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Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia — these have been the travel destinations of choice for history graduate P.Curtis Schenck ’80. For someone with a passion for such a diversity of travel experiences,Albany, N.Y., isn’t the first place most people would guess that Schenck would choose when making a career move. Nevertheless, it is where Schenck has settled to take on his new position as manager of investor relations for Albany Molecular Research Inc.
The chance to work for a company whose efforts are aimed at helping people is what drew Schenck to the job, along with what seemed to be a perfect fit for him personally.
“I worked for numerous years as an investor relations consultant,” he explains. “During that time, I helped many companies to grow and diversify their shareholder bases. At AMRI, I found a company in need of my skill set, where I also get to experience, firsthand, the benefits of my activities. If I do my job right, a creative company staffed by brilliant people will have more resources in order to treat medical problems.”
Schenck continues to draw on skills acquired at Lafayette.
“My experience at Lafayette trained me to cultivate the ability to perform under pressure while maintaining a calm, cool, and collected attention to detail. It also taught me to improve my study habits, which helps me to this day,” he says.
Two history professors had a hand in Schenck’s professional formation as well.
“Drs. Donald Miller and Richard Sharpless inspired me. As my adviser, Dr. Sharpless filled the role of mentor and helped me to improve my research and writing skills. He guided me to become more thorough in my approach to work. Dr. Miller provided me with creative and intellectual inspiration. He helped to improve my creative-thinking and problem-solving process.”
Schenck has some advice for today’s Lafayette students.
“When you get knocked down, immediately jump back up. Unpleasant things happen and one has to be able to persevere in order to succeed,” he says.
It is advice that he learned through his experiences while working in Japan.
“I lived in Tokyo for about 12 years,” he says. “I had to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. I expanded the Tokyo office and opened the Korea and Taiwan markets by being the first investor relations practitioner to directly introduce American corporations to their investment communities. The end result was that I helped attract billions of dollars in long-term Japanese pension investment into American stocks, which helps lower the cost of capital.”
Schenck is looking forward to applying his perseverance at AMRI to achieve his goals of increasing and diversifying the company’s shareholders, boosting the trading volume and stability of its stock, and implementing aggressive efforts to target select investors and broaden research coverage.