Stephen Olive
Steve Olive knows how a co-op position can turn into a successful career path. In 1984, Olive completed three co-ops at the defense and government electronics firm Avco Textron Systems. By the time he graduated from Northeastern in 1987, he had three years of full- and part-time experience in a program office. This enabled him to secure a job as a manufacturing supervisor at Raytheon. “Co-op provided me the opportunity to see how business operated in a coaching environment,” says Olive. “It was definitely my co-op foundation that jump-started my career.” In December 2006, Computerworld magazine, a trusted source for IT management news, named Olive one of the top 100 IT leaders in the IT industry.
Since joining Raytheon, Olive has held a wide range of challenging positions there, including technical supervisor in the manufacturing organization, software engineer in the engineering organization, and CIO and vice president of the information solutions organization. Olive currently serves as the vice president of Business Solutions and Integration, where he is responsible for the enterprise-wide systems, processes and tools Raytheon needs to deliver timely, NoDoubt™ solutions to its customers.
Through it all, Olive hasn’t forgotten the role co-op played in his career. For the past three years, he has worked hard to revive and expand the co-op program at Raytheon. Under his direction as the company’s campus executive to Northeastern University, Raytheon has hired 172 co-op students from the engineering, business, criminal justice, computer and information science, and arts and sciences schools. “The co-op program at Raytheon is a ‘win-win,’” he says. “Students get work experiences that are both meaningful and exciting, and Raytheon establishes a talent pipeline for future growth.”
Olive has also championed Raytheon’s sponsorship of Summer Bridge, a Northeastern program that helps high-school students transition into engineering at the university level. “The Summer Bridge program allows us to move the excitement of our co-op program back into the high-school levels. It allows us to create the coaching environment very early with the students and help set them up for academic and professional success.”
