Jimmy S. Pappas

Class of 1991

When Jimmy S. Pappas started attending Mount Wachusett Community College as an evening student in 1988, he wasn’t sure he would stay long enough to earn a degree, let alone transfer to an Ivy League college.

“I always knew that I should go to college, but by then I was married, I had a kid, I was building a house and I was working full time,” he said.

Pappas’ odyssey to The Mount began in 1983, when he returned to his birthplace of North Carolina after living with his family in his parents’ native Greece for nine years. He completed high school by attending a nine-month high school completion program at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte.

At 18, Pappas joined the Army. While in the Army, he met his first wife. They and their daughter moved to his wife’s hometown of Phillipston after Pappas left the Army in 1988. It was while working at the Fernald State School in Templeton that he began attending MWCC at night.

Pappas credits retired Professor Tom Malloy, Vice President Ann McDonald and Dean Richard Shine for encouraging him to pursue a degree. “They’re the ones who guided me through my time at the Mount and gave me some direction,” he said.

“It was nice for me to…go to class and interact with people who had the same busy life I did but were interested in bettering themselves,” he recalled.

After graduating from MWCC with a degree in general studies in 1991, Pappas transferred to Amherst College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1992. He received a master’s degree in accountancy from Bentley College in 1995.

“The Mount was a huge stepping stone for me,” he added. “It enabled me to reach higher for aggressive, sometimes attainable, goals, such as getting into an elite four-year college like Amherst College.”

Pappas started Passio Consulting in 2005 after working six years for the accounting firms Tofias PC, Ernst & Young LLP and Deloitte & Touche LLP. He serves as a managing director at the Boston-based company.