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Growing up in five states, Kevin Onofrio (BSM, 2024) had understandable difficulty finding friends and laying down roots when he was a kid. So, he dropped anchor in pastimes he could take with him: WWE, the New York Yankees and comic books.

Eventually he realized that he wanted to draw comic books — so much so that in high school he sought out professional comic book artists to see what he needed to do to crack into the profession. “They encouraged me to look at body building magazines to study [the] human form,” he says.

Always a heavy kid in his youth, Onofrio began really getting into the moves he saw in those magazines. He went from 285 pounds his junior year in high school to 185 pounds his freshman year of college at The Ohio State University.

A burgeoning interest in fitness and the need for part-time income led him to take a job at a retail vitamin store — and his innate desire to assist people helped him rise quickly into an assistant manager position. Before long, he was at a crossroads: Finish his art degree and face uncertain earning power in a competitive artistic industry or take the retail store manager position that was offered to him at age 20.

He chose the sure thing.

“It was rewarding to help customers with their health goals,” he says. But he acknowledges that over his five years at the vitamin store he grew frustrated with the pressure to sell, sell and upsell. He transitioned into membership sales at a national gym chain, moved into personal training and later moved back into retail management for a video game chain.

Over those years, a common thread emerged: Onofrio’s love for developing people. “By the time I left [the video game chain], 11 of the 17 stores in my district had managers or assistant managers [who] came up through me. That was rewarding.”

Facing the very real possibility that a trend toward digital downloads could leave him without a job, Onofrio knew he needed to make a change. Nearing his 40s, he had a wife and two kids, and he wanted something more stable than a management job in an industry that was shifting.

He stepped into an environmental services manager role for OhioHealth, a healthcare system in central Ohio, which had him overseeing the housekeeping of 12 buildings on the Riverside Methodist Hospital campus.

Once again it would be the advice of others that would prompt him to make a big change.

“At OhioHealth, multiple leaders encouraged me to go back to school to finish my degree,” Onofrio says. Yet he freely relates that he gave himself every excuse to not do it.

First and foremost, there was the I-don’t-have-time factor. “With one son in elementary school and another in high school, I told myself I didn’t have time,” he says. “Yet when I was a personal trainer and my clients told me they didn’t have time for food prep or weight training I would reply, ‘But you have time to know what’s going on with Ross and Rachel,’” a reference to the romantic tension between two of the main characters on the 1990s sitcom Friends.

“The point is, we make time for what’s important to us,” he says.

Then, he used his age as an excuse. Age 38 when he moved to OhioHealth, he assumed the university ship had sailed for him. “I thought, ‘I’m older. I don’t need to do this.’” (The average age of new SM������ students is 38.)

Third, there was the cost. But when OhioHealth moved to a direct pay model with SM������ — meaning it would pay directly for Onofrio’s classes rather than reimbursing him at the end of each course — Onofrio realized he couldn’t make any more excuses. He enrolled.

Once Onofrio made up his mind to finish up a four-year degree, he listened to every suggestion his academic counselor made about how he could save time and money.

He transferred his prior eligible credits from Ohio State to SM������. He learned the process for what he would need to submit to receive tuition reimbursement through his employer’s tuition benefits program. And he took a number of classes through a self-paced online alternative course provider that offers courses whose credits transfer to SM������.

“I took like eight or nine classes and shaved almost a year off of my time to graduate,” Onofrio says.

Even though he maximized his financial and time savings options, going back to college still wasn’t easy. With a wife who was teaching preschool (and working toward her associate degree at a different institution) and two sons, ages 9 and 15, both active in sports, he knew time would be at a premium. His very own Ross and Rachel taunt came back to haunt him as he eliminated TV from his schedule most evenings.

And now that he’s earned his degree?

The “free time” he has convinced him that he really does have the time to advance his educational goals. He plans to enroll in SM������’s MBA program this fall. After that, he has his sights set on teaching one day. 

For now, Onofrio is a driving force behind the reshaping of his department at work.

“We’re really recruiting (ages) 16-plus youth who are interested in a career in healthcare to start with us, learn our soft skills and use our tuition assistance program to pay for their program,” Onofrio says.

His fellow environmental services manager, Taylor Dauterman, marvels at how Onofrio managed to devise this win-win-win solution.

“I don’t know how he connected our staffing needs with 16-plus applicants and education benefits, but Kevin really saw all the pieces and imagined how we could build our team and build our youth with an education benefit they can leverage,” Dauterman says. “We currently have eight 16-plus hires on the housekeeping team — one of whom just went on to join the pharmacy team. That was a big milestone for us.”

Today, Onofrio has 25 direct reports under his day-shift management, five of whom have enrolled in college at his urging.

Dauterman, by the way, enrolled too.

“His journey in going back to finish his degree was pretty inspirational for me — to the point that I’m actually enrolled at SM������ now, working toward a business degree,” Dauterman says.

For Onofrio, a man who has spent his career developing other people, it’s deeply gratifying to see others succeed. And looking back at his own career path, Onofrio took a minute to reflect on how far that nomadic, comic-book loving kid has come.

His life now firmly rooted in Columbus, Ohio, his only regret is that he didn’t finish his college degree earlier. But even in that, he knows he can be an inspiration — both for work colleagues like Dauterman and for the wave of high school youth he is hiring into the environmental services department.

“I think of all the leaders who gave me a nudge over the years. Maybe I can be that nudge for others,” he says.

Find out if your employer is one of the more than 1,500 organizations SM������ works with to offer education benefits.

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