"In what other MBA program can you learn from proven success?" - Toffee McAlister '05
Jack Long
Most Americans know the basics about Abraham Lincoln. Sixteenth President, log cabins, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, civil war, assassination. Acton entrepreneur-teacher Jack Long sees in Lincoln a model of honesty, simplicity, and deep wisdom, a role model for himself and Acton scholars.
"Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored."
Long began his journeys into bootstrap entrepreneurship at a young age, spending an entire summer drawing plans to place an airport near his Tennessee home. "How many planes could it accommodate" How Much fuel would they buy? Was the runway long enough?" He asked every question he could, then determined solutions to those questions. Experiment, sell, build. These are characteristics of a bootstrap entrepreneur, and the foundation for Long's first business, Lone Star Overnight, the FedEx of Texas, an overnight package delivery business founded in 1991. Lone Star Overnight served Texas and Oklahoma, with over 15,000 customers and 600 employees. Long discovered an untapped market with no real competition in the shipping industry, and his success led to his selection as the Ernst & Young Central Texas Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 1996, Long sold his company and retired.
"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Jack Long couldn't stay retired. In 2001, he started PeopleAdmin, a company selling human resources software to higher education institutions such as The University of Chicago and Princeton University. PeopleAdmin now serves almost 300 colleges and universities in three different countries. He also began teaching entrepreneurship classes at the University of Texas, receiving numerous teaching honors. In 2003, Long became a founding faculty member of the Acton MBA program.
"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."
Though known as a tough teacher, Long's students come to appreciate his desire to see them succeed. He demands excellence, but Long does have a heart to help. That generosity of spirit extends beyond the classroom and into the community. A commercially licensed pilot, Long spends his free time flying cancer patients on behalf of the Angels Network.
"I do the very best I know how the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."
This quote, like the ones that preceded it, comes from Jack Long's historic mentor, Abraham Lincoln. Arguably there has been no greater American leader and statesman than Lincoln. Just as Jack Long looks to Lincoln for wisdom and guidance, so do Acton scholars look to Jack Long.
