Brains, talent and ambition are the cake.

There’s little doubt Ivan Hernandez (BSBA, MBA ’16) would have been successful even without benefit of an exceptional mentor. The eldest of three children of Mexican immigrant parents, Hernandez would occasionally assist his father, a house painter, as he worked on homes in wealthy neighborhoods. That experience served as both financial and academic motivation, as even a young Ivan understood it was a college education that often made owning such homes a reality.

Since paying for college would only be possible through his own efforts, Ivan wasted no time on the entrepreneurial side – buying bulk candy and reselling it to classmates for a profit in elementary school, then moving on to other ventures such as renting his car through Turo and, in later years, successfully practicing day trading.

At the same time, he intently pursued every scholarship opportunity available, eventually gaining the attention of Greenhouse Scholars, an educational foundation that provides leadership development, financial support, and mentoring and networking opportunities to exceptionally promising students from low-income families.

It was Greenhouse that enabled Hernandez to enroll at DU and also provided an auspicious introduction to Taylor Kirkpatrick (MBA ’04), CEO of a large family business enterprise, who would ultimately become Hernandez’s long-term mentor. While the initial meeting between Hernandez and Kirkpatrick was a perfunctory luncheon introduction, Ivan’s persistence and drive – inviting Taylor Kirkpatrick for frequent coffee and breakfast meetings, even wangling an invitation to meet Taylor’s mother – parlayed that into a productive and mutually rewarding relationship that helped him gain admission to the Daniels MBA program, obtain his first professional job at Price Waterhouse, and ultimately realize the entrepreneurial ambitions he first evidenced as a child.

Taylor Kirkpatrick’s family circumstances were significantly more comfortable than Ivan’s – the family fortunes began with his great grandfather who sold phonograph recordings for Thomas Edison, bred Arabian horses, and started the current family business – but there was nonetheless a total absence of entitlement.

Kirkpatrick grew up with a sharpened sense of both responsibility and obligation espoused by his mother, who stipulated “1) you have to become involved in an organization; 2) in a community where you live or work; and 3) it has to be small enough where you can actually make an impact.” 

Honoring that request led to a lifelong commitment for Taylor – including extensive volunteering and leadership work in childhood literacy, serving as President of the Denver Library Commission, classroom reading to kids, financially supporting DU’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology, and among many others, multiple board roles and serving as a DU Trustee. 

It was a consulting engagement of Taylor’s that indirectly led to expanding and enriching his mentoring relationship with Ivan into what essentially became a business partnership. “When I got involved with Banner Signs as a consultant,” Taylor recalls, “the owners ultimately decided to sell. That’s when I suggested Ivan apprentice there and if things worked out, I’d buy the company and install him as president."