Hoya Staff Writer Friday, May 19, 2006 Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya Jon Carpenter

Ever since his first foray into business in the fourth grade, Jon Carpenter (MSB ’06) says he’s been interested in the way companies operate. It all started with Buy and Save, his business enterprise that sold candy, film and batteries to his classmates and friends. He and his buddies – who wore blue hats with “BAS” written in red puff paint on the front – even had business cards and learned strategic decisions about the company’s future. “We were very disciplined,” Carpenter recalls. “All of us had an equal share of company assets, so we had to weigh the pros and cons of things like buying a new cash box.” So maybe it’s no surprise to his former business partners that at Georgetown, Carpenter traded his puff-painted cap for a palm pilot when he became CEO and president of the Corp, the largest all-student-run, non-profit business in the country. Carpenter oversaw the Corp as it posted its second consecutive year with a profit and its strongest financial showing since 1992. He points to the creation of a philanthropy committee, an increased focus on improving each of The Corp’s stores and services and the endowment of new scholarships as the company’s highlights during the past year. He rose to the top of the company – something he said still amazes him considering “there were so many other smart people here” – after serving as the director of Full Exposure, where he oversaw the photo development store’s closure. The rise of digital cameras has roiled the film development industry, and the Corp closed the store in May 2004. Colleagues say that Carpenter had a charismatic but consensus-based approach that made him a successful leader. “He cares a lot about people and it affects the way he leads,” says Craig Kessler (SFS ’07), the company’s chairman. For all of Carpenter’s enthusiasm about Georgetown – he spoke in a packed Gaston Hall to admitted students in April – he had originally enrolled at a university in California. “A phone call to Georgetown and the other school switched my life in a very, very significant way,” he recalls. Freshman year, he continues, was “very, very difficult.” He struggled with adjusting to a private school on the East Coast after coming from a public school in the San Francisco area. “It took me a while to feel alright being myself here,” he says. “Any place or job or school that lets you be yourself is an indicator of how good that place is for you.” Carpenter admits that while he came to Georgetown in part because of learning about the Corp on his campus tour, he didn’t join immediately. He has tutored in the Sursum Corda housing project and worked for GUTV, where he produced a live student health program. He also tried out for the Improv three times. He made the comedy troupe during his junior year, only to leave months later to concentrate on his duties as the new president of the Corp. “There’s no instruction manual saying where the Corp should go,” Carpenter says of the challenges facing the company. “No one in high school did anything like this, so it’s really quite exciting for college students.” The best part of his job, he says, involved letting other people realize their potential. “The opportunity I’ve been given is to watch people see that what they’re doing makes a difference.” He says that the Corp struggles with its mission and its identity on campus, often caught between twin desires – being a professional organization and also a place for college students to have fun. And he says he quickly discovered how much harder it was to follow through on promises once he became an officer. The Corp, he says, has made a concerted effort to prove that it’s something everyone at Georgetown can enjoy. This year it became a federal work study employer and saw its employment applications double. Carpenter acknowledges that some minority students don’t see themselves represented in the Corp, but says that the company has worked aggressively to change those perceptions. “To the extent that the Corp can get its fingers in a lot of things on campus, the more students we can bring in. We gave money to the Gospel Choir, The Fire This Time, Asiafest, the Black Theater Ensemble. Can we improve? Yes,” Carpenter says. “But hopefully recognition from those efforts will follow.” Carpenter will work for a private equity firm that specializes in health care in Washington, D.C., next year, but says his long-term goals would see him working as an entrepreneur that combines business interests with social responsibility. Like his fourth-grade business operation, Carpenter says that his desire to figure out how to make companies operate better drives him still: “The test for the Corp every year is that its employees are excited. When they are, it does amazing things.”