Behind The Counter (BTC): What are the main benefits of being CEO of The Corp? At $8.50 an hour, we know it’s not the salary…
Sam Rodman: Well first of all, you get your own office – that’s big.
BTC: Don’t you have to share it?
SR: Let me rephrase that – I get my own desk. (I have to share with HR and catering, etc.)
But, when I was Director of MUG I used to just crouch in the back office of MUG, and people would reach over me to grind coffee or grab clutches. So finally, I have a place where I can actually get work done.
BTC: Do you have a Twitter?
SR: Uh … I do, but I don’t want to promote it because there are no tweets on it. I just follow people…
BTC: Will you commit to having a Corp CEO twitter?
SR: Is @CEO taken?
BTC: @CEO is probably taken.
SR: OK, then no.
BTC: So what kind of CEO is Sam Rodman going to be?
SR: I’m really hoping that I can be a presence in every single Corp service – that’s really important to me. I’ve worked in a bunch of different ones, and there’s both important differences and important similarities between every single service.
Really tapping into that and making sure the needs and preferences of every single Corp service are integral in every decision I make is going to be really important.
BTC: What are you really bad at?
I lose things all the time – it’s easily my worst attribute. I lost the MUG keys twice, I’ve lost my GOCard three times, I’ve gone through multiple winter jackets at Georgetown … I don’t know what it is. I’m a really organized person, but things just disappear around me.
BTC: Any plans for students or members of the Georgetown community who aren’t in The Corp?
SR: I think we’ve had a lot of progress over the past few years with an internal focus – you know, there’s been CEOs who’ve focused on professionalism or the employee experience, but now that we’re running several profitable Corp services that have upgraded their equipment and rethought their processes, we have an chance this year to renew our external focus and think about exactly what The Corp means to the campus community.
I would definitely encourage anybody who is not a member of The Corp, but who can think of a better way that The Corp can work for them, to reach out to me.
BTC: Tell us a little about yourself as a student.
SR: My academics are completely polarized – I’m an OPIM (Operations and Information Management) major which is all Excel work and business technology, but I’m an English minor. So I’m either poring over spreadsheets or writing an essay.
BTC: When did you join The Corp?
SR: Freshman fall.
When I was applying to Georgetown, my prospective interviewer was a Corpie – he was the head of the now defunct book co-op. So before I had even gotten into Georgetown I had ran into this guy who was completely obsessed with The Corp. [During these interviews], you’re supposed to talk about yourself and your accomplishments – we spent the whole time talking about The Corp. So that got me really into it.
When I came to GAAP weekend, Brad Glasser (then CEO), gave a knockout speech. Then I ran into Sean Kelly (’13), the Director of Personnel of Midnight Mug, at Pitchfork Music Festival and he was wearing his Corp shirt. He said, “It’s the best thing on campus, you gotta apply.” That really sold me on it.
I sent my application to a bunch of Corp services the second I got on campus, got a few interviews, and ended up at MUG.
BTC: What has surprised you most about The Corp?
SR: I honestly didn’t expect that there’d be so many different opportunities to affect change in the organization. You don’t see the whole hierarchy right away, but there are so many different levels of leadership in The Corp where you can make a serious impact. That’s something I never would’ve expected when I first joined.
BTC: Can you describe a typical Corpie?
SR: We definitely pride ourselves on being an organization that has a diversity of personalities; what you could say is a unifying perspective is that everybody comes in with a sort of team mentality.
Everybody wants to contribute back either to their individual service, or to the people on shift, or to The Corp as a whole. You won’t find a single Corpie who doesn’t have a mindset of being part of something bigger than themselves. I think that’s why we always come back to the fact that we’re the largest and most successful student-run organization in the world.
It’s an ecosystem of people who are all contributing at the same time.
BTC: What has been the happiest day of your life?
SR: Monday [the day Sam was named CEO of The Corp] was definitely up there. That was exciting. But I think getting into Georgetown was probably the happiest day of my life.
BTC: How have you seen The Corp change in the last couple of years?
SR: Our services are closer than ever; crossover culture has been huge for The Corp over the past few years. We’ve had a bunch of successful financial years over the past decade, which has been really exciting . And of course, we’ve had some incredible steps forward in terms of what we’ve done with IT.
For the future, The Corp’s gonna get much bigger when we finally reach our full staffing numbers for The Hilltoss. We have to make sure that we’re not losing that Corp-wide unity that we’ve only just begun to build.
The other big change that I hope to make is just to think about “Students Serving Students” from a financial perspective – think a little bit more about our return on investment in what we’re giving out.
Our scholarships are excellent, but we need to think about exactly what sort of impact we’re having on campus: Do we want to funnel money towards impacting individuals or do we want find a way to fund things like the Farmers’ Market, which has had a massive impact for hundreds of students? That’s the direction The Corp need to head in over the next couple of years.
BTC: What are the craziest ideas that you’ve ever heard legitimately discussed in The Corp?
Buying a liquor license – that opened up. Corp Real Estate, I still am in love with that idea. Um, what else? Someone on IdeaScale (who I don’t think was a Corpie) suggested bringing back the Cone Zone, which I also loved.
BTC: OK, rapid fire. What should people know about you?
SR: I’m really am here to work for you, and I don’t want to be a distant person.
BTC: What is your shift music of choice?
The Strokes radio on Pandora.
BTC: What’s something we couldn’t guess about you?
My go-to fun fact is that I had a stint in child modeling. It lasted through middle school. I was actually on the cover of a Life cereal box.
BTC: So you were a model, and you have pictures…
SR: Yeah.
BTC: And how would one get one of those picture?
SR: Um, just Google “Sam Rodman Life cereal.”
(Source)
BTC: Wow.
SR: Yeah.
BTC: What’s the best non-Corp place to eat in Georgetown?
SR: I would go with Burger, Tap, and Shake.
BTC: And have you ever been to the Starbucks in Leavey?
SR: Um, yes, but I’ve never bought anything there … no, that’s not true, Luke Marrinan (’15) dragged me there to buy an eggnog latte when I was freshman…
BTC: How was it?
SR: Um, I mean … mediocre. [Laughs]
BTC: What is your shift drink of choice?
SR: Oh — this is one I spent a long time thinking about. It’s usually a Rainbow Fish, but I felt like I had to represent MUG, so I’m gonna go with a Robin Hood (mango, lime, iced tea). It was the first drink that I was forced to try on shift, and I’ve never gotten sick of it.
Dan Marrow (COL ’15) is managing editor of Behind the Counter.
