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Trey Gannon Technical Director, |
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Trey Gannon was living in what Steven Tomlinson (see "The Secret of Your Success") calls "the zone." He had found a way to combine his love of cycling with his job, and he was making pretty good money at it, to boot. About the time Trey started working for EDS as a software developer, the company was searching for a sporting forum in which to showcase its technological innovations and had decided to sponsor a cycling racing team.
Team EDS was made up of full-time EDS employees who, as they qualified for national cycling competitions, were granted leaves of absence. So as Trey became an increasingly better athlete, he had more time to train and compete, and was even able to participate on the World Cup Circuit. By the time he retired from the sport in 1998, his accolades included US Masters' National Champion, Sprint (3 times); US National Champion, Olympic Sprint (3 times); and UCI Master's World Champion, Olympic and Match Sprint. Professionally, he had managed the database design and development for World Cup Soccer 1998, designed and planned the technology infrastructure for the EDS Superdrome in Frisco, TX, and acted as technical liaison among the Superdrome's partners.
Talk about living at the intersection of your motivation and your talents! So why return to school? "I was lucky that EDS gave me the scope to do what I did," says Trey. "I was very close to that zone. But as the EDS Superdrome neared completion, I had decided to retire from the sport of cycling, and I started looking around for new opportunities." He adds, "I needed to freshen my perspective and it was an incredibly convenient time in my life to do a big change."
Researching the fields in which he was interested, Trey saw that they were populated by MBAs who thoroughly understood finance, accounting, and statistics. "I'll be acquiring these hard skills so that I'll be able to go into systems modeling or financial information systems," he says.
Trey's mentors at EDS provided additional incentive for his decision, "I was so impressed by the managers at EDS: they had the guts to stand by tough decisions, they had creativity and the ability to see the forest through the trees," he says. "So, I'm also a believer in the general management principles that I'll learn here."
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
