From Student Investment Club to Entrepreneur, LSB Graduate Joseph Scannura is Driven to Succeed

Joseph Scannura has an enviable drive to succeed. A transplant to the Bay area, Joseph is passionate about learning, growing and advancing new ideas that made him feel right at home in northern California, where an entrepreneurial spirit can flourish.

“In the Bay area, there’s generally this feeling of everyone wanting to be involved in so many things.”

And it’s true, Silicon Valley is where innovation is often birthed and one of Joseph’s first jobs was at a small start-up where he became inspired by entrepreneurship. But when the start-up began to struggle, Joseph began to look for other worthwhile opportunities. And while Joseph had a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, he knew that he wanted an advanced degree in finance to give him an advantage as both a job candidate or a foundation on which to build his own business.

He applied to several programs, but he found that the Master’s degree program at the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business was the best fit. Not only did he love the beautiful area, but the fact that SCU was a Jesuit university resonated with him. What’s more, his MS with a concentration in Finance could be completed in a year, which fit with his busy lifestyle and career goals.

And Joseph is quick to point out that his experience at Santa Clara drastically changed his life. He loved the technical and leadership classes he took and he was really impressed with his professors. He shares how impactful it was to have leadership professors who were so accomplished in their own right in the business world.

But his experience at SCU didn’t just give Joseph a graduate degree, it also changed the trajectory of his life. Two of his leadership professors were veterans, one served in Vietnam and one served in Iraq. Joseph had a long-held desire to serve his country and it wasn’t until his journey with SCU that he decided the time was right for him to join the United States Coast Guard.

Now, Joseph is a husband, father of two and business owner. He is the owner of Falcon Express Logistics LLC . His business is an Amazon Delivery Service Partner (DSP) operating in Boston and Boston's North Shore and he currently has 50 employees.

But Joseph isn’t finished there. He has other projects he’d like to pursue and sums up his approach to life as” my mentality is forward, expand, grow, do more.” It is this philosophy that led Joseph to start his own student investment club while he attended SCU with a fellow student who would go on to be one of Joseph’s groomsmen at his wedding.

And this philosophy provides the foundation for Joseph’s success. He was inspired by entrepreneurs and start-ups, so he set out to get the education and tools necessary to become one himself. To the young person who is toying with the idea of going for their own MBA or pursuing their own business idea, Joseph says:

“Just take risks, to do the things that you want to do. Do not look back in 10 years and be like, “why didn’t I just do that…?””