By Jamie Hu
Our department had the recent pleasure of chatting with Steve Wells, one of our donors, a New Venture Program mentor, and longtime friend of the department. He and his wife Tracy have sponsored a scholarship in their name for students in any major. Read on to learn more about Steve’s background, what brought him and his wife to Technology Management, what he’d like to tell other donors, and more.
Connect with Steve at his LinkedIn here!
About Steve & Tracy Wells
Steve is based in Santa Barbara, and has grown up in the city his whole life. He attended UCSB for his undergraduate degree, graduating in 1990. From there, he moved to the Bay Area, where he was able to get his start in tech. His first job out of college was at a computer software company, where he also met his wife Tracy.
The couple moved back to Santa Barbara around 1994, after which they both worked for a couple of tech firms in town including Software.com, John MacFarlane's company, which was a big success story and household name for Santa Barbara. In 2013, Steve and Tracy decided that they’d been in this tech scene for a while, and found it volatile enough that the safer decision for their long-term careers was to start their own company. They got together with Steve’s soon-to-be business partner, Chris Fowler, who they met through Software.com, and created ClearPathGPS, a GPS fleet tracking company for small and medium-sized businesses. They specialized in vehicle tracking for trucks and construction equipment.
“Think of plumbers and HVAC companies and construction companies,” Steve said of the company’s work. “We tracked all of their equipment, trucks, and drivers, and provided a logistics view into how to operate their business.”
They grew ClearPathGPS for about 10 years into a nation-wide brand serving thousands of fleets. During this time, they capitalized on connections to our department, Technology Management, and hired a number of TM graduates from the Certificate program into various roles at ClearPathGPS. In 2022, they sold the business to a private equity firm, Accel-KKR, and the couple made the decision to give back and become donors to Technology Management. Over the years, Steve has had the opportunity to contribute to the department in a variety of ways, including as a speaker for a couple of different classes and as a mentor for the New Venture Program. To this day, he’s still an advisor for EyeClimate, the winner of the New Venture Competition in May 2024, and continues to work with them as they commercialize.
“We love it here,” Steve stressed about his connection to California and its higher education system. “We've got a real affinity for UCSB. My parents met there as undergraduates in the 50’s. I went to UCSB, and my wife went to UC Santa Cruz and attended grad school at UCSB. My son, Collin, goes to UC Berkeley, and my daughter is a graduate from Cal Poly SLO, and she works in environmental consulting down in San Diego. We're big fans of the UCs, and we always want to give back.”
In the Q&A below, Steve gives us more details about what brought him to the department, what excites him about our students, and what he would tell other donors about our goals.
Q: How did you first hear about the department of Technology Management?
A: I've known about it since its inception, primarily because John Greathouse was instrumental in the early days, and I’d worked with him before. I also knew David Telleen-Lawton from earlier in my career, so I’d heard of Technology Management once he started working there.
David brought his class to our business a couple of times, and we had a number of interns that we brought in from that program. Santa Barbara's a small town, you know, especially in the tech scene! We joke that there’s only about two degrees of separation from anybody around here. It really shows how important connections and networking are. Once we started hiring people and bringing in interns, it was great to have a steady source of good employees. It's hard to hire here in Santa Barbara, and we know a lot of the people who come out of UCSB would like to try and stay here. You can get a lot of people who are really eager to come work for a startup or an early-stage company.
Q: What got you so excited about the department?
A: Number one, I looked at it and wondered what my life would have looked like if I’d had access to it when I was an undergraduate! The classes have a heavy tech focus, sure, but they also bring entrepreneurship, business, and technology together. When I was at UCSB, I studied Sociology and then went into tech after graduating. My path just happened randomly. Nothing like this existed back when I was an undergraduate. If there was, I would have been all over it. So I'm a little jealous of the kids today!
Q: What key priorities of the department are you most interested in working toward?
A: Tracy and I are big believers in entrepreneurship for students, so that's why we really wanted to support that aspect of Technology Management’s certificate program. We felt that in the technological environment going forward, with changes happening constantly and accelerating at such a rapid pace, kids are going to have to become much more reliant on themselves. This is the advice I give to my own children: having the tools, education, and experience is going to be critical for the future.
Entrepreneurship is going to become more and more dominant as the path that people take to succeed. Soon, I don't think you're just going to be able to go out and get a job somewhere. You're going to have to be an advocate for yourself, and use your soft and hard skills to make your own path. Going through the programs in Technology Management is one way to get started. I think the department really exemplifies and teaches that same ethos, that entrepreneurial mindset. It’s what attracts a lot of people to it.
Q: On this topic, you and Tracy sponsored the Steven & Tracy Wells Scholarship for students of all majors. What priorities do you have for this scholarship?
A: I think there are a lot of undergraduate students at UCSB who would go into Technology Management if they could afford it, or if they didn’t think there were so many barriers. So, my wife and I wanted to make sure that there was a scholarship available for students who might not have ever considered the space, like a sociology or poli-sci student. If cost wasn’t an issue, maybe they would do the certificate program. And then that would spur different thinking, or they'd feel more empowered to take the next steps. We wanted to be there for that first moment that they stepped into it and took that chance!
Interested in learning more about or applying for the Steven & Tracy Wells Scholarship? Click here to see our certificate scholarship page.
Q: What continues to bring you back to our department?
A: I think it's one of the best sources of new talent for tech companies and entrepreneurship in the Santa Barbara County area, and maybe beyond it. One of the things that I've been exposed to through being a mentor for the New Venture Program has been the new generation of innovators. I work with a bunch of students at UCSB, and they’re not screwing around! They’re such an underestimated, smart, driven group of people, and they work incredibly hard to realize their ideas and make the world a better place.
A lot of them understand that the game out there has changed, and that they're going to have to be responsible for their own careers. Like I mentioned earlier, joining some big tech firm isn’t a surefire path to success anymore. You can see a lot of it now, especially with entry-level jobs being threatened by AI in a lot of ways. So, we’re excited about being a steady presence to help them get their own experience and take control of their lives.
Q: If you could give advice to students just entering the business world today, what would you say?
A: One of the most important things that people overlook constantly, especially young people who are so excited to enter this world, is the ability to sell. Some of them hate the word “sales,” but they don't realize that they have to sell their product, sell to their investors, sell to their future employees, sell to everyone!
Just having the best technology is not enough. You’ve got to be able to communicate that with the world. How do you tell a succinct story? How do you get your idea across? How do you communicate? Those are some of the biggest soft skills that I think we need to stress with students to help them develop. They can't just rely on ChatGPT to write their emails for them. They really need to know how to pitch someone, express their ideas, and convince people to join them.
Q: If you could give any advice to other donors/potential donors, what would you say?
A: I would say that, for anybody who has come up through the technology or even business worlds, this is a really good place to see your donor dollars have an impact. Technology Management students graduate and change the world with their inventions, businesses, and technology. As donors, we look at a lot of different philanthropies, but I think this one stands out. I think this one makes a lot of sense to invest in to see results: people who go for it and do incredible things.