DeKALB — Christopher Henkel, owner of IT Lighthouse in Naperville, started his career at NIU in 1987 as an accounting major and graduated in 1991 with an economics degree. An IT internship through university resources is what set his career path in motion. 

“I actually had an internship through the university with a company called MicroAge,” Henkel said. “They were one of the first distributed network vendors in the country and I actually got on the ground floor of distributed network technology that was through my connections to NIU through one of my professors.”

Although his major was different from his current career path, Henkel contributes his education at NIU as one of the things that prepared him in becoming a business owner in another field.    

“Having an accounting background was extremely helpful,” Henkel said. “I found that to be almost like a second degree for me. I also learned from them the do’s and don’ts on how to run a business. At the time, I was 26 years old, the average age outside of me was 58 in the group.” 

With the help of outside organizations, Henkel believes he grew as businessman and communicator early on in his career and created a foundation he uses still today. 

“I was involved quite socially in a fraternity and other activities,” Henkel said. “I found that even though I had more of an engineering background when I went into computer science, the fact I was able to talk to people in a non-engineering way made a huge difference in my career and gave me the opportunity to work with business leaders.” 

Don Brown, former Sr. Director of Management Information Systems for the Chicago White Sox’s, used Henkel’s company for their services for 29 years.

 “The IT system we had in place during my time there was one of the best out in the MLB, with the help of Chris of course,” Brown said. “Not once did I ever have an issue with his company and was even able to use two of his workers full-time.” 

Brown was introduced to Henkel at a time when IT was new to the South Side organization and recommendations steered Brown in his direction. 

 “(There was) no IT staff when I first got there,” Brown said. “We checked around for different options and was highly recommended to his company in Chicago.”  

Henkel recommends students who are pursuing a career in the IT industry obtains an internship with a prevailing IT company or a company within their IT department. 

“The reason there’s a benefit to go into an IT company (is because) you’re getting to see a lot more different platforms in your internship then say if you work for a company that’s in their IT department, you’re going to see one system,” Henkel said. “If you work for an IT consulting company, you’re going to see 10 to 11 different versions of that system.”