Tech Exec Draws on Values Learned at St. John’s
Once he recognized how a Master of Business Administration (M.B A.) degree would enhance his potential, David Dobrindt ’94CBA, ’98M.B.A. knew there was only one place for him—St. John’s University.
“Early in my career—when I was interviewing for jobs—there were candidates from different universities who maybe had more experience than me,” he said. “But where St. John’s stood out was in the practical use of what it was teaching me. To me, the goal of college is to prepare someone for a career, and teaching students how to operate in the real world got me ready for what I would experience as a professional.”
I loved my time at St. John’s. I had great professors with an abundance of real-world experience. The University has always had a reputation for graduating hard-working students.
Mr. Dobrindt, originally from Hicksville, NY, and now living in Milton, MA, near Boston, is Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations for HCLSoftware, an arm of technology giant HCLTech. In that role, he is responsible for the company’s sales operations and reporting, training and development, target setting and tracking, market intelligence, and more.
It is a sophisticated position that draws on all his accumulated wisdom and many of the lessons he learned as an undergraduate and graduate student at St. John’s. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing before earning an M.B.A. in 1998.
“I loved my time at St. John’s,” Mr. Dobrindt recalled. “I had great professors with an abundance of real-world experience. The University has always had a reputation for graduating hard-working students.”
“Much of what we did was in group settings, where we had to demonstrate teamwork,” Mr. Dobrindt continued. “All that team activity helped me prepare for life in the corporate world and helped ensure that I treat others respectfully.”
While at St. John’s, Mr. Dobrindt was a member of the Red Storm Men’s Lacrosse team, where he competed for playing time with some of the best players in the region. He called his time with the team “character building.”
“The players were so good that I went from being one of the best players in Nassau County to struggling to find playing time,” Mr. Dobrindt said. “It was a great life lesson about hard work and humility.”
It was a lesson Mr. Dobrindt carried into his professional life, beginning with four years at The NPD Group, a marketing research company based in Port Washington, NY. While at NPD, he started work on his M.B.A. in marketing, which he would complete as a consultant with the professional services firm Coopers and Lybrandt, now PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He moved on to tech industry giant IBM, where he spent 14 years. He later worked at the risk advisory practice Willis Towers Watson, now known as WTW, before moving to HCLTech in 2018, where he served as Senior Vice President, North America and Asia/Pacific regions.
After four years at the parent company HCLTech, he moved to his current position at the subsidiary HCLSoftware.
Wherever he has worked, Mr. Dobrindt has carried the lessons he learned at St. John’s. Those include accountability, preparation, teamwork, and respect for the contributions of others.
Leadership, he said, is about empowering employees and equipping them with the tools needed to excel.
“My role as a leader is to make other people successful so they can get to senior places in their careers,” Mr. Dobrindt said. “I need to put people in positions and give them the resources to be successful. If I am not doing that, my peers and I fail.”
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Zohaib Qamar, C.P.A. ’06TCB, ’09MBA, had limited accounting knowledge when he began his undergraduate studies at St. John’s University. However, he quickly discovered that the University offered a treasure trove of opportunities to explore in that field and several other areas he had never previously encountered.
“There were so many things that I learned about during my undergrad years—religion, philosophy, ethics, and different career paths,” recalled Mr. Qamar, of Valley Stream, NY, who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and a Master of Business Administration degree with a major in Accounting from The Peter J. Tobin College of Business. “St. John’s does a great job of giving you all of these opportunities for discovery—but it is up to you to act on those opportunities.”
The son of Eastern European immigrants, Ron Weidner ’81CBA arrived at St. John’s University with a world view shaped early by resilience, faith, and responsibility that only intensified during his time there. “I grew up in a tight-knit Gottschee community in Brooklyn and Queens, NY, surrounded by people who had lost everything during World War II and rebuilt their lives from scratch,” he explained. “From an early age, the values in our home were apparent: work hard, be grateful, serve others, and never take freedom or opportunity for granted.”
From his earliest childhood days, Somers, NY, native Michael T. Chidester ’98MBA enjoyed an intense passion for cheesesteaks. “As a kid, I would grab $5 or $10 from my parents to buy one from a vendor at a little food court in Cape May, NJ, where we vacationed,” he explained. “I also sampled all the great hole-in-the-wall cheesesteak places where I went to school in Lehigh Valley, PA.”
When he moved to Long Island, Mr. Chidester nurtured that passion and turned it into a business. “I realized a good, authentic cheesesteak wasn’t really offered, not that I could see.”