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From sociology major to entrepreneur

By Jennifer Richter CSB ‘10

The road embarked on after graduation can often be just as varied as the path a student takes while at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University. Just as undergraduates are able to experiment and grow through the coursework they take and the experiences they have at college, CSB/SJU alumnae/i are no different. Such is the case with Tara Tollefson, a 1999 graduate from the College of Saint Benedict.

Tollefson majored in sociology, minored in philosophy, and graduated with honors. Originally, she planned to go into law, which is why she chose the sociology major.

“I originally picked the major because I wanted to work in law and had heard sociology was a good pre-law major,” she said. “Within the first year, I dropped the pre-law idea, but had fallen in love with sociology.”

For Tollefson, sociology had become a passion.

“I’ve always been intrigued by how people interact with each other, and I liked learning about how social variables in a person’s life can influence their decisions and path,” she said.

However, currently, eight years after graduation, Tollefson is not directly working in a sociology related field, but has started a company focusing on customer relations research and consulting. The path she took to reach this career has been long and varied, but also a great experience.

After graduation, Tollefson headed to graduate school with hopes of becoming a professor.

“I went straight into a Master’s program in Gerontology,” she said.

However, after a year, she decided the program was not for her, so she pursued career paths in many other areas. She has worked in fundraising events and communication aspects of a non-profit, major gift fundraising, direct sales, and print advertising.

Although she considers her experiences in direct sales and print advertising to be missteps, she did gain a lot from her time in each area.

“I learned that I had a love for working with business owners,” Tollefson said.

Such passion intrigued Tollefson, but did not lead to any new developments—at least not at first.

“While in fundraising, I always thought that if businesses treated their customers the way non-profits treat their donors, they’d strategize differently and with better results,” she said. “That was the seed that led me to starting my own business.”

Soon, Tollefson was receiving encouragement to take this idea and turn it into a career, but she was afraid to fail after her two short career paths. However, Tollefson soon realized that she did have the potential to take this passion and make it into so much more.

“While selling an ad to the owner of a greenhouse and nursery in the St. Cloud area, I found myself giving about an hour’s worth of free customer-relations advice and brainstorming with the owner, who asked if she could hire me,” she said. “At first I laughed, but she was serious. A light bulb went on in my head, and I realized this is how it works.”

The nursery became Tollefson’s first client, and with them she developed and evolved many programs used to analyze customer’s experience and then build a strategic customer relations and marketing plan from that research.

“I saw a market for these services—in particular the insight into a business’ customers and how to increase word-of-mouth,” she said. “The research and the consulting on how to turn the results into actionable items for the client became my niche.”

Even though she is now the owner of a marketing research firm, Tollefson still uses much of what she learned from her experience in the sociology major at the College of Saint Benedict.

“Sociology, for me, was about seeing the variables and understanding why people interacted with people and made decisions they made,” she said. “And theory! I loved theory! So, for me, researching customers and coming up with my own strategies and theories based on the research seems like a natural progression.”

And Tollefson uses this background in research everyday.

“This is research and analysis applied in the real world—to real business, with real results to a business’ success,” she said.