "In that regard, everything has been a lot easier since I graduated!"

WPI had yet to develop its emphasis on teaching students to think about the social consequences of technology, but Halstedt found similar inspiration in The Two Cultures, a book by the British novelist and physicist C.P. Snow that played a pivotal role in his understanding of the link between technology and society.

WPI was the only college Halstedt applied to while attending high school in Cromwell, Conn. "Dick Merriam, my uncle, graduated from WPI in 1939 with a mechanical engineering degree, and I was very fond of him," he says. To help pay for college, he labored as a field hand and straw boss in Connec-ticut's tobacco fields. "I also caddied," he remembers, "was a mail boy in the State Welfare Department, and worked high steel as a structural iron worker."

In 1965, Halstedt was diagnosed with melanoma, an often lethal form of skin cancer; he recovered and has experienced no recurrence. The diagnosis brought him a discharge from WPI's then-mandatory ROTC program, but following graduation he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was commissioned at the Officer Candidate School in Virginia and taught computer science and operations research at the Army Engineering School before being sent to Vietnam as a platoon leader and battalion operations officer in a combat engineers outfit.

Following his discharge from the service, he earned an MBA from Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. From there he went on to work at Travelers Insurance in Hartford, Conn., and Daniels & Associates, a cable television firm in Denver.

In the latter post, he first noticed what he terms the "wave of change" that was set to transform the communications industry. In the 1970s, he saw the shift from broadcast television to cable. Then came the growing marketplace call for mobile telephones. His early recognition of these technical trends, coupled with his understanding of the prevailing financial picture, prepared him to participate in today's communications convergence marketplace.

Now, as managing director of Centennial Ventures, which has more than $1 billion in assets under management, Halstedt is helping advance an industry that continues to grow at about 8 percent a year. Centennial focuses its venture capital on computer, media and communications networks and the technologies that enable them.

In the process, it is helping nurture the convergence of traditional communications and media services, Internet-enabled communication and new media, which is creating a $2 trillion market and transforming daily life and work for everyone.

Halstedt, remembering the words of C.P. Snow, is also mindful of the convergence of the industries he helps grow and the society around them. "We build big companies that employ many people who contribute to their communities and pay taxes," he says. "There is a huge multiplier effect in our investments."