Peter Rottenbucher, Marist ’12, ‘22

Majored in both History and Spanish and just completed his MBA with a concentration in Ethical Leadership

What has your career path been to this point?

Following graduation in 2012, I moved to South Korea to teach English. Korea brought me to Thailand, Thailand to Japan. After a couple of years of teaching, I moved to Tokyo and began a career in executive search. For three years, I recruited senior level positions for multinational companies in the Asian-Pacific region, primarily Japan. I moved back to the United States and joined a top executive search firm, N2Growth. After a few years of C-level recruitment, I made an internal transition into Operations. Currently, I work as the Director of Sales Operations for the firm.

Can you share an experience/memory from your time at HRVI that stands out as meaningful?

I was once tasked with trying to get The Hudson River Valley Review into various coffee shops, bookstores, and boutiques around the region. Thinking back, it was very likely my first sales experience apart from selling candy bars for my elementary school trip. While the goal was to build distribution, and maybe some revenue, what I learned was how to make cold calls, visit perspective buyers, and handle rejection. These were skills that were tantamount to my experience in recruitment, which at its heart, is a sales job.

How has your experience at HRVI helped you advance your education and/or professional pursuits since graduating from Marist?

It's kept me in touch. The folks at the HRVI were great to work with and showed care for students not just as students, but also as people. It stuck out in a way that other campus jobs and internships simply couldn't compete with. I look back on it fondly and it was a strong reason for me to reconsider Marist for graduate school.

As HRVI celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2022, do you have any advice for future HRVI interns based on your time at HRVI and your experience in your professional field?

Sometimes, History can feel like it moves slowly. In reality, history happens every single day. What may seem benign to you as you read it in a text book was somebody's else's reality in the moment that they were living it. Embrace the history of the area around you as a living, developing concept rather than a static relic of the past. Understand that actions you take today or experience tomorrow may someday be viewed by others. Wouldn't you want them to embrace your history with as much fervor as you embrace your own? Reciprocate that.