Jacob Tzegaegbe, CE 11, MS CE 13, is the first to admit that his professional journey hasn’t been the most straightforward.
Since graduating from Tech, he’s moved from drilling engineer to management consultant to transportation advisor to technology distribution.
“I would have never told you I was going to do this journey, but I can actually tell you exactly why I've done this journey and what I was solving for at the time,” Tzegaegbe said.
Like a true engineer, Tzegaegbe has strategically approached each of his career moves by analyzing six variables to make the best career choice for his “season of life.”
At the Spring 2025 Hyatt Lecture on Feb. 13, Tzegaegbe shared his decision-making framework along with stories from his life to help students as they begin their own career journeys.
The Hyatt Distinguished Leadership Speaker Series, made possible by the generous support of Kenneth Hyatt, CE 62, MS IM 66, brings a distinguished leader to campus each fall and spring to share wisdom and insight with the Civil and Environmental Engineering community.
During his time at Georgia Tech, Tzegaegbe was a student leader with an extensive list of accomplishments. Among them, he was an academic all-American diver with the Georgia Tech swim and dive team, he served as senior class president, was elected Mr. Georgia Tech by his peers, and was named a Marshall Scholar, which allowed him to earn a master’s degree in the United Kingdom.
Tzegaegbe is currently the vice president of global strategy for ADI Global Distribution, where he directs strategy mergers and acquisitions and serves as part of the leadership team. Among his previous positions, he served as director of expansion for a transportation startup and as senior transportation policy advisor for the city of Atlanta.
Tzegaegbe encouraged students to think about their careers one step at a time and make decisions based on what’s most important at their current stage of life.
“Life isn't about getting from point A to B,” Tzegaegbe said. “It's about as you're going on that journey, making sure that you're doing what you want to do at the right time in your life, because throughout the next 10 years of your life a lot of things are going to change.”
Tzegaegbe said there are six variables he considers when determining the season that you're solving for:
- Pay: How much money will you be making?
- Professional development: what skills are you going to learn?
- Progression: How does this position you for where you want to go?
- People: Who are you working with?
- Purpose: Does this fulfill you?
- Personal: What’s happening in your life outside of work?
Tzegaegbe used his own career trajectory to illustrate how he’s ranked these points.
As a student searching for an internship, he solved for the two most important factors to him at that time: pay and professional development. Exxon Mobil offered a highly paid internship with opportunity for professional development “to get really good, hard technical skills,” he said.
Though drilling oil wasn’t fulfilling his life’s purpose, that wasn’t the most important factor at the time. Later in his career, he went on to prioritize purpose when he accepted a job with the city of Atlanta. Though he had to take a big pay cut, he was excited to work in public service and help improve transportation in his hometown.
After a couple of years, Tzegaegbe returned to the private sector in a position that enabled him to deploy technology and public transportation to communities across America. The company offered him a promotion to lead a 40-person team based in Tel Aviv—a great opportunity for someone like Tzegaegbe with an interest in global leadership.
But he turned down the promotion because it wasn’t a good fit for his season of life.
His personal life was now his priority as he and his wife Elise were expecting their first child.
“This is a pivotal moment in our life. I don't want to be traveling to Tel Aviv every few weeks and away from my daughter, who's about to be born,” he said. “I knew that what I was solving for had changed from when I joined the company, and this wasn't the right move for me. I want to be a great father. I want to be present, and there will come another season in my life where I will be able to lean in more to work and split my time differently.”
Tzegaegbe’s story illustrates that purpose doesn’t always mean doing what you’re passionate about every single day, but rather, finding balance between professional growth, personal life, and fulfillment. He encouraged the audience to recognize that career fulfillment is a long-term pursuit, and to remain open to evolving their priorities over time.
“I sit here today and I'm less than 10 years into my professional career, and I can say that I feel really confident that I made great decisions,” Tzegaegbe said. “I feel super fulfilled in the career that I've built so far and even more excited about the career that's coming.”