Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Bart & Associates, Paul Mangus ’86, information systems management, has been integral to developing some of the United States’ most critical homeland security systems created over the last 20 years. Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award for Engineering and Information Technology, Mangus came to campus to sit down and chat with UMBC’s director of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, Vivian Armor ’73, American studies.

Vivian Armor: It’s been a while since you graduated from UMBC, but it’s been longer for me. What was it like then, for you as a student?

Paul Mangus: I initially went to community college because I couldn’t get into any colleges because my grades were really bad. I’m dyslexic, so education was very hard for me.

VA: That seems to be common for entrepreneurs.

PM: But when I got into this campus atmosphere, I just flourished. For some odd reason, classwork became a lot easier for me. Maybe because it wasn’t as structured as it was in school, where you had set assignments and set timeframes you had to get things done in, which is very difficult for dyslexic people. So then, I started flourishing.

VA: What about the IT program caught your attention?

PM: I initially wanted to be an accountant because I like numbers. I went to my first accounting class and I just got super, super bored. So then, that’s when I discovered computers and IT, and changed my degree into information systems.

The IT department was a very small group of people, and we got to know each other very quickly. We got along, although there was some competition there. The only computers available to us were in a lab that closed at night, and we’d have to sign up for time slots in advance. I got to know the guy that managed the room, and he would allow me to spend the night in the lab, but the room would be locked after 11 p.m. I would go in with food and whatever I needed, and he would shut me in there to do my work. Then, at 7 in the morning, the door would open and there would be a line of students to get in, and I’d be walking out with all my assignments done.

They got back at me because at the time, you also had to use computer cards—it was before you had CRTs or computers and keyboards—you did everything on these cards. So, when the other students found out that I was going into the computer lab at night, they would chase me down the hallway and tackle me, then 1,000 cards would go everywhere.

VA: Did you always know you’d probably start a company, or not? Was this a surprise even to you?

PM: It was a surprise to me. I guess you could call me an entrepreneur when I was young because I used to always walk around the neighborhood and knock on doors, ask to mow your grass, rake your leaves, shovel your sidewalks, and all that other stuff. I’d collect bottles, turn them in for five cents apiece.

But I never had a vision of running my own company until I started working and realized I’d be better suited to create something of my own.

VA: Then, that major opportunity after 9/11, an unfortunate opportunity.

PM: I so happened to be right where I needed to be after 9/11. Out of tragedy comes opportunities, I guess. It was something we got involved in because the systems our company had built were for identifying drug trafficking, child pornography, people trying to smuggle drugs and people into the United States. After 9/11, the government asked if we had systems in place to monitor people. It so happened that, yes, we had built the system already.

VA: I think of you every time I go through an airport.

PM: It was a great experience for me. I traveled the world, meeting with various airlines on developing interfaces with their systems so we could communicate with the reservation systems to gather all the data we needed. We ingest all of that and do the analytics.

VA: I’ve met a lot of entrepreneurs and they just have this incredible confidence, and they do whatever it takes to start. They take these risks, like starting out with lots of credit card debt. You were one of those entrepreneurs. What gave you the confidence to do that?

PM: I was single. I didn’t have any responsibilities, which is huge. I don’t know if I’d do it again, but I have a wonderful wife and she supports me.

The confidence and credit cards were a necessity because when we started the company, the bank refused to give us a loan. The bank officer wanted to see hard assets, like “Where are your trucks? Where’s your manufacturing equipment?” We didn’t have any of that.

Cash flow is huge. So, out of necessity, one day I was at home and I got an envelope in the mail, and it was the classic thing: open up a credit card today and you could write a check for $3,000. So, I called up my partner, and I was like, “Hey, are you getting these in the mail?” He goes, “Yes.” I was like, “Game on.” 

VA: Obviously, it paid off, but it’s a risk.

PM: It paid off because it allowed us to hire people. But, it’s a huge risk, yes.

VA: Paul, I know any time I’ve asked you to do anything, you’ve said yes. You’ve been a speaker for us in a speaker series. You’ve been a judge in our competition. You’ve been a mentor to our teams. You’ve worked with the digital students. Any time I ask you, and you’re incredibly busy, you say yes. What got you involved as an alum with UMBC?

PM: It is because of you.

VA: Is that right?

PM: When I became successful financially, I started donating back. Then, you sent me a polite email saying, “Hey, would you like a tour of the campus?” You brought me on a tour and we ate lunch. You said your goodbye and that was it. I was like, that’s nice.

My wife and I have a pay-it-forward attitude. We’ve been blessed with success. I’m not driven by money, so that was never in the equation—that I want to be a rich man, and be wealthy, and show off wealth—that was never a driving factor.

VA: One of the many things I like about you.

PM: Money actually makes us uncomfortable in some ways. There’s a lot of responsibility associated with money. So, we decided we need to start giving back to the community.

VA: Things obviously have changed so much for entrepreneurs. What would be your advice for students here, who have that entrepreneurial spirit? 

PM: Our lives are too short to learn everything we need to learn, so that’s why universities are here, so we can jump-start our understanding by coming to institutions like this to learn from other people’s experience. When you’re an entrepreneur, you leave college, you’re still learning, and you need to find, constantly seeking out those mentors.

It’s constantly maintaining a Rolodex of people that you meet. I wish I had done that earlier in my career because there’s a lot of wonderful people I’ve met early in my career that I’ve lost touch with that would have really helped me to be more successful.

The mentors and the relationships with other professionals… it allows all that noise to dissipate, and you can really focus on why you got into business in the first place. 

***** 

Learn more about the 2019 Alumni Award winners and register to attend the October 2 ceremony.  

Header image by Marlayna Demond ’11.

Dr. Michael Carlin, Associate VP and Deputy CIO at UMBC, has been named Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Carlin has been with UMBC since 1996, starting as a student employee and then hired full-time as a desktop support and help desk technician in 1997. Over the years, he’s taken on a variety of roles and projects: he oversaw DoIT’s continuity of operations following power outages, took the lead on support of the Columbus Center, served as the DoIT liaison for the 2010 IT Restructuring Report and led UMBC’s Google Apps deployment.

From the DoIT announcement about Carlin’s departure:

“Mike is also a UMBC success story. While working full-time he completed both his Masters and Ph.D. in Information Systems and ultimately married his UMBC Organic Chemistry Lab partner Cherisse Carlin (Lewis), who also completed her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Culture.”

Read more at the UMBC DoIT website.

More than 70 alumni and friends enjoyed pizza and drinks at the 2012 IT & Engineering Happy Hour. The event, which  welcomed all UMBC alumni with a special focus on those from the College of Engineering and Information Technology, was sponsored by the UMBC Training Centers and held at Pub Dog of Columbia. Alumni enjoyed the chance to unwind after work while connecting with fellow Retrievers.

Check out all the great photos from this event on Flickr or Facebook.

About Our Sponsor
UMBC Training Centers extends the academic excellence of UMBC to working professionals and organizations through the delivery of professional, scientific and technical training. As a training partner with the industry’s leading technology providers and a Prometric and VUE certified testing facility, Training Centers provides training and certification preparation to thousands of students in IT, cybersecurity, and engineering. Training Centers recently expanded to a new facility in Columbia, MD on Columbia Gateway Drive. More information can be found online at www.umbc.edu/trainctr/cyber.

Sometimes a small act of kindness can lead to big results.

One year into her undergraduate education, Kara Freeman ’91, engineering and information technology, was doing well at UMBC. Unbeknownst to her, however, her parents were fretting how to pay for the next semester. A grade school principal of Freeman’s contacted then-vice provost Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, to ask for help.

UMBC’s future president did not know Freeman or her family personally back in 1987, but found time to speak with her mother and offer useful financial assistance tips. The family secured the necessary aid for Freeman not only to finish but to excel as a scholar. Freeman has not forgotten Hrabowski’s intervention in her success – and it has had a big impact on her life. Freeman is now the vice president of administration and chief information officer for the American Council on Education (ACE). And part of her duties at the council are to help universities such as UMBC best use technologies to help their students.

A Washington, D.C. native, Freeman was the daughter of a firefighter father and a mother who worked as an equal opportunity specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She and her four siblings inherited their father’s strong work ethic and their mother’s never-say-die attitude and appreciation for helping others.
Both parents also emphasized the value of education. “They let us know how important school was and that we should stay on top of it,” she says.

Freeman started as a computer science major, but quickly migrated to information systems management, where she could focus on applying her people skills and avoid the long hours of solitude that programming often requires.

She also attributes much of her success to UMBC’s cooperative education program, which helped her land internships with IBM and General Electric: “When I graduated, I had work experience. That put me way ahead of anyone else.”

Her first job after graduation was as a systems analyst with AT&T, thanks to her tireless efforts in petitioning the company’s recruiters at job fairs. She followed this with stints working for WorldCom and MCI and, later, a consultant job for defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

In climbing the corporate ladder, however, Freeman has made a point of reaching back and helping others on the same climb. It’s a trait she picked up at UMBC, when she herself was seeking a mentor. As Freeman tells it, she and a friend never made it to a campus classroom where they were to be assigned a mentor, and instead wandered into a room filled with aspiring young mentors.

To this day, she remains in contact with her own protégée from that program, a then-nine-year-old inner-city student (who is now 30 and successful in the business world herself). And Freeman continues to participate in a variety of mentoring and education programs, including UMBC’s Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT).

“I just have a strong need to make sure that others can learn from what I have learned,” Freeman says.

Freeman wasn’t looking for a new job when her sister pointed her to an information technology (IT) management position that had opened up at the American Council on Education. But she looked into the prospective job that offered, she observes, “a weird connection between what I love to do and what I do for a living.”
The council’s mission is to establish a national and international agenda for postsecondary education and training, and technology now plays an ever-increasing role in this effort. While part of Freeman’s job involves managing and making strategic decisions about the council’s technology, she sits on a board that advises ACE president Molly Corbett Broad on larger issues.

“When decisions are being made about any particular area, the technology needs to part of that discussion,” says Freeman. “In many cases, the [IT] folks are not at the table. Here, I can influence the decisions.”

Another part of her job involves understanding how colleges and universities use technology to help better prepare their students. Computers are becoming a core part of business and academia, yet higher education institutions can vary wildly in how they make full use of new technology. Her insights help ACE assist its members in the best use of these technologies.

Earlier this year, at ACE’s annual meeting, Freeman presented a panel about how universities can use technology. “For me, it is exciting,” she says. “Sometimes you think of IT as keeping the email on. But in this day and age, it is really much more strategic.”

— Joab Jackson ’90