Artist, Engineer, Entrepreneur

Serg Albino Puts Everything on the Table

Serg Albino is a serial entrepreneur with a long career in technology, engineering, and consulting. He has been the co-founder of several businesses, including ecoSPEARS, an impact venture delivering cost-effective and eco-friendly cleantech solutions that destroy persistent organic pollutants from our land and waterways. In this interview with J.B. Adams of Crummer Connections, he discusses the influence of an early childhood spent close to nature, the importance of exploring new ideas and taking risks, and the impact of his Crummer education on his entrepreneurial ventures.

Part 1: Serg Albino as Co-Founder of ecoSPEARS

J.B. Adams: You’re a co-founder at ecoSPEARS, an environmental tech company. Tell us about what you do.

Serg Albino: ecoSPEARS is a cleantech solutions company where we take innovative solutions — which originally stem from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center — and commercialize them for the environmental sector. We help clients solve chemical contamination in the environment that has gone on for 40 to 50 years and is still at that site. Instead of using yesterday’s solutions or technologies to solve yesterday’s problems, [we] utilize innovation and technology to truly solve [those problems] and close that site for good.

J.B. Adams: If I may … we have a contaminated site. It’s toxic. What would be the old way of dealing with it, and what’s the new way?

Serg Albino: The old way of dealing with it, which is the current way of dealing with it, is to dig it up and move it to somebody else’s backyard — sometimes very far away, in the sense of Hawaii to California or Portland or Clive, Utah. Once it gets there, they put it in a tomb and keep it there forever, or they destroy it via incineration. Transporting the contaminated dirt or water puts a lot of CO2 emissions into the air, and once you decide to burn it, it creates much more. You’re really sacrificing clean air to get clean water and create clean soil. It’s not a good tradeoff, especially in today’s world where climate change, environment, and sustainability are more front and center.

J.B. Adams: What does ecoSPEARS do instead?

Serg Albino: Instead, we help develop onsite solutions for our clients. Depending on where the problems may lie, in the soil or groundwater or sediment, we have different solutions. We have a more surgical approach and we customize our innovative solutions for their needs. At the end of the day, we’re actually destroying the contaminants, without burning them or transporting them out of there, in a much more green and economical way.

J.B. Adams: What do you love about this kind of work?

Serg Albino: It allows me to meet people and create friendships. Some of the new friends that I have are from a sector that I’ve never been a part of before, which is the environmental sector. It allows me to figure out the intricacies of an industry, but also figure out how to disrupt it. That’s really the challenge. If you can find a good way to disrupt an industry, that’s something you can hang your hat on for a long time.

Part 2: Serg Albino’s Backstory and Early Career

Serg Albino was born in Negros Oriental in the Philippines. His earliest years were spent playing outside and engaging in activities that brought him close to nature, such as exploring caves and digging for clay. At the age of eight, he relocated to New York City.

Serg Albino: My mom at that time lived in the New York area. My dad and I lived in the Philippines. My mom petitioned us to start a new life in New York for a better opportunity for the family, especially for me. We relocated from the Philippines to New York, around eight years old. It was a very difficult transition for an island boy into New York City. I was exposed to a “New York minute” culture. That was a big realization for me where now everything happens fast-paced, everything is upbeat, and it’s hustle and grind. That was the New York lifestyle.

J.B. Adams: What were you doing after you came to America?

Serg Albino: New York is very much about art, so I got into art quite a bit. The Bob Ross-inspired painting you see behind me, I did when I was in fourth or fifth grade. When I was in seventh grade, my mom enrolled me in the Art Students League of New York to study fine arts.

Later, as a teenager, Serg Albino relocated with his family to Orlando, Florida.

J.B. Adams: Now you’re in Orlando, Florida, and you’re exposed to a whole new set of interests. What did those include?

Serg Albino: Coming to Florida reinvigorated my love for nature and space — NASA is literally a drive away. I remember moving into Poinciana in Kissimmee in the middle of the forest. I’m so used to sirens and cars and train audio at night, those sounds from city life. Now I’m hearing crickets for the first time in a long time. I remember looking up in my backyard and I see tons of lights because there’s hardly any development in that area. I got into astronomy and love for space at that point in time.

Serg Albino’s interests in both art and space led him to attend the University of Central Florida (UCF) to pursue an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering. This allowed him to do computer-aided design and drafting (CAD) work, which put his fine arts skills to use, while also nurturing his interest in space. Months after graduating, he found a drafting position with Siemens, but he continued to explore different options.

Serg Albino: After Siemens, I wanted to pursue a research and development type of role. There was an opportunity with a company called Cubic Defense to design military equipment for simulation and training, so I went there for about a year. After that contract, I went over to L3 Communications, where I was a thermal engineer and designed laser range finders for all the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] systems. It was because of that background in thermal management that an outfit from NASA, Bionetics Corporation, headhunted me to help them with their thermal issue for one of their space station projects. That’s how I got into NASA.

J.B. Adams: Based on all of that, what advice would you give to a young person who is figuring out what to do next in their career?

Serg Albino: Your time in your twenties is very valuable. Take all the risks you want. You can always make money. Don’t try to search for a career in your twenties. Try everything out there. Put yourself out there to the world and figure out what you like. I was working at Siemens where I questioned engineering, where I actually went back to school and thought I wanted to become a veterinarian. It was only through the ability to put myself out there and try different things that I realized where I needed to position myself in engineering.

Part 3: Serg Albino’s Crummer Experience

Serg Albino describes what prompted him to pursue an MBA at the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College.

J.B. Adams: There was something going on in your career that made you think you needed some additional education.

Serg Albino: Yes. I knew about Crummer back in 2004 when I was working at Siemens and I saw one of the events that Crummer was hosting to market the MBA program. I remember Dean McAllister was speaking. It wasn’t the way he spoke or his words, but the way he controlled the room. From that point, I said, “I need to learn that type of command.” Being able to learn that and the proper theories of business would complement my engineering side so that I could move up in the corporate world. Little did I know that I wouldn’t be moving up in the corporate world — it would actually be entrepreneurship.

J.B. Adams: Let’s move onto some of the surprises you encountered as a student. First, I know you had an international experience at IPADE [Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresa, also known as the PanAmerican Institute for High Business Management]. Some of our listeners may not know what IPADE is. Can you explain it?

Serg Albino: IPADE was a corporate social responsibility program at IPADE University in Mexico City. It was a full immersion course where you get to look into corporate sustainability and do case studies with your cohort from all different parts of South America, Central America, and even Europe. It felt like being part of a U.N. program because everybody was mixed up and they were speaking German, Spanish, English, and there are translators in your ear. It was fun.

J.B. Adams: What was your major takeaway from that experience?

Serg Albino: A cultural perspective of how things are viewed in different parts of the world.

Part 4: Serg Albino Applies his Crummer Education

Serg Albino goes on to describe his experience at Crummer with Dr. Bob Prescott’s domestic consulting course and how this influenced his career in entrepreneurship.

Serg Albino: Dr. Bob [Prescott] had these sayings in class that I took away: “the main thing” and “sobremesa.”

“The main thing” is getting to what the main, one thing would be for that client and for that contract, and to put that main thing first and foremost. I’ve morphed it a little bit based on what I’ve learned from my current mentor, Terence Berlin. We always say, “Before you get two, you have to get one.” It’s about keeping focus so you’re not chasing shiny objects, especially when you’re consulting.

J.B. Adams: What was the second thing that Dr. Prescott said?

Serg Albino: “Sobremesa,” which is basically that everything’s on the table. I am very transparent with how I go after and work on my contracts, especially on the costing side. At the end of the day, I like to work with value partners rather than just clients. Giving them [the clients] a good sense of how I work the budgeting and the costing side helps them feel at ease that they’re not going to be taken advantage of. Everything’s on the table. Then they get to have those knobs to dial in and to turn down and up whenever they feel like it — because, at the end of the day, I’m adding value. They’re going to continue to ratchet up the expectations as well as the performance and deliverables.

J.B. Adams: How do you think these lessons have been applied in real life in your work as an entrepreneur?

Serg Albino: It’s those two things that I’ve used in every single startup that I’ve worked on, especially in consulting. The unique thing now with ecoSPEARS is that every single client is essentially a consulting program. I’m able to utilize those things to keep the clients focused because sometimes clients don’t know what they want. The “main thing” hones in on that so we can develop a program around it and solve their true needs. “Sobremesa” gives them that sense of partnership right away. That partnership is not bolted onto my business — it’s built-in.

J.B. Adams: How do you think you’re different as a result of your Crummer experience?

Serg Albino: Crummer helped me express myself better, helped me vocalize my internal ideas of technology into the world. It helped me to craft a better message on how to take the crazy ideas from building technologies into solving real-world problems. … Crummer has been an integral part of my career.

J.B. Adams: What advice would you give a prospective MBA student?

Serg Albino: Stop thinking about it. Just dive in. Sometimes you have to jump into the fire and not worry if there’s a frying pan or not — just go in there! But when you do go, come in as an empty cup and go full immersion. Enjoy every minute of it. Those two years go by so fast. Put yourself out there. There are so many great programs you could be involved with, like the NASA program, the international programs. You can do domestic consulting or international consulting work. Do it. It’s a great program and it’s right here in Central Florida.

Serg Albino also appeared on the Crummer Hour radio program. To hear more from him about entrepreneurship and engineering, click here.

The Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida is consistently ranked as the number one MBA in the state of Florida. Crummer offers a variety of educational programs to prepare students to become global, innovative, responsible, business leaders.