A last minute application for an ROTC scholarship changed the trajectory of Carrington Bradley's life, practically handing him educational and career opportunities that required little decision-making on his part. Other happenstances helped guide him on his personal and professional path. Find out how recognizing the signs and following twists of fate can sometimes provide chances to take an active leadership role.
Guest Carrington Bradley, Dartmouth ’96, feels as though a number of happenstances, “twists of fate” as he calls them, have really helped shape the trajectory of his life. One of the earliest was when his mother stumbled across the ROTC scholarship application the day before it was due and—because it didn’t require an essay component—Carrington completed it. Getting that scholarship and joining the ROTC program at Dartmouth handed him the educational opportunity to study engineering and also took the pressure off during senior year when everyone else worried about what would come next. Without any decision-making on his part, he knew that he would be in the Army for four years. His first assignment took him to Korea where he was leading a group of over 30 servicemen just a few months after graduation. Leadership is at the core of everything an army officer does and while some of his engineering and problem-solving skills were put to the test, it was his soft skills—persuading people to do things on time, on budget, and well—were developed most of all.
When his team did not get deployed to Bosnia as they thought they would (another twist of fate), he ended his military career when his four year commitment was over and visited friends in the Bay Area. Fate found a way to set him up in Silicon Valley to begin a second career in project management in the semiconductor industry. He enjoyed working with other former military officers with a boss who asked them to do whatever it took took to solve the problem. Once the problem was solved, he decided to head back east to business school.
Meeting his wife in business school (ah, sweet fate) and compromising on geography by moving back to the Bay Area, he returned to the semiconductor industry. This time, he joined a startup and had the classic Silicon Valley crash-and-burn experience after the financial downturn. Fate smiled again, however, and introduced him to the electric vehicle industry where he continues to use his project management and leadership skills in building out charging stations and making EVs usable for a wider market.
In this episode, find out from Carrrrington how recognizing the signs and following twists of fate can sometimes provide chances to take an active leadership role …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Carrington Bradley is an expert in charging station technologies within the electronic vehicle industry who is on a mission to make you into an electric car driver and to connect you to the power you need. A project manager at heart, Carrington also has a background in the semiconductor industry as well as military leadership.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Carrington Bradley: Project management is very similar. Regardless if you're in the army, if you're in the semiconductor industry, if you're in an electric vehicle industry, you're basically convincing people to do things, you know, on time, on budget, with the level of quality and yeah, that all started with that practice in the Army.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: A last-minute application for an ROTC scholarship changed the trajectory of Carrington Bradley's life, practically handing him educational and career opportunities that required little decision-making on his part. Other happenstances helped guide him on his personal and professional path. Find out how recognizing the signs and following twists of fate can sometimes provide chances to take an active leadership role…on today’s Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
I'm here today with my friend Carrington Bradley, and we are going to tell. About sources of power shifts of power, or something like that. Carrington, it's so great to see you again and to have you here.
CB: It's great to see you too again, Leslie.
LJR: All right. So I ask the same questions when I start and they are, when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
CB: I've been thinking a little bit about this over the last, uh, over the last couple of days. And, I think I've sort of come to the conclusion that when I first got to Dartmouth, I was a little overwhelmed, you know, if I think back to my, you know, high school, middle school, elementary school years, you know, I really had the same, you know, call it 50 friends or so that, that I met, like, you know, first, second, third grade and that same group of friends, I, you know, I, I was with just about every single day for, for 12, 13 years. And when I got to Dartmouth, I didn't know anybody. I was the only person from my high school who went to Dartmouth. In fact, it was probably only maybe five of us who went, you know, really kind of like far away, like far out of state. I dunno, I sort of, you know, I, I had a great freshman year roommate. I had a great bunch of people who I met first year, but I sort of always, I felt a little intimidated quite frankly, right? I sort of felt like, Hey, here's all these other people. They've, they've already done all these other things. And, you sort of like, where do I fit? I think, I didn't really realize at first, how difficult or most would be, you know, looking back I was school, I was probably a little lazy, you know, finishing up senior year. It was easy, but yeah, it was not like that at Dartmouth at all. And it was a real struggle at the very beginning. I think as we near towards graduation in the senior year, I think I found my way a little. I think I definitely worked a little harder than I, than I did freshman year.
I was always pleased. I mean, I chose to be an engineering major. I was really happy about that. I think it was a great decision, you know? I love the analytical nature of an electron to solve the problem. I love there actually being a right answer rather than something that was, you know, open to interpretation or open to opinion of sort of things of that nature.
But, you know, by the time I graduated from Dartmouth, you know, I participated in the ROTC program at Dartmouth, right? And so, you know, really my decisions in terms of, Hey, what am I going to do next…that had already been decided for four years prior to that. And so, you know, I didn't participate in like any of the job recruiting kind of stuff.
And I, you know, I didn't have any uncertainty. Right. Like I knew exactly what I was going to do. I knew exactly where I was going to go and work. I dunno.
I will tell one kind of story that I think is kind of interesting that I'll hit upon in some of the other things we talk about, right. Is, you know, I didn't, I have a plan. Like I had no idea what I was going to do. It's like, most people don't have any idea they're going to do, right? And I sort of think back to these like little twists of fate that have come had a major impact on my life and yeah. And, so yeah, so I attended Dartmouth on an ROTC scholarship. But the fact is I had to actually win that scholarship. Like literally my mother grabbed me my senior year and we sat on the dining table and she said, she's telling you like, Hey, look, you know, just fill this out. It's due tomorrow. And you, and you might get it. And I was like, oh gosh, I've got to fill out some other like, form for colleges. Like what is, and she's like, she's like, no, Hey, don't worry about it. This one's easy. You just have to fill in the bubbles. There are no essay questions for the scholarship at all. I was like, oh, great, fantastic. Like, what is it? She was like, it's an army ROTC scholarship. I was like, oh, okay, I'll fill this out. And so I filled out the little bubbles and you had to get some teacher recommendations and, and like, I went the next day to school when I was like, Hey, I'm sorry, like, this is the very last minute, but can you please do this? Like in the next two hours? And my teachers did it and I got this ROTC scholarship. So I mean, literally like my entire life kind of turned over the fact that my mother was just sort of searching around. She was like, she was like, Hey, this looks interesting. Like give it a try. And Sherman. That's how I ended up sort of, you know, my senior year in Dartmouth, like knowing exactly what I was going to do for the next four years and, and, and sort of to move on into the army.
LJR: Yeah, exactly. And little did you know, filling out those bubbles, you'd be getting up really early in the morning and all the extra work you had to put in for that, but it is kind of amazing: You, with no plan, actually had plans kind of come together for you. Right? So after graduation, you probably went the farthest away that I can think of, of all of my friends. Tell us where you ended up and what that life was like.
CB: Sure. So the first six months was kind of like, yeah, the first six months was sort of like training for the officers. Right. And so I was in Augusta, Georgia. It was great. That was actually, I think it was the summer that Tiger Woods first won the masters. But none of us got to go to the golf tournament, but it was exciting to be in Augusta at the time. I think I'm remembering that correctly.
LJR: Well, and the Olympics, I think wasn't that Atlanta, that year?
CB: It was, but I was there in October. So…good point I forgot about that. So after that, I got to go jump out of an airplane for three weeks. So that was like, really cool. It's like, Hey, that's why you want to like, join the army. Right. It's like, cause you get to do cool stuff, like jump out of airplanes. And then I went to Korea, I went to South Korea for 15 months and yeah, that was, that was pretty far away. But it was really neat. Right? I mean, you know, I get to take the train to go into Seoul on the weekend. You got to…you know, my “go to war” location, right? It was in Pusan, which was, you know, which is essentially the beach, right? Because like the idea was port would receive all this material and drive up the main interstate highway. But yeah, I mean, it was certainly an eyeopening experience from a cultural point of view, being in a country that, you know, once you stepped off of base, like, you know people didn't speak English, right? But it was neat. I mean Korea was extremely easy to get around in, and that's actually interesting, like that's actually leftover from the Olympics. Like there was tons of signs everywhere. They were English. The train system was fantastic. I really learned to love the food, like I love kimchi and it was just, it was just interesting sort of being, yeah. So, you know, the army as a whole and the experiences of the army were, it's not only like, Hey, you're going to a foreign country.
You're going so far away from the United States. It's also, you know, like the army drops you into these sort of situations that you just have to perform. Like you're supposed to be a leader, like the whole idea of being in the army and being an officer in the army is to lead other people to do things.
And so, you know, at the time I was 22 years old and I had arrived in Seoul and, you know, we had spent a couple of days to get like paperwork done or whatnot. And as trivial as this sounds, the very first thing that I had to do, they were like, Lieutenant, here's 10 train tickets, here's nine other soldiers.
And your job is to make sure that you and the rest of them get off the train station that you're supposed to get off on. Right. And it was like, you know, two hours away or something like that. And again, as trivial as that sounds right, like, you really don't want to mess that up. Right.
Like, I can tell you that I did not sleep at all on that train ride. And, you know, you think about like, you know, when, when you're like in the subway in New York and you're kind of listening to like the announcer saying next stop is whatever. It's like every single time that announcer came on and he’s speaking Korean, I was like, oh my gosh, I know like one word, please don't let me mess up the one word to say that this town is the next one that’s going to come.
And so, yeah. Hey, so that was the first thing, but you know, but beyond that, so you, you know, I get there and, you know, within two weeks, I'm in charge of 35 people, right? I mean, I've got a platoon that’s in charge of 35 people. I don't know too many other people in our class who, outside of the military, who can say like, Hey, six months after they started working, they were in charge of 35 people. Right. And you know, Hey, you're responsible for, you know, you on a day-to-day basis. Like, what do you do for like, you know, the maintenance of the equipment and Hey, you got to do performance evaluation. You have to sort of deal with like these unknown things that pop up, right?
Like soldiers were away from their family. There was one person who got a divorce while he was there. One of my soldiers, you know, had some serious medical problems that we had to deal with. You also get to do good things, right? You get to write out for like awards and you get, you get to literally pin medals on people's chests. Right. So, yeah.
LJR: Carrington, let me stop you for a second because one of the things, and I know you're— I'm not going to get the nomenclature, right—the unit, the group that you were with had engineering capabilities and jobs to do so that related to your engineering, but one thing that you said about your love of engineering before was that it was analytical and there was a right answer. And just about everything you just told me, like dealing with somebody's medical issues or dealing with somebody's divorce, or figuring out what to do on a day-to-day basis—That is the open to interpretation that you said that you were eschewing in other fields. So how did that part of you grow? And did he grow to like realize there's, there was more to you? Or how did that work?
CB: I would say like, yeah, the army doesn't, you don't have a calculator. Right? Like you don't do any of that stuff. And so, yeah, it's all soft skills and you know, it is leadership and it's daily, daily practice of that. It's getting things wrong. It's getting yelled at, it's making a plan, it's adjusting that plan and you just do it over and over and over again for four years.
So, yeah. Hey, there are like these like large problems of these large, like tasks that you need to, to complete. And just like, you know, a more sort of like analytical engineering problem. You're going to break it down into little discrete sub tasks and you're going to sort of knock off and complete them one at a time.
And it's the same sort of thing in the army, except you're dealing with people and equipment and a mission and sort of things of that nature. And so you practice and those four years of practicing in the army, you know, again, it's something that has sort of led me to, to do what I do today.
Project management is very similar and, you know, regardless if you're in the army, if you're in the semiconductor industry, if you're in the electric vehicle industry, you're basically, you know, convincing people to do things, you know, on time on budget with a, with a level of quality and yeah, that all started with that practice in the Army.
LJR: Right. So you've just done a little foreshadowing. There was an end to that army experience for you though. It wasn't just Korea. Right? You had a couple of different tours.
CB: It was in Colorado Springs, right after that, which was a glorious place to go. I think I could make the lift line at Breckenridge in, I think it was an hour and a half I could get up there.
Right. So that was wonderful. There was an opportunity for my squadron at the time. We were scheduled to go to Bosnia for a year. I was really excited about that. That was sort of like a, it's almost like a capstone for my army experience, but again, a small twist of fate and force requirements for that Bosnian mission got cut. And so for the three squadrons in my upper grade that were supposed to go to Bosnia, one got cut. We were the ones. And so that, that was kind of like as like, oh, okay, well then, you know, I've done my four years. I've completed. So let's move on to the next thing. And that next thing was the semiconductor industry.
It was, it was San Francisco. And again, a twist of fate. I, I had some very good Dartmouth friends who were in San Francisco and I was like, Hey, let me go out and visit. And I flew in on a Friday and they took me out to San Francisco and it was just a phenomenal time. I had a great time, you know. Bunch of job interviews that, you know, two days after that on Sunday that were set up for a recruiter. I think I had a job offer to two weeks after that. It was sort of like the height of like the dotcom boom. And soon thereafter I moved to San Francisco and yeah, Hey, now I was a project manager in the semiconductor industry. Right. Which was almost the exact same thing as the Army. I mean, literally like my group, you know, seven people or so we were all project managers. We were all former army officers. Our boss was an army officer. It was sort of like a first taste of like the Silicon valley culture. It was, she was like, you know, our boss basically said, Hey, she's sort of like unleashed us. She said, Hey, I've got this problem. You guys go fix it. Don't do anything illegal. Don't do anything, you know, that contradicts company policy or whatnot, but do whatever it takes to fix the problem. And it was, it was great. I mean, we just sort of took no prisoners, you know, in a way. And we solved this problem, but at the same time, it's like, as an introduction to Silicon valley, it was, it was also very much of, you know, You you've got to go fast. You've got to iterate. You've got to constantly improve. You're going to change directions constantly. Like if you fail, no problem. Like just, you know, go on to the next thing, you know, learn from your failures. And so, yeah. The dotcom bust came in, you know, in late 2000 Silicon valley, you know, sort of petered out a little bit for a couple of years.
And so after about two years at Applied Materials, which was a very, very large multi-billion dollar firm, I decided I was like, oh, okay, well, let's, uh, you know, what can I do next here? You know, I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of that group of Dartmouth friends also had moved away. Like you were one of them actually, Leslie, Right? [LJR: Right.] And, you know, it was kind of sad to see all my friends moving away. And so I had made that decision at that point, I was like, okay, well, let's go to business school. And, I ended up going to duke for business school, which was on the east coast.
And again, that was my grand plan. I was like, all right, like I'm going to move back to the east coast. Right. I grew up in Virginia and you know, I was going to move back across country and then, you know, be close to my family, close to them, frankly, a lot of, a lot of friends from both from, from high school and from, from college, figure out what to do next, on the east coast.
LJR: And so you had this kind of, I would say, not that there was a traditional in the late nineties Silicon Valley experience, but a bit of a non-traditional experience because it wasn't that like flash and burn kind of thing. So you still knew that there was a job, right? Like, did you not go back into the same career?
CB: Another twist of fate, right? I ended up meeting my wife in business school and she was from Los Angeles and she was like, I'm not going to live on the east coast. And I said, yeah, I'm not really going to live in Los Angeles. And so we were like, well, Hey, what about San Francisco? And so right after business school, we moved back to Silicon Valley and I went back into the semiconductor industry for a few years, but at that time I was like, all right, well, Hey, if I'm here in Silicon Valley, let's have one of those more classic sort of startup experiences. So I ended up joining a few years later, but I ended up joining a, like a, a small startup company that did semiconductor foundry work for like, research type of companies. And so, yeah, I mean, it was, you know, there was maybe, I don't know, 75 people, maybe a hundred people. We did our thing for, for a couple years. And then lo and behold, you know, another financial crisis hit, I think our largest, like two or three customers all went bankrupt. We held on for a little while, but yeah, we ended up going bankrupt.
I think I was one of the last 10 people out the door by the last week or so, like, I was literally like on trash detail, like we were shredding documents and hard drives. You know, cleaning up the offices in order to turn over, but it was a great experience, right? It's like, okay, Hey, like it didn't work out from a startup point of view. Like I didn't make it good bazillion dollars and you know, it wasn't Google, right? It wasn't anything like this. But it was certainly the exact opposite, right? I mean, it was crash and burn and it was very different from, at Applied Materials in which you were like, you know, there was this expectation that there was always money in the bank. Like you, you just, you know, there was always money in the bank. And then all of a sudden, like you were worried about cash flow, like on a monthly basis and whether or not you were going to make payroll and all that other kind of stuff. And ultimately we didn't. Yeah. But those are great. As you said, great experiences.
LJR: ’Cause you see what it feels like, what you can withstand. Like frankly, all those things that I would imagine, you know, scenario planning in the military, like you're, you're seeing it out now, but I'm sure that also gave you some time, like you, you saw the writing on the wall while you were taking out the trash.
We were like, okay, so I'm going to have to have a next act. There wasn't really. Uh, well, this one, this one goes down, I'll just hop to the next. It needed to be something different. So what was kind of your thought process on getting you to the right next place? And I'd love to tell you that I had like this like great plan and I was fantastic about like reaching out to a network and they're like, and like all of these things sort of fell into place.
But again, it's like, I feel like in some way it's luck and, and the more and more that I'm in, in Silicon Valley, like the more, more like it's luck so many times, right? Like my old boss at this semiconductor company that went bankrupt, had a friend, his friends from college who were, who now joined the industry. And he was like, Hey, I've got a position for you. Why don't you want to come over and join us? So like yeah, sure. Like I don't have anything else to do. Yeah. I was, at this point I was, I was trying to get out of the semiconductor industry. Like I think I had been through three or four sort of bust cycles and, and they're pretty brutal.
And so the, you know, the electric vehicle automotive industry sounded pretty cool and it was kind of like a construction drop, right? Yeah. It was project management. And if you've done project management in the army, if you've done project management and in a semiconductor company, it's just construction project managers.
LJR: And it's like, no one had electric vehicle experience anyway, ’cause this was like new territory, right?
CB: We were completely making all this up on the fly. Right. So there were no rules. Right. You, you could do whatever you needed to do in order to get the job done. You could, you could make up whatever you needed to make up. You could ask people to do whatever you wanted to do. And at the end of the day, like, you know, you're in charge. Like we got to make all the decisions to create an electric vehicle charging network. And it worked. Right. I mean, it's been fantastic. And I've been building electric vehicle charging for the last eight years at this point, which is exciting, right?
Yeah. I mean, I'm completely bought in on electric vehicles. Right. I mean, like, you know, it is something that, you know, if you don't drive an electric vehicle right now, like, you know, I'm going to convince you like over the next, like 10 to 20 years, right, you're going to buy an electric vehicle. Right. And I feel like my job is, you know, to make sure that all of those, like little things that you worry about from electric vehicle, right? Like the, like the range anxiety, or like, Hey, how am I going to get to Disneyland with my kids? Or sort of something like that. I have to build charging stations for everybody, so that you can buy electric vehicles and it's tremendous fun.
It is. It’s very fun. I work at mission driven companies. Again, very much like the army, that's a mission driven company, right? It is, is being a part of something that is bigger than yourself. And I love it. Right. I mean, it's great fun to talk about electric vehicles. It's great fun to think that like, I am a very small piece of trying to solve like this huge sort of overwhelming issue of climate change and carbon emissions, but it feels good every single day to be able to say, yeah, Hey, I am doing my part and little by little. We're going to kind of help solve this problem.
LJR: And one could say that too is a correlate to the military. That you're a small piece in this overwhelming mission that can change the world just by its very nature.
CB: You know, I was, we, we talked quite a bit about the Army and I think that that really is one of like the key sort of things that shaped me for the type of person that I am today. And I would say that the Army was really a great equalizing type of organization. Frankly, nobody cared that I went to Dartmouth. At the time, it didn't matter at all. Nobody really even cared that I was an engineering major. Right. You know, there was a story, I don't know if this is apocryphal, but there was a story where there was a second Lieutenant and they were like, well, Hey, what did you major in?
He was like, I was a dance major and everybody was just kind of laughing. It's like, ah, you're a dance major. Now you're an army officer. And then, you know, like the first physical fitness test sorta came around and the dance major like destroyed everybody. So they didn't make fun of the dance major anymore.
Right. So it doesn't matter. So the Army is, this is this great equalizing sort of organization, but it's also, you know, as I look back on it, it's a fantastic career for the people who choose to go that route. It is open to everybody in the United States. It doesn't matter, you know, it doesn't matter if you're a male or female, like what your background is. There are, there are thousands of individuals who, you know, join the army and, you know, I think they get their citizenship. So it's a great first job for a lot of people sort of coming to this country. And, it really sort of opens your eyes. Dartmouth. I mean, as much as we love Dartmouth, I mean, Dartmouth is really in a bubble.
I mean, like Hanover is like a massive, massive bubble and the Army and the Army bursts that bubble very, very quickly. And so I would, I, you know, I would encourage everyone, look at the armed services. Right. And it was a great experience. Don't be afraid. Like if your kids say, Hey, like, you know, I'm really kind of interested in the Army or the Navy, I would encourage you to encourage them because it was wonderful. And then, you know, for, for other people, like, yeah, Hey, if you are looking for a second job or a career move or something like that, you know, I would encourage everyone to participate in some type of public service. Right. I mean, you know, it doesn't matter if you, you know, maybe you run for your town council or, or maybe you, you know, you join the, you know, the state department or maybe you're just like in the mail room…and, you know, because you want to do something in, in, in, you know, for, for, for a part-time job. And you're just in the mail room at like, like city hall or something like that. But I would very much encourage people to do something, with public service. So, yeah.
LJR: So it seems as though these twists of fate, plus a little bit of knowing who you are and what you're attracted to, has really put you in really cool places. When you think back to that, you know, pre-22 year old Carrington, so that maybe that freshman or, you know, college days Carrington, what do you know now that had he known would have kind of blown his mind about where you would be or the experiences you'd have?
CB: I don't think it would surprise me that I ended up working in an electric vehicle manufacturing company. I think that that would, that that would not be. Yeah, Hey, I was an engineer at Dartmouth and I always kind of, I enjoyed that kind of stuff. Even like my last couple of years at Dartmouth, I don't think I was going to be one of like the design engineers, like the people who are, who were really heavily involved in the design aspect.
So it doesn't surprise me that I'm not an engineer by practice. And it doesn't surprise me that I'm involved in some type of company that is technology focused. I like to tell people that electric vehicle charging industry, the people who work in the industry, it's sort of like a Venn diagram, right? You've got people who were like car people, and then you've got people who are like technology people, and you've got people who are like environmental people and I'm sort of in the middle of like the technology and environmental piece and both of those pieces. I can kind of trace back to Dartmouth, right? Hey, I was an engineer at Dartmouth and all of the, sort of like the outdoors kind of vibe. Dartmouth, it kind of just permeates your soul. And that's kind of carried on throughout these 20 years or so. And so, so yeah, you know, the company that I work for now is this kind of perfect confluence of all those little pieces coming together, doing something that I get immense personal satisfaction.
LJR: Yeah, just a whole lot of fun and hopefully world changing for the good for the rest of us and generations to come. So I just want to say thank you so much for sharing these roads. We're really excited to see where those twists of fate take you next and wish you well.
CB: Thanks, Leslie. I very much enjoyed speaking with you today.
LJR: That was Carrington Bradley, an expert in charging station technologies within the electronic vehicle industry. Who's on a mission to make you into an electric car driver and to connect you to the power you need a project manager at heart. Carrington also has a background in the semiconductor industry, as well as military leadership.
We love to hear stories about people taking advantage of what fate has offered them. And we hope you will take advantage of the material we offer at RoadsTakenShow.com. The show notes and transcripts give you other ways to connect to our guests and a “contact us” form on the site gives you a chance to share with us what you're enjoying, what would make the show better, and who you'd like to hear on the podcast. Please follow, review, and share our show and keep joining me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on future episodes of Roads Taken.