Javidi diagrams a problem during a class at N.C. State

Dream Come True

How an immigrant kid with lots of brains
became an All-American success story

By Patrick Jones

Twenty-six years ago, Manoochehr Javidi landed on the Oklahoma prairie straight from Tehran. He had $100 in his pocket, and he spoke no English. Today, Dr. “Mitch” Javidi is a tenured professor at N.C. State University and the founder and CEO of a successful Internet technology company, Digiton Corp.

“My dad always had a dream to do everything in his power for his (five) children to go and be somebody in America,” says Javidi. “It is the land of freedom. It is the land of opportunity. This is the model. This is where you can make everything happen.”

Javidi co-founded Digiton with his older brother, Akbar, and Kristen Burnette, a former graduate student and colleague. The company, with a staff of 10, provides expertise in strategic planning, branding, market research, integrated communication and Internet technologies. Revenues for 2001 surpassed $1.6 million.

That's a long way from 1975. The day after Javidi arrived, Akbar, then a student at Oklahoma City University, landed his 14-year-old brother a job in the campus cafeteria as a busboy making $1.75 per hour. To make ends meet, he picked up a second job chopping poultry at a Church's Fried Chicken.

Javidi excelled in math and sciences in his home country, but he knew little English — save what he had gleaned from John Wayne movies. His American schoolmates, unable to pronounce his given name, Manoochehr (pronounced “man-o-chair” and meaning “God given”), shortened it first to Mitchell and then to Mitch.

“Culturally and psychologically, it was very difficult,” says Javidi. “The pain of my lack of (English) language skills — and resulting social skills — made it tough. But I followed my father's advice about what John F. Kennedy said, that every crisis is an opportunity, so leverage it.

“If you can manage the pain and never give up, you will succeed,” he adds. “I learned how to strategize and be a strategist, not by choice, but for survival. You keep asking yourself: `What's next?' ”

Javidi's first survival strategy was to pick up English — quickly and cheaply. Unable to afford private language courses, he leveraged what he knew by enrolling in multiple math and science classes that accelerated his learning of the language through problem solving and experimentation.

The framed reminders of just how far Javidi has come hang from the walls of his office. They are his three diplomas, including an undergraduate degree in engineering and sciences from Langston University; a master's completed in just one year from Kansas State University; and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma University.

“It was understood in my family, from a very early age, that education is everything,” says Javidi. “Intelligence is everything.”

Academics continue to be an integral part of his life. Javidi is a member of N.C. State's Academy of Outstanding Teachers (he's currently on leave without pay from the university, where he's devoted 12 years).

“Mitch was a dynamic professor,” says Burnette. “Now he is the core of Digiton. While the rest of us take care of the day-to-day business, he focuses on the landscape of tomorrow — on what's next.”

In the early 1980s, while pursuing his doctorate, Javidi landed a job with Wal-Mart as a customer service manager. That quickly led to the role of a marketing strategist and entrance as a junior member of the inner circle of founder Sam Walton. Javidi was part of the strategy team that had the foresight to recommend Wal-Mart expand its reach by opening pharmacies inside its retail stores, a strategy since copied by competitors.

One day, Javidi found himself on Walton's private jet. Walton himself placed an envelope in front of Javidi and told him he had the choice of opening it and taking the contents (money) or gaining exposure and experience by being granted entrance to a high-level meeting of some of the retail industry's top executives.

“They were heavy hitters in the retail business,” Javidi says of the attendees at the New York meeting. “I was given the chance to just participate, sit and listen. It was worth everything that was in that envelope.”

Indeed, the National Society of Accountants recognized Javidi as its “Person of the Year” in 1998 for his strategic restructuring of Wal-Mart. The true prestige of the award became even clearer the next year when the NSA recipient was Delaware Sen. William Roth, whose name has become a household word for his efforts in establishing a tax-free retirement savings plan, the Roth IRA.

Javidi in all likelihood is the only Persian-born honorary member of the Army Special Operations Forces, U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The honor was bestowed upon him in 1998 in recognition of his management and strategic operational programs for the U.S. Department of Defense, Army Special Operation Forces.

“I finally felt like I had achieved something,” says the soft-spoken Javidi. He proved his esprit de corps and worthiness of the award when, asked the specifics of the services he provided for his adopted country, he said he couldn't.

“One of the things I learned in my early years in the Turkish-Persian culture is that loyalty and respect are the greatest things,” he says. “And I have tried to hold on to that — respect those who teach you, respect those who give you an opportunity.”

The loyalty to his family and respect for his parents' wishes is evident. Javidi, the second in line to fulfill his father's dream of giving all his children an opportunity in America, did his part to bring the rest of them over. He and Akbar pooled the money their dad was sending for expenses for several years. They surprised their parents by returning tens of thousands of dollars to bring their remaining three siblings over ahead of schedule.

Two of the Javidi children, including Mitch, have earned doctoral degrees, two are finishing doctoral programs and the other has a graduate degree in microbiology.

Javidi's unique experiences and philosophies have heavily influenced the corporate beliefs of Digiton. “If I know the desired outcome and the goal is realistic, then I think most anything is attainable,” he says. “Of course, the best solutions are rarely obvious. They require patience and they require thinking out of the box to develop the right strategies and determine the `not obvious' required to make things happen.”

Reyn Bowman, president and CEO of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, attests to Javidi's skill as a strategist and researcher. The pair has worked closely since 1992 to reshape the attitudes and perceptions of the city on both a local and national scale.

“He has laid the whole foundation for our effort to resolve the conflict between reality and what people were saying about Durham,” says Bowman “He's helped target solutions and then track the progress. The media and the public at large are just catching on now to what he helped identify as far back as 1993. There has been measurable success.”

“My father gave me three pieces of advice at the airport when I left for America,” Javidi says. “He said, `First, have a drive. Second, study hard. Go for the education as much as you can.

“The third one was: `Be lucky.' He never said, `You are lucky.' It took me a couple of years to figure out what he meant by that. He meant to be lucky to meet the right people who can make a difference in your life.

“I look back 25 years and say I've been very lucky to have had the mentors, friends, colleagues, clients and students. But then you have to be able to leverage being lucky and know how to strategically turn it into success one step at a time.”

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