Co-ops Are Integral to Logical Thinking

Bud Pirrello, E’51, electrical engineering, says Northeastern and the co-op experience was the impetus for applying logical thinking to develop innovative solutions during his 70-plus-year career across a variety of positions and industries.
Ask Bud Pirrello, E’51, electrical engineering, and he would say that the formal academic program isn’t what most prepared him to enter the workforce. With a career journey spanning over 70 years, Pirrello has held positions in disparate industries requiring different technical skills to succeed. The throughline for each was logical thinking, which allowed Pirrello to develop innovative solutions that saved time and turned over higher profits. He credits Northeastern and his co-op experience as the impetus for his logic.
“Northeastern picked me up as a kid by helping me use the logic that God gave me and apply it to most anything,” says Pirrello.
In his youth, Pirrello recalls his father pointing out MIT as they drove from his childhood home in Medford to his grandparents’ house in Roxbury, Massachusetts. “He would tell me, ‘One day you’re going to go there and be an engineer,’” says Pirrello.
Having spent his summers assisting his father in construction projects at their camp in Billerica, Massachusetts, Pirrello was no stranger to engineering when it came time to apply for higher education. Working with his father, he learned basic drawing and problem-solving skills, at one point mapping out the plans for a new house, all while learning various building processes.
By the time he sent in his Northeastern application, Pirrello had the technical skills to serve as a foundation for his engineering degree. However, he lacked the grades to make him a competitive applicant. Pirrello dug in to improve his marks quickly, impressing his admissions officer and gaining admission through his determination to succeed. This marked the beginning of a maturity period for Pirrello, furthered during his first semesters at Northeastern.
Attending classes alongside returning veterans from the Second World War, Pirrello grew up quickly through their influence. “They allowed me to become a much more responsible person,” he says. Pirrello’s growth during this time would help him in his co-ops, making him a reliable and diligent employee.
For his first co-op, Pirrello worked as part of a groundbreaking effort to convert buildings in the metro Boston area, including Harvard University, to run on natural gas to reduce pollution and increase energy efficiency. Pirrello’s role turned him into an adept worker, keeping a tight schedule while moving between projects and being incredibly detail-oriented and cautious. He cites one project where he learned this the hard way after causing a small explosion from lighting a pilot with the gas still running.
“That semi-explosion reminded me never to do that again,” says Pirrello. “It was a learning experience.”
Pirrello worked at Sprague Electric for his following co-ops. Each co-op term allowed him to take on new responsibilities and expand his skillset. He worked in the sample lab during his first cycle before transitioning to a position in quality control, where he tested and approved capacitors for use. Pirrello ended his role at Sprague as a product designer, creating capacitors tailored to the needs of specific customers. Although his roles differed in responsibilities, they built off what he was exposed to in the last cycle, allowing Pirrello to develop his technical toolbelt through interconnected experiences.
Sprague also marked a turning point for Pirrello, who began using logic to work efficiently and effectively. In quality control, he developed a method for examining capacitors faster, resulting in a higher rejection rate than other workers. While working as a designer, Pirrello’s use of a self-made formula combined with a slide rule eliminated a lengthy trial-and-error testing procedure, expediting the design process. Pirrello says Northeastern was integral to this way of thinking, combining his innate thought processes with teachings he could apply to the real world.
“Northeastern gave me the ability to use the logic I was born with to understand when something isn’t quite right and figure out what is needed to make it right,” says Pirrello.
Logical thinking was vital to Pirrello’s postgrad roles. He worked as a drafter at Westinghouse, a switchgear manufacturer, where he created an index in his notebook to help him find necessary materials faster than digging through each of his reference books. After leaving Westinghouse to seek career growth, Pirrello took a position at switchgear manufacturer Ultrasonic, but the company went out of business shortly after his employment started.
This transition prompted Pirrello to pivot away from engineering roles into a career in sales. “I needed to get into sales to see what was going on in the real world outside of the office,” Pirrello says. He held a position at Emerson Electric selling motors, exhaust fans, and lighting before entering the switchgear sales industry at Federal Pacific Electric.
Pirrello’s career transition marked a change in his responsibilities, but he still drew heavily on his technical expertise and logical thinking. While at Federal Pacific, Pirrello used his knowledge from Westinghouse and Ultrasonic to produce drawings and schematics for orders that had fallen behind, moving along production and exponentially increasing company sales. Logical thinking also allowed him to renegotiate deals, allowing Federal Pacific to provide better product arrangements for less. He eventually became the district manager in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued growing his division through logical decision-making.
“At the time, they only had $70,000 in sales throughout the whole Connecticut district,” says Pirrello. “In a couple of years, I had brought that up to $5 million.”
After departing Federal Pacific, Pirrello began running his own organizations, including a reverse-cycle air conditioning manufacturing company and an independent consulting venture in the LED lighting industry. He was prosperous in both ventures, owning the air conditioning company for 20 years and consulting until 2020. As with the rest of his work, he could jump into each industry at full force, not because he was a technical expert within them, but because he could craft logical solutions that allowed each venture to prosper.
“The formality of the training doesn’t matter,” says Pirrello. “It’s what the brain takes away that’s most important.”