Co-ops Are a Core Part of Alumnus’ Successful Career
Main photo: Winslow Sargeant, E’86, electrical engineering, near Elmina Castle, Cape Coast, Ghana while attending the Northeastern University Global Leader’s Conference in 2023.
Winslow Sargeant, E’86, electrical engineering, has had a highly successful career including roles as CEO, venture capitalist, entrepreneur, consultant, NSF program manager, member of the Northeastern University Board of Trustees, and a President Barack Obama appointee. He says his co-ops helped make it happen.
Growing up in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1970s, Winslow Sargeant, E’86, electrical engineering, attended middle school at the prestigious Boston Latin School and high school at Dorchester High, where he played sports. His passion, however, was electronics and CB radios. He wanted his own equipment, but his parents could not afford it and he had no savings. But he wasn’t going to give up.
In what was likely his first entrepreneurial adventure, the 12-year-old Sargeant started a business selling firecrackers and raised the funds he needed. He can still recall his trip to RadioShack to buy a radio and antenna, which he promptly attached to the roof of his family home. Having always been curious about how things worked, Sargeant discovered that with the occurrence of “Skip”, which is when radio signals reflect off the ionosphere, he could communicate with fellow CB hobbyists around the world. “I was hearing from people in Newfoundland, Italy, and all over,” he says.
That passion and curiosity, combined with a drive to not quit, has been with Sargeant for decades and has made him, by any measure, a highly accomplished person.
A member of Northeastern’s Board of Trustees since 2016, Sargeant holds an MS and PhD in electrical engineering, has held many CEO or senior executive positions at technology companies, funded startups, sat on several boards, co-founded and sold a semiconductor business for $900 million, and was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate for the job of Chief Counsel for Advocacy for the Small Business Administration.
Currently, he serves as an owner and senior strategic advisor for ITSC Secure Solutions, LLC, a cybersecurity and systems engineering consulting firm, CEO of Purple Team Technology, a cybersecurity company, a senior advisor for globalization and head of capital markets at Genaesis, a merger and acquisition advisory firm, and managing director of S&T LLC, which invests in early stage technology companies.
“I still do some research, but I’ve focused more on the practitioner role that looks at the bigger picture,” Sargeant says.
His work supporting entrepreneurs and promising start ups has been perhaps the most rewarding because he believes the purpose of engineering and technology breakthroughs is ultimately to help people.
“The core of entrepreneurship is improving the human condition, whether it’s creating a better drug or a device that will help someone who is disabled,” Sargeant says. “We are applying what we know about science and engineering to try to make things better.”
Among the factors he attributes to his success are the co-ops he completed as a Northeastern student.
“I didn’t come from an environment where there were many professionals,” Sargeant says of his childhood in Dorchester. “The co-ops gave me the ability to learn and observe others, and that boosted my confidence and made me feel like I could belong. I felt like I could work in these environments and succeed.”
His first co-op was at the Boston Transportation Department on the drafting and design staff, focusing on timers for traffic lights and signals, an experience that helped him see how engineering theory applied to the real world.
“I’m a hands-on guy,” Sargeant says. “Sometimes, when you are in the classroom, you can think, why do I need to learn this? It’s not until you go out into the field that you start to see that engineering is important. This is why we need co-ops. They are very important for learning problem solving.”
He also did co-ops at LTX, a semiconductor testing company that was based in Norwood, Massachusetts, and in the aircraft instruments division of General Electric in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
“It was very important for me to actually see engineering from the technical side and the management side,” Sargeant adds.
While at Northeastern, Sargeant found support in affinity groups and recalls feeling a sense of community with the Black Engineering Student Society and the African American Institute.
“I got a tremendous amount of help from the African American Institute,” Sargeant says. “They had a number of tutors who would help me in math and science.”
Because of his positive experiences as a Northeastern student, Sargeant made a choice to give back to the university. “There is a tremendous amount of talent available,” Sargeant says, “but sometimes young people may be unable to reach their full potential or see what they are capable of.”
“I didn’t have anyone to teach me,” Sargeant adds. “I decided that if I was ever in a position to give back, I would.”
Sargeant has generously supported Northeastern students from underrepresented communities. He helped fund Summer Bridge, a one-week program that takes place before the academic year begins for students who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), to provide opportunities to adjust to college life and for networking with peers and faculty. First offered in the College of Engineering, Summer Bridge is now institutionalized at the university.
He also established two scholarships, the Black Engineering Student Scholarship, which provides need-based aid to minority engineering students, and the Dr. Winslow L. Sargeant Engineering Scholarship that provides support to African American students majoring in engineering who are also involved in entrepreneurial activities.
“When I see those students who have graduated from the Summer Bridge program or if I had the opportunity to help guide a student pursuing an award or developing a new product, I feel I’m part of that success,” Sargeant says.
And in some ways, those students remind him of his own youth. “What I knew back then about Northeastern was seeing all the buildings when I was on the train, going from Dorchester to Boston Latin every day when I was in middle school,” Sargeant says. “I remember hearing it had a good engineering program.”
His high school guidance counselor encouraged him to apply to Northeastern, and Sargeant was accepted with a scholarship.
“It all starts with curiosity and wondering how to make something or how to make something better,” Sargeant says.