A Senior With High Sights
May 13, 2013—As a graduating senior and Baker scholar, Albert Eisenberg (C’13) departs from Georgetown with formative experiences and ambitious career goals.
An English major and studio art minor, Eisenberg hails from a suburb of Philadelphia, which he describes as “about 50 percent Jewish.” Before coming to Georgetown, he had no idea what a Jesuit was. Early on, he and his grandmother even playfully hid the fact he was going to a Catholic university from his grandfather.
In the last four years, Eisenberg has come to identify with the dedication to social justice that forms the core of Georgetown’s Jesuit education. He appreciates that he is expected to take classroom lessons and use them to make life better for real people.
“Georgetown produces extremely pragmatic graduates who are really grounded in the world,” Eisenberg said. “I think a lot of academia nowadays falters because people are thinking so high that they forget the majority of people exist and operate on a different level. Georgetown is interested in touching lives, [no matter how] its graduates do this.”
These ideals are visible on campus, Eisenberg said, where there exists an atmosphere of acceptance, tolerance, and understanding between groups of people that have learned to communicate, in spite of differences.
“I’m gay and Jewish. I’m not a typical Georgetown student,” he said. “But Georgetown is an extremely diverse community. It has a big commitment to religious pluralism and religious dialogue. I’m very proud to be a Hoya.”
Eisenberg also takes pride in his participation in the College’s Baker Scholars Program, which was founded in 1973 by the family of the late George F. Baker, a leading financier and philanthropist who believed in cultivating socially conscious business leaders.
Selected to the join the program at the end of his sophomore year, Eisenberg has spent the last two years developing business skills and acumen by traveling to cities across the United States with other Baker scholars, meeting industry leaders and company executives.
“It really has made me into the business-focused person that I am, which is great for somebody coming out of the liberal arts, because you might not get that otherwise,” said Eisenberg, who also served as web and media chair for the program. “There are 300 or so Baker alumni, ranging [in age from] 23 to about 60. Knowing that all of them were students once, and are people, and have made big mistakes and have had successes—that was a huge inspiration to me.”
Eisenberg is no stranger to entrepreneurialism: In the summer after his sophomore year, he founded Harry Tees, a clothing company that specialized in witty Harry Potter-themed t-shirts.
Eisenberg expanded the company after sensing a niche market that was not being satisfied: student groups that wanted “cool, custom apparel” that were forced to employ either student designers who lacked experience or professional printers who dismissed the fashion trends of young people.
Harry Tees helped Eisenberg make a name for himself on campus—so much so that after he ended t-shirt production, he was contracted to work as a visual designer for several student groups, including The Corp, the university’s Writing Center, and the Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity.
“People were impressed with the fact I had the whole supply chain controlled and that I could make up a design on Adobe Illustrator and actually have that be on a piece of clothing a few months later,” Eisenberg said.
For him, the experience was about cultivating his biggest interests—visual design and market research—which he plans to translate into a professional career.
“I know that in my life I will start more companies. I just have always been the kid who had the proverbial lemonade stand,” Eisenberg said. “I feel like wherever I land, I’ll be able to figure something out. I don’t have a deadline for myself. If I can come up with a good idea, I’m hoping to execute it.”
—Brittany Coombs