 What
could be worse than being fired on national television? For Carrie
Gugger, ’96, it was having it happen on the day she’d
originally planned her wedding. As one of the contestants on The
Apprentice: Martha Stewart, Gugger was one of the 16 who performed
business tasks such as creating a children’s book, designing
a hotel suite, and creating and selling a wedding cake.
The owner of a marketing and communications consulting company,
Drive Creative, Inc., Gugger works with partner, Steve Godwin, ’95,
to create video and marketing initiatives for clients.
A former stockbroker for Salomon Smith Barney, Gugger has a passion
for blowing glass, a craft she first discovered at the UCSD’s
Craft Center. She currently has her own line of artwork, G2Glass,
and continues to participate in art programs all over the country.
Initially, Gugger had auditioned for Donald Trump’s The Apprentice but her passion for art was not exactly what producers were looking
for. When she heard about The
Apprentice: Martha Stewart, Gugger says she immediately knew that
she would be one of the contestants.
Filming for the show, however, conflicted with Gugger’s wedding,
which she had been planning for two years, with fiancée,
Jay Kelley, ’98. Then after postponing it, she was coincidentally
eliminated on the seventh show, on the original wedding date.
However, Gugger says that the experience helped her to learn more
about the business world. “I didn’t have quite the
poker face that I once thought I had,” she says. “But
in business I’m going to be much more cognizant of the way
I communicate with people.”
Gugger already has plans to parlay what she learned on the show
into a new consulting business, A-Strategy, with some of the other
contestants. A-Strategy will take a virtual business model using
practices learned from The Apprentice and apply it to the real
world.
With her “apprenticeship” behind her, Gugger says she
is looking forward to her wedding, continuing her work with Drive
Creative, Inc., and developing A-Strategy. —
Marnette Federis, ’06
View more Class
Notes online & submit your own!
If you have not yet
registered, you'll need to create a user name and password. 
MORE
|
