Sports breed success. That is what I’ve come to realize through the Life After JCU columns. Whether the individuals continue to stay in the sports profession or take a completely different path, the former athletes continue to strive for greatness off the field. 

Jason Therrien is yet another example of this phenomenon as he successfully runs his own integrated marketing agency as the President and CEO. 

Therrien is originally from Strongsville, OH as he made his way to University Heights, OH for college. 

“I was not really very aware of JCU prior to my first visit,” Therrien told The Carroll News. “My dad took me to one of those senior days of visiting colleges and that sealed the deal. I was originally ready to attend an out of state school, but ended up doing a total pivot based off of that visit to John Carroll.”

While a Blue Streak, Therrien studied in the Boler School of Business, a major component to his attendance at John Carroll, where he graduated with a BSBA in Management, a major in Logistics and a minor in MIS. 

His experience is similar to many others as Therrien felt right at home with the Blue and Gold. 

“Even in my first year, I knew I was lucky to find the place where I felt right at home. Part of that was getting a head start playing sports, I was on the football team. Getting to campus a little early and getting settled in, having a built-in friend group all helped me feel more comfortable. I also came to appreciate the Jesuit way of teaching, which I had not run into as a public school product. I still have an immense appreciation for that today because there’s many things I look at that had an impact on my life. I was just having an absolute blast at John Carroll.”

Therrien played football for John Carroll as he embodied what it means to be a “Man of Carroll.”

“I was on the fence about joining the team. I wanted to play and continue after high school. I decided I wanted to be a part of a team in that capacity. That was the reason I chose JCU. It just so happened that Carroll had a lot of the components baked in a great program, a great business school, the campus and the right size. It stirred up all those ingredients and it made for a beautiful recipe for me.”

Therrien was already on the business search while a Blue Streak as he actually started his company, thunder::tech, in the dorm rooms in 1999. 

“The mid to late 90s were a time where a lot of tech was becoming a reality. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family so I was maybe wired a little bit for it, but I just watched in awe and gravitated towards those professors who covered the topics about learning about the current scene and how the world is changing and starting to change at that time. It was just a tremendous time to be learning and see the world through that lens at the early stage.”

Thunder::tech offers services ranging from web development, communications, digital marketing, video & multimedia, advertising, visual design, brand strategy and user experience as the company focuses on “combining modern marketing disciplines for custom end-to-end client solutions…to enterprise clients across the globe.”

Similarly to the adaptability of the sports world, Therrien and thunder::tech have made adjustments based on new technology and changing climates within that professional world. 

“We’ve had to evolve a lot because technology has changed a lot. Certainly, the internet as a function of technology and consumer behaviors have changed a ton. The media just in general continues to change. There was this intersection of all these things happening over the last 20 years that I feel very lucky to have been a part of, but my team has worked really hard to keep up and to keep changing and keep growing at a very steady clip over those years. I’m really proud of that.”

With 50-60 employees working for his company, Therrien’s jobs and responsibilities have shifted from when he started the company in 1999. 

“My day to day is steering the ship in terms of our strategy: how we want to grow, where we want to grow, what services we want to push to the forefront. I do a lot of strategic counsel with some of our biggest clients. I mentor a lot of our team, team members, especially our leadership team, that portion of them reports to me. It’s the care and feeding of the system. I don’t do much of the work, but I have a behind the scenes impact.”

Therrien contributes many characteristics of himself to his time at John Carroll and the Jesuit teaching that are instilled by the Blue and Gold. 

“I think some of the broad based ability to think about thinking. The ability to actually be so self aware of inputs, like what you’re consuming, and then to decide how you want to apply the other lenses in your brain over it. Thinking about whether or not I’m going to put critical thought to this? Am I going to put my learning hat on? Am I going to put my spiritual or religious lens on and what am I going to do with it? But, I’ve got to first understand what’s coming at me. So I think there’s a mindfulness and thoughtfulness that I took away from my schooling that I don’t know that I had, or at least it wasn’t fully developed, that made me a lot more curious about the world with the ability to think about it more strategically. It is a highly, highly underrated skill. It’s easy to talk about, but it takes training and it takes training from a lot of different angles to be able to think critically.”

What was amazing to discover through the conversation with Therrien is how so much of his life and the way he views the world was impacted by the Jesuit teachings at JCU. 

“Being somebody for others is something that I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of times, but it’s that ability to think about the world, beyond yourself, and certainly beyond your circle. Each day I become more and more convinced that we need this because, frankly, we’re all connected and we’ve gotten tighter and tighter because of technology. You have to be able to understand more of your fellow humans and fellow human needs in order to go out and be a person for others. That’s everything from how to think to how to act to the religious aspects.”

Therrien is also grateful for this experience as a Boler student due not only to the teachings, but the various opportunities it has also provided professionally.

“The business school has a great reputation, but it is still a hidden gem that needs to be shouted from the rooftops a lot louder because of the types of people that the whole university puts out. From my experience, the business school goes about producing graduates that create so many leaders and business owners, just people making a difference in the world. I’m the byproduct of that.”

But it’s not just the sports world that benefits from the networking opportunities John Carroll provides as explained by Therrien. 

“I don’t know how many others have said it, but I didn’t have an appreciation for the network until after school. I quickly learned about the strength of that network when I had just graduated. After an opportunity fell through, I started reaching out to alumni. I would sit down with them and hear about their experiences, because I needed to learn very quickly if I was going to run a business. Looking back, it was kind of crazy. I was this 21 year old just making random calls, but the amount of time people afforded me, coached me, gave me tips and made other introductions was amazing. It was a huge educational moment for me. The network is so amazing and it just continues to be. We go into different cities and states all over the country and bump into fellow Blue Streak alums, it’s awesome.”

Therrien has remained in the Cleveland area for work and has kept his ties to John Carroll as he is a member on the Board of Directors at JCU. 

“I was asked last year to be on the board and I was credibly flattered to have been asked. It’s a big role. It’s a national board, as you can imagine, with the alumni being from all over, not just the country, but the world. I was very humbled to have been asked and was glad to be at a point in my life to be able to serve as well.”

The board focuses on fiscal responsibility with Therrien helping the marketing and enrollment department to understand what drives students to come to John Carroll and what they can do to get students here.

Being asked to be a member of the Board is not the only recognition that Therrien has received over his professional career. The former Blue Streak has also been awarded the JCU Young Alumni Award, Crain’s 40 under 40 Award and the 2017 Northeast Ohio Smart 50 Award.

“It is humbling. Sometimes you pinch yourself. I try not to let the words get to my head, they’re great, but I’ve still got a job to do. Thankfully, I still have plenty of leaders at work and my family at home that’ll keep me in check too.”

When asked what his best piece of advice is for students working towards their undergraduate degree, Therrien offered thoughtful insight about his time with the Blue and Gold. 

“There’s this gift of time. When you’re in school you have this ability to make a lot more choices than maybe you had in high school. You’re on your own and you get to be conscious of those choices. Do you want to learn new skills? Do you want to try something new? Do you want to make different friends? Do you want to apply for this internship? There’s just choices and a lot of them. My time at JCU, I wanted to get out there and learn and meet new people and work, et cetera, et cetera, so I had a very enriched four years because of the choices I made. The world is your oyster and you just have to get after it, try it all, reach for your dreams. It’ll make you smarter to pick the path that resonates best with you.”

Therrien made sure to mention how this area is perfect for individuals right out of college and how staying in Cleveland made a significant impact on him both personally and professionally. 

“Northeast Ohio, the midwest, the Great Lakes especially, it’s a great place for someone right out of school, where you’re not necessarily just a number. You can go to New York or LA or Miami or Austin or Chicago, but it’s a bigger pool and pond. It’s harder to break out and make a name for yourself, but there are a lot of cities, like Cleveland, where you can get involved asap or as soon as you want in the community, in specific groups, and have a faster accent in whatever you want to get into. In hindsight that is something I’m glad that I did. I still travel a lot and see all parts of the country, personally and professionally, but to set up a home base where I can grow and make a difference early on, frankly, has made all the difference for me.”

Therrien’s story is one based on the Jesuit ideals that John Carroll taught him. Not only does he carry it out in his personal life, but also in the professional world as he gives back to his alma mater. His story continues to prove that once you join the Blue Streak community, it never stops having an impact on you. Your world will forever be entangled in the Blue and Gold.