Seamus Ruiz-Earle was on a flight to Washington, D.C., when he discovered Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 enterprise technology list.
“I got a text message from Jimmy McDermott, also Class of 2020, who made it the year before,” Ruiz-Earle, BC ’20, said. “We’re very good friends and so he basically just texted, ‘welcome to the club.’”
Ruiz-Earle, the founder of Carabiner Group, is not the only former Eagle on this year’s list. Kyleigh Leddy, author and BC ’19, also made Forbes’ 30 under 30 media list this January.
Leddy said the original notification email from Forbes went to her spam folder, so she did not learn she was named to the list until she had received an invite to join a Slack channel.
“I was kind of like, is this possible?” Leddy said. “Is this actually happening? And then I found the line and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, yes.’”
Leddy is the author of The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister, which details her relationship with her older sister and explores grief and the effects of mental illness, according to her website.
The achievement reaffirmed that Leddy is moving in the right direction career-wise, she said.
“No one’s giving you permission to write,” Leddy said. “No one’s saying you should be pursuing this necessarily. So every time you get a publication or an award or any kind of validation that you’re in the right direction. It just kind of helps reaffirm that this is the right career for me.”
For Ruiz-Earle, landing a spot on the enterprise technology list was not necessarily an active goal.
“It’s always something that’s like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I actually made it onto the Forbes list?” Ruiz-Earle said. “And now, once you’ve done it, the natural next step is not super clear, right?”
Ruiz-Earle said he started at Boston College intending to pursue investment banking, but by the time he graduated, he pivoted toward consulting and was offered a job at Deloitte.
“[I] Interviewed with them, loved the company, got the job, and then the pandemic hit, and so I needed something to keep me busy,” he said. “They effectively delayed my start date by nine months.”
With new-found time on his hands, Ruiz-Earle created a model for a consulting business, which he said led to the start of Carabiner Group—a team of consultants, advisers, and industry leaders aiming to make revenue operations easier for clients.
“It was really accidental, right?” Ruiz-Earle said. “It was an accidental entrepreneurship.”
According to Ruiz-Earle, his active involvement on BC’s campus sparked his professional career. During his time at BC, he was a member of the Screaming Eagles Marching Band and also worked for the Boston College Police Department.
“The skills that I use now, more than anything else, is the work ethic that I developed at Boston College, as well as the operations expertise that I gained working with those team members,” Ruiz-Earle said.
Leddy was also involved on campus, including writing for The Heights her freshman year, but she credits one creative nonfiction course with BC professor Suzanne Berne as her motivation to pursue writing professionally.
“That was senior year, second semester,” Leddy said. “That’s when she encouraged me to submit to the Modern Love New York Times contest.”
According to Leddy, she won the contest after submitting a piece about her older sister, Kait, who was presumed dead following her disappearance in January 2014.
“I think when I look back at my life in 10 years, I think I’ll always look back at that moment of winning that contest, and that will be a serious shift in my life, and I have her to thank for that,” Leddy said.
Leddy encouraged writers and students unsure about their future to never get discouraged by others and to go after what they want.
“Really take those chances because you never know what’s going to happen,” Leddy said. “Like with me, if you just send one essay in, it could change your life.”
