Vasco Bridges III has taken his impressive academic background and his commitment to social change and community development into a career that is improving the economic landscape in Chicago.
Bridges is executive director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) program at Harold Washington College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. The program, one of 25 throughout the country, is designed to help local entrepreneurs improve and expand their businesses, thereby increasing local employment opportunities and strengthening neighborhoods.
For Bridges, the position was what he calls “a good fit,” but it was not a career choice he envisioned years earlier. “My philosophy on career movement is about not mapping out a full five- or 10-year plan because you never know what’s going to happen,” he says.
“You always have to be in a position to take advantage of the next career step when it presents itself. You need the background and the training to do it, but you also need an understanding of what your ‘true north’ is so that when an opportunity comes along, you know if it’s the right one and you take advantage of it.”
So when a friend told him about the executive director position, Bridges relied on his inner compass.
With an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, a master’s in music business from New York University and a bachelor’s in economics from Rice University, Bridges was a strategy and operations manager with Deloitte Consulting before joining Goldman Sachs 10KSB in 2014.
He views community colleges as “a great avenue to help impact communities through economic and workforce development.” He adds that the 10KSB program “connects the needs of the local economy with the training we’re doing at the college.”
