Rod McDermott met separately with undergraduate and graduate business students on Nov. 19 in what he calls “fireside chats,” at the invitation of Professor Heather Anderson, who teaches personal branding and personal development. 

“Those subjects are right up my alley,” says McDermott, CEO and co-founder of McDermott + Bull Executive Search, one of the fastest-growing executive recruitment firms in North America with both domestic and international offices.  

As one of three 2024-2025 UCR School of Business Executive Fellows, McDermott, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business at UCLA, is spending time on campus throughout the academic year mentoring students and sharing his expertise: For more than 20 years, he’s been an entrepreneur growing companies from the ground up. He is also CEO and co-founder of McDermott + Bull Interim Leaders, addressing clients’ needs for solutions to leadership challenges; McDermott + Bull Executive Network, a community of in-transition senior-level executives seeking guidance to land their next roles; and Activate 180, which helps companies elevate employee performance, productivity, and happiness through coaching.  
 

Within the fireside chats, says McDermott, he discussed how to stand out during the interview process, follow-up after the interview, and once in the position, how to network within the company.  

“You are the president of your career, and you’ve got to treat it that way,” he says.   

He also conducted the “Big Life Exercise” with students: “Imagine if you lived a life of no limits, no limiting beliefs, no limits on what you can afford, do not think ‘that’s not for me,’ and you decide you can do anything in the world. What would it be? 

“I wish someone would’ve gone through this exercise with me when I was in college because it would’ve gotten me thinking really, really big,” he says.  

In fact, McDermott experienced the exercise himself in 2005 when he was well into his career and was working with a career coach. “The coach gave us crayons and paper and instructed us to draw a picture of where we wanted our lives to be in five to 10 years,” says McDermott. “I drew this big life, which seemed ridiculous at the time, and I put the drawing away at the bottom of a T-shirt drawer in my dresser. Seven years later, I found the picture, opened it, and it was my life. I contacted the coach and shared this realization with him, and he said, ‘I told you it works.’” 

McDermott is a strong believer in making sky-high dreams an on-the-ground reality, especially if that includes some trial and error.  

“Looking back, I also wish someone had taught me the concept of visualization, thinking without limits, and understanding failure or rejection as just a step in the process, and letting that be your energy to keep trying harder,” he says. “A lot of great things would never have been invented in this world if people gave up the first time they tried.”  
 

That sentiment also rings true with a UCR scholarship supported by McDermott and his wife, Laura Martinez McDermott, whose late father is Eliud Martinez, professor emeritus of creative writing, who joined the faculty at UCR in 1972 and retired in 1995. Martinez chaired the Chicano Studies program and helped develop UCR’s Department of Creative Writing. Laura grew up knowing the university well, and she and Rod established an annual scholarship in her father’s name for the creative writing department.  

“We like that UCR has been the No. 1 school for social mobility for the last several years, and we have a passion for changing the economic trajectory of the family tree: If we can support first-generation college students and help them graduate, land a job, and build a career, then we can change the economic future of that part of their family tree. 

“My father-in-law was the first in his family to go to college, and not only did he go but he earned a doctorate, and his entire family drafted off that, even the members who didn’t go to college, and they all saw the possibilities based on what he did as the oldest.” 

As an Executive Fellow, McDermott continues that effort within the UCR School of Business interacting directly with students on campus.  

“I see most people live within self-imposed limits, and it doesn’t need to be that way,” he says. “They can have live limitless lives and experience amazing things over their lifetimes, as long as they give themselves permission to do so and have a plan to go for it.” 

_____________

Within the UCR School of Business Executive Fellows program, business leaders are selected annually to interact and share their considerable knowledge with students and faculty. This year, McDermott is joined by Executive Fellows Jeff Paul, who was most recently general manager and vice president of the west region at software development company Red Hat, and Hilda Kennedy, founder and president of nonprofit community lender AmPac Business Capital.