Adrian Hatch thought he had his future all figured out. He planned to graduate from Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, get a corporate consultant job, make a lot of money and retire as early as possible.
That all changed his sophomore year when iSchool professor Bruce Kingma encouraged him to take an exciting entrepreneurship class called “What’s the Big Idea?” The class helped students learn how to develop, grow, and vet ideas and build teams to create a product, service, or business.
After Kigman’s pep talk, Hatch went straight to the advising office and asked to be added to the class. The entrepreneurship class and other courses that allowed students to use cutting-edge technology were among his favorites.
“I was really struck by the inspiration to build something,” Hatch said. “Those are the professors who easily had some of the biggest impact on me and my time at Syracuse – their mindset, their thinking, their approach, their experience and the way they shared it with us. It deeply resonated with me.”
He now applies that passion to his job as chief of staff at Sitelink, a Las Vegas-based company that hosts an augmented reality platform for commercial construction project teams. Sitelink allows project engineers, superintendents and other staff members to streamline site documentation, perform quality control, take measurements and simplify field management using AR.
Sitelink is the next generation platform from IMAJION, a company Hatch co-founded on Syracuse’s campus.
“We all expect this thing to be an outrageous success, the kind that’s going to define our goals for the rest of our lives and careers,” Hatch said. “I say that from a position of optimism and confidence in our team in knowing the rock stars that I work with every day.”
While at Syracuse, Hatch earned his bachelor of science in information management and technology with a minor in information technology, design, and startups in 2016 and his master of science in information management and certificate of advanced study in data science in 2018, graduating summa cum laude both times.
The iSchool featured Hatch’s story in 2016, when he was selected as a university scholar, the university’s highest academic honor. He encourages current iSchool students to take advantage of the school’s curriculum flexibility and take elective courses that teach them something new, such as culinary arts, which he loved.
Hatch also advises students to stay positive and stay in touch with their professors and classmates.
“The iSchool really is a family. Syracuse has a particular reputation for it, and definitely for good reason,” he said. “I really am just truly, truly immensely grateful to Syracuse and happy to do anything I can to promote it and to share my story and to help other people write their own.”
