What do Hollywood and charter schools have in common? For Tom Strickler ’84, they both offer the opportunity for creativity and entrepreneurship in exciting and challenging ways.

Having been a part of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals and Gilbert & Sullivan Players as a student at Harvard, Strickler called himself an “academic delinquent,” joking, “I’m not even sure I did graduate.” After his (supposed) graduation, Strickler wanted to join the world of movies and television, so he packed up his car and drove across the country to Los Angeles – “not a traveled route for Ivy graduates” – in search of a new life.

His first job was a mailroom position at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) then headed by Mike Ovitz. Strickler found the company to be “dynamic” and “lots of fun,” despite the at-times menial and dull nature of his job. “There’s no shortcut” past mailroom work, he explained to a listener interested in a Hollywood career. But Strickler enjoyed his job, and celebrated the fact that “your friends in the mailroom will go on to have interesting careers.”

Strickler was promoted to agent just two years after he began his mailroom position, but was fired only a year after the promotion. Thought it felt like a crisis at the time, Strickler looked back on the event as a “valuable lesson” which led to even greater opportunities. In partnership with his best friend Ari Emanuel and two other colleagues, Strickler and his friends founded a new company, Endeavor Talent Agency, with only $400,000 to their name. The agency gradually expanded to become one of the largest agencies in L.A. with over 300 employees.

After Endeavor’s merger with the William Morris Agency in 2009, becoming WME (William Morris Endeavor) Entertainment, Strickler decided to leave the agency. “Everyone always stays in an act too long,” he explained, citing examples of personalities around the globe in various professions (actors, politicians, etc.) who were widely perceived as long past their due time. Plus, he was bored. “I felt like I was making the same calls again and again,” he said, though personalities and circumstances may have changed.

Conscious of that phenomenon, Strickler wanted to do something different, though he didn’t really have a plan. He knew he wanted to stay in L.A.; he knew he wanted to work in a “high need” business; and he knew he wanted another chance to be entrepreneurial as he was during the founding and build-up of Endeavor. Thus it was that Strickler entered the world of education and charter schools, putting together a “serendipitous” group of talent in L.A. to head the project. “People are a central force in any business,” he asserted, believing that education is a “90% people-driving business.” He also enjoyed the hands-on nature of education, saying that his work was “something practical and real” where he can “see the lines” of progress and failure.

Acknowledging the growing difficulty to start charter schools, his talented leadership team combined with rare financial viability led to his success. On September 6, a charter school opened in Boyle Heights, a poor Hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles, serving 235 kids in kindergarten through third grade. Strickler expressed an intention to see his project grow to include multiple schools, even as he begins work on a nonprofit bank to serve low-income communities in L.A.

Needless to say, Tom Strickler has had an exciting and diverse career that will continue to evolve in the years ahead. The formula? It’s as simple as taking risk, learning from failure, and following your passion.

—Nicandro Iannacci, ‘13