Following graduation, Collins spent 18 months in
McKinsey & Co.'s San Francisco office. He was exposed to what may have been an influential project for him – two partners at McKinsey,
Tom Peters and
Robert Waterman, were running a McKinsey research project that later became the best-seller
In Search of Excellence. After his time at McKinsey, he returned to study at Stanford, graduating with an
MBA from the
Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983. He then worked as a product manager for
Hewlett-Packard for 18 months. He published his first best-seller
Built To Last, co-authored with Jerry Porras, in 1994. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in
Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors. During that time, Collins has served as a senior executive at CNN International, and also worked with social sector organizations, such as:
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the
Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents, and the
United States Marine Corps. == Personal life ==