Tony Risica ’78 didn’t start his professional career thinking he was going to be an entrepreneur. He was happy to be hired by a large corporation, AT & T, to work in its prestigious Bell Laboratories. He describes his first job as “like a university – it was all about learning.” From there, Risica went on to work for another large corporation, Motorola.
But his career really took off when he became involved in starting two small companies, Sonus Networks and Arris Networks. His first start-up, Arris Networks (now part of Ascend Communications), developed wide-area network access products. After Arris was acquired by Cascade Communications, Risica started up another company, Sonus Networks, which provides switching equipment and software that enables voice to be delivered over data networks. “When we began, Sonus was just four of us sitting around the dining room table,” he remembers. A little more than two years later, the company had more than 400 employees, and successfully went public. “The proudest accomplishment of my career so far is the day we went IPO,” says Risica. “We had done it – developed the right product, and delivered it at the right time.”
One of the hardest parts of working at a start-up company, he notes, is striking a balance between work and home. However, while Risica worked long hours at Arris and Sonus, he claims he worked longer hours while at Motorola.
Risica believes that his electrical engineering education at URI provided an important foundation for his eventual professional success. It is for this reason that Risica decided to give back to the University, with a gift of $94,000 to establish the Anthony J. Risica Endowed Lecture Series in Engineering Entrepreneurship. He believes that engineering students can benefit from being educated about entrepreneurship, and hopes that by hearing from important entrepreneurs in the engineering world, they can learn about and take advantage of the opportunities that working at small start-ups can provide.