by Bill Wells Director of Student Promotion
ALUMNI IN ACTION: Nick Gourley ’18
Nick Gourley ’18: ‘WMA engrained in my mind that I could go out and do anything’
W
ith COVID-19s grip firmly around the neck of the world, Wilbraham & Monson Academy’s Nick Gourley ’18 wanted to help in some capacity. But how? The former president for the Class of 2018 had no experience in the medical field. What could he do? Mr. Gourley looked within, found some skills and interests he thought could be helpful, made the difficult choice to take a gap semester from college and opened his own startup company late in the summer of 2020. Arcadium—named after the band Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ninth album—was born, as Mr. Gourley and three of his classmates at Tufts University opened a strategic consulting company, with its sights set firmly on how they could aid struggling companies near the Medford, Massachusetts, campus.
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AC ADEMY WORLD SPRING 2021
“I figured I could help with my business experience,” Mr. Gourley explained. “It would have been cool to get involved in the medical side; but since there was very little I could do on that end, I took what business knowledge I had and ran with it in the fall.”
Mr. Gourley had started a three-month internship at the Boston Food Allergy Center in the spring semester of his sophomore year at Tufts when COVID-19 slammed into the United States. His responsibilities shifted at the clinic, but he was happy to aid the facility in any way during the pandemic.
• Nick Gourley ’18 during his tennis-playing days at WMA.
“It almost felt like a wartime effort with the first responders and people in health care,” the economics and international relations double major said. “I wanted to get involved, so I did some economic consulting for this clinic, working on the business end figuring out ways to increase company revenue.” As the summer drew closer to the start of school, Mr. Gourley faced a difficult decision: take a gap semester Tufts was offering to its students or attend online classes. From his off-campus apartment, he took a bold step and created his startup, registering his consulting business with the state and putting school on hold. Then came the real hard part—finding clients. After a month of knocking on doors of local businesses, a personal training company in neighboring Somerville took on Mr. Gourley and his team.
