Website Entrepreneur

Ben Bernard ’14 (pictured) was focused on a career in consulting until an internship at Ripplecreek Partners made him take a second look at entrepreneurship.

As he was perusing the Career Development Center’s regular emails about internships, says Bernard, “this one immediately caught my eye.” One resume and two interviews later, he had landed a generously paid internship near his hometown of Concord, Mass.

Bernard spent the summer managing databases and brainstorming potential partnerships and revenue streams for Learnlinx.com, part of Ripplecreek Partners. Ripplecreek, which was founded by managing partner and Macalester Alumni Board member Dan Rippy ’89, provides consulting services to clients in technology and the life sciences. Learnlinx is a new initiative connecting older adults with learning opportunities in a variety of settings. “For example,” says Bernard, “a cooking class might be offered at a local senior center, as an online course, or by a university.”

During the course of reviewing some 7,000 adult learning websites (with the help of two other interns), Bernard really got to know what is—and isn’t—effective. His pet peeve? “Sites that make you download a whole PDF to get one little bit of information. My computer is still full of all these big downloads.”

“Dan is a great mentor and gave me excellent advice,” says Bernard. “It also was rewarding because I knew that the work we were doing would genuinely help people.”

The other part of his job was the essence of entrepreneurship—developing revenue streams and partnerships. This taste of working with others but for your own company has Bernard planning more computer science courses with an eye toward entrepreneurship.

He was inspired in this by his summer mentor. “Dan Rippy is passionate about this project and knows it down to the last detail,” says Bernard. “He kept us informed and aware of the whole scope of the project.” There was much to accomplish over the summer, but when things got stressful, Rippy took the interns out for coffee or ice cream and mini-golf.

“Dan is a great mentor and gave me excellent advice,” says Bernard. “It also was rewarding because I knew that the work we were doing would genuinely help people.”