Chemistry Overview

	B.A. - Chemistry, Franklin and Marshall M.S. - Chemistry, Ohio State University M.B.A. - Business Administration, Harvard University
	President of a consulting business
	"Consulting is good for people who like to combine their analytical business capabilities with knowledge of science and technology."

Roger Shamel, president of Consulting Resource Corporation in Lexington, MA, came to consulting via a different path. "While I was working on my master's in physical organic chemistry, I realized I didn't want to spend my career in the lab," he says. "I wanted to be with people, not baby-sitting distillation columns." Shamel decided to forego a Ph.D. and went to business school instead. There, the range of prior experience of his classmates- from aerospace engineers to humanities majors- made him realize the breadth of opportunity in business.

Consulting is good for people who like to combine their analytical business capabilities with knowledge of science and technology. Consultants like to go out to talk to other people and pull information together from a variety of different sources. He adds that it is important to know your own skills. "Not all scientific people have the training to sell professional services," he says. "This is just as much a part of the business as are the research and analysis."

Consultants anticipate that the need for their services will continue, though it will change with the advance of the information highway. "There will be a shift away from aspects of consulting that provide straightforward, published information, as a generation of young executives becomes more attuned to using computerized information," says Shamel. Opportunities for consultants will also emerge as international business develops.