Know Your Why

On his first day of his MBA program, Prag Shah ’86 felt a little out of his league. Never mind that he had just spent the first six years of his career surrounded by actual rocket scientists at NASA and had a master’s degree in aerospace engineering of his own. Now, he looked around at his new classmates: bankers, sales professionals, marketing directors, and consultants. Only a handful of the 900-some students in his class came from the nonprofit or government sectors. While his background in engineering provided a foundation in problem solving, it was otherwise of little use as he began poring over financial statements and case studies. The coursework was overwhelming at first, but what did he expect? It was Harvard after all.

As a young engineer at NASA, Prag began noticing how his interest in the highly technical aspects of projects was not as deep as that of his peers. He found himself gravitating toward the broader, more managerial tasks: budgeting, building project timelines, collaborating across departments. He was only a few classes away from earning his master’s, so he completed the program, but by then he had a much clearer understanding of his strengths and passions. He applied to some of the top business schools and was accepted into Harvard, effectively changing the trajectory of his career.

Coming out of business school, Prag wanted to find opportunities that married his technical background with his new set of skills. He sought out large companies with executive development programs to accelerate his exposure and training. It was 1996 and the mobile communications industry was booming. Prag joined the fast-growing team at Sprint Corporation, which was on the forefront of the mobile revolution.

Over the next 10 years, he held a variety of leadership positions in sales and marketing, product, strategy, and innovation. Just a few years out of business school, he was vice president of a $20 billion company. He helped launch the first music-capable phone in North America. “We were just hair-on-fire creating services that didn’t exist, services we take for granted now,” he says.

After Sprint, Prag continued to pursue opportunities that blended technology and business and landed at Rosetta Stone, a language learning software company, as president of the Global Consumer Division. He and his family packed their bags and moved across the ocean to Tokyo, Japan, in 2011. It was, in Prag’s opinion, a life-altering experience. Not only was he leading teams all over the world, but he was also immersed in a culture entirely unique from the “D.C. bubble” he was born into.

“Japan was this amazing mix of contradictions,” he explains. “It’s fast on one hand, slow on the other. It’s very modern, but it’s very traditional. It’s vibrant but also quiet. The people are so welcoming. There was this feeling of being part of something; I felt at home.”

A few years later, Prag would find a new home at sea with Princess Cruises. After returning from an exciting National Geographic expedition to Antarctica, Prag was inspired to find a position that would intersect his love of traveling and his knack for business. He pursued opportunities in the hospitality, travel, and leisure industry, and “through some luck, creative maneuvering, and happenstance,” he landed a global innovation role at Princess.

When the COVID pandemic hit, the effects were detrimental to the cruise industry. Prag was on a ship in New Zealand when news first broke. He had teams on ships all around the world, but within a few months most of the company had been laid off. Unsure of what was next for him, Prag did as he’d always done: pursued his passions. In the winter of 2021, he applied to become a ski instructor at Whitetail Resort. A lifelong skier and former president of Mount Saint Joseph’s ski club, Prag thought he might as well give it a go while he explored his career options.

One day as he was making the hour-long commute up to the mountain, he had a thought. Whitetail is owned by Vail Resorts, a $2 billion publicly traded company. Maybe there’s an opportunity there. “I basically cold outreached to the CEO of Vail Resorts,” he laughs. “It took a little maneuvering, some emails. There was a FedEx involved. The opening line of the letter was something like, ‘I’m having the time of my life as a ski instructor with Vail Resorts.’” The CEO set up a one-on-one video call and six months later Prag moved to Denver in an executive role at Vail's headquarters.

Prag admits that his career path has been anything but conventional. “I have this curvy, twisty route, but the common theme is leadership, intersecting my various interests,” he says. “Many people will go burning down one path, which may be satisfying, but always understanding your ‘why’ is critical.”

Prag is currently advising a few companies in the hospitality and tech industries, serving on the board for another tech company, and doing some parttime consulting while he “searches for the next adventure.”