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When Mike Viskovich graduated from Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, he anticipated a steady, conventional career in finance. Now, a lifetime later, he has survived and thrived through multiple reorganizations and spin-offs, serving in half a dozen vice president roles, traveling the globe, and working in nearly every corporate function. It’s been anything but conventional or predictable.

Today, Viskovich is Vice President of Workplace Services at Agilent Technologies, a massive life sciences company born from Hewlett-Packard with over $7 billion in revenue and 18,000 employees worldwide. His portfolio includes corporate real estate, facility operations, environmental health and safety, and capital projects across sites in the US, Europe, Asia, and beyond.

He compares managing a building to managing one of Agilent’s scientific instruments: both have structural, electrical, mechanical, and software components. “The only difference is instruments don’t have people inside,” he says. Among current projects is a $740 million oligonucleotide manufacturing facility in Colorado, a massive bet on Agilent’s pharmaceutical ingredient business.

From Opening a Small-Town McDonald’s to Opening State-of-the-Art Life Science Facilities

Viskovich grew up in Sonora, CA, a small foothill town where the opening of the first McDonald’s was, as he puts it, “a very big deal” to him and his high school friends. He chose Santa Clara for its size and reputation, its proximity to home and family, and the famous Bronco alumni network.

What he didn’t anticipate was how thoroughly Santa Clara would stretch him. “I took an acting class. I was terrible at it, but it got me out of my comfort zone,” he recalls with a laugh. 

He also met his wife, Megan, at Santa Clara. The two were placed in the same marketing project group junior year because of a chance reshuffling by Professor Kirby, one of the most consequential things that ever happened to Viskovich. They’ve been married 31 years, and two of their four children are also Broncos.

A Finance Major Goes into Finance, and Then Moves On

Viskovich joined Hewlett-Packard out of school in finance, his Leavey School major, and then kept moving. Over nearly 30 years spanning HP and various spin-offs: Agilent Technologies, Keysight Technologies, and back to Agilent again, he has held roles in finance, manufacturing, procurement, sales, and corporate real estate. “I have worked in almost every function in the company,” he says, “except legal and tax.”

Not all of those transitions went smoothly. When a senior vice president of sales suggested Viskovich try a VP of Sales role where he would be selling technical software to top-100 customers like Lockheed Martin and Google, via a brand-new subscription go-to-market strategy, during COVID, Viskovich questioned whether he was up to it. “I got into that job, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I do?’” he admits. “I really felt like I could fail.”

It was during those dark, difficult times that Viskovich leaned hardest on the principle he insists that his own children follow: having a growth mindset. “I’m not there yet, but I will be, on my timeline,” he would tell himself. And he credits that mental framework and the mentor who knew when to push back with shaping his leadership arc.

How One Mentor Changed Everything

Early in his career, about a year into his first management role, Viskovich was ready to quit. He walked into his manager’s office and asked for a demotion. He wanted his individual contributor position back. She told him to take two weeks off, with no email and no work, and to come back with a clear head.

“She got me to realize what I was doing well, and maybe not to worry so much about the other things,” Viskovich says. “Without her, I probably would not have gone on to five or six vice president roles.” Today, Viskovich applies that same servant leader approach with his own teams. Seeing former direct reports rise to vice president roles, he says, is more rewarding than any of his own promotions.

What Santa Clara Really Taught Him

Looking back, Viskovich points to three things he learned at Santa Clara that he couldn’t have gotten elsewhere: an education grounded in ethics that forced him out of his small-town comfort zone, the experience of group projects that mirrored how his future jobs would actually function, and the alumni who came back to campus and inspired him to take on the world. That last piece, he believes, is part of what makes the Leavey School uniquely powerful.

“I think the degree and the foundation helps you think about how to tackle problems,” he says. “Santa Clara’s focus was really on the whole person. Not just in Leavey School of Business, but in general. And as you get older, you realize how important that is.”