Member Spotlight: Seth Reid
Tell me a little about yourself. I study history at Union University, and [I’m] about to start my senior year. I just got married a month ago. With my job . . . I do a lot of different things. I work for an insurance technology consulting firm that also does operations management consulting Tampa, Florida. I got connected with my boss a few years ago and have been working for [them] since then. We do online trainings online, courses, insurance, and insurance technology.
We’ve got a few other things in the works, but I do the website maintenance [and] website development for that, manage the learning platform. I do the video production. I work with a couple of people to help me do some edits, but I'll [usually] be the main producer. Also, we just launched a blog, so I managed that, too. So yeah, I do a lot of things. I do less of those things during the school year.
Tell me about the dynamic of being a student and running a business. And why did you choose to work out of theCO? Well, the last question is super easy because I hate working by myself. If I'm writing papers . . . I don't usually go into my room and just, like, get isolated. I'd be better kind of seeing other people working around me. If I'm by myself, you know, my first thought is, “Okay, I should lay down and take a nap.” But if I’m with other people and see them doing things, that motivates me to do stuff. I'm from Florida, so I went back to Tampa during the summer [of 2016] and was actually able to go into the office with my boss, and we worked side by side whole summer, and that worked well. But, you know, I was like, “Okay, I'm going to be all by myself next summer, and I'm staying in Jackson.”
I’m married—I mean, that’s the reason I’m still here. I was going to go to the Union library every day [during the semester], and that’s quiet as all get out in the summer, and so somebody just mentioned theCO. . . . I was like, “This could be actually . . . exactly what I need.” So that’s why I'm here: because I don’t work by myself.
[To address] the other question . . . it's weird because my entire focus is humanities with my degree. . . . I studied Greek for a couple of years. Nowhere in my mind was I a business guy, but the way things happened, I ended up working for a business consulting firm. So I just decided I'm going to do this, and so I guess that’s why the big word is “dynamic.” During the school year, I will go from writing an essay, evaluating some kind of history position, or making an argument for a historical interpretation, and then I’ll go straight from that to talking about business development.
Anything else you’d like to say about theCO? Is there anything we offer here that has been helpful to you? The people of theCO are super encouraging and awesome to hang out with. It's pretty clear that everyone here cares about what they're doing. And when you're in that kind of culture . . . it makes you care about what you're doing. If you want to meet people, if you want to interact with people who really care about what they’re doing, if you want to work with people who know what they’re doing—come to theCO.