Tuesday, May 25 Big car bomb went off this morning at 8:20 a.m. About 80 yards (a soccer field) away from where I live, so it was loud. Hard to say how many, if any, killed. Most likely just the bomber, if he stayed in the car. Looked like it was just for the television cameras. Strange place to blow up, just in front of the checkpoint I go through four times a day. Didn't see any bodies, and all the guards (Iraqi) at the checkpoint were OK. I got there 3 minutes after it went off... Just picked up my camera bag, ran out and around the block. Update: Hard to say if the bomber was killed or not, but a 10-year-old boy who sold cigarettes by the side of the road appeared to be the only non-suicide bomber fatality. He was a nice kid, very friendly, with a great smile. I'd bought things from him before. Mohaymen [Al Safar, Jumpstart co-founder and close friend of O'Sullivan's] was upset, he waved to the kid and talked to him every day on his way in and out of our hotel. Sunday, May 30 Traveled today to Fallujah, which is considered dangerous... The basic plan is to take 10 civil engineers from Fallujah, have them trained and working and vetted in several of the 60 or so JumpStart sites in Baghdad, then bring them back to Fallujah to start new projects in Fallujah once we verify they are good managers and can do the accounting work, etc. Our hope is to grow to about 300 workers in Fallujah within a few weeks. Thursday, June 17 ABC News Nightline tapes a long interview. Tish [Durkin, a reporter for the New York Observer and O'Sullivan's fiancee] is worried the publicity will create a problem for my safety. But, while I haven't been seeking publicity, and have never issued and haven't allowed to have press releases issued about JumpStart, etc., generally I do grant interviews when people approach me. I have now agreed to turn down interviews so as to reduce my exposure. But I am of two minds about this, of course, because I want to promote the idea of what JumpStart is trying to do, and the importance of winning the peace by economic and employment means rather than by military means...

JumpStart laborers are paid $4.80 a day, and a foreman makes $12.50 a day — about 20 percent above the going rate in Iraq these days. Operating with just more than $7 million in donations, JumpStart has made a significant contribution to rebuilding efforts in Baghdad and Fallujah, and has given thousands of Iraqis a concrete investment in their country’s future.

O’Sullivan’s commitment to working in a dangerous place has impressed JumpStart’s employees.

“He has a brave heart to be here,” Muthanna Harith Al Kenani, a site engineer and foreman, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in March. “It is dirt and damage everywhere. When you see it clean you will have hope. He is helping us do something good for my country. It is the first step to rebuilding and rehabilitating Iraq.”

The Road to Baghdad
O’Sullivan did not leave Rensselaer, armed with a degree in electrical engineering, with the goal to become an international humanitarian. In fact, he’s best known in the business world as one of the founders of MapInfo, a global software company now headquartered in Rensselaer’s Technology Park. In the mid-1980s, O’Sullivan joined with fellow student-entrepreneurs Laszlo Bardos ’86, Andy Dressel ’84, and John Haller ’86 to launch what has become one of the most successful mapping and location intelligence software companies in the world. O’Sullivan served as president and chairman of the company for seven years before leaving in 1993 to start a rock band called Janet Speaks French. The band released two CDs, and O’Sullivan branched out to co-found Sonic Recording Studios in Philadelphia, which has been used by major recording artists including Sheryl Crow, Bon Jovi, and Boyz II Men.

But the software world still beckoned. In 1995, O’Sullivan started NetCentric, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that developed software for faster, more efficient Web communications, and for faxing over the Internet. While that company grew rapidly to about $6 million in revenues, it eventually became what O’Sullivan calls a “dot-bomb,” so he decided to enter the film school at University of Southern California to focus on documentary filmmaking. His studies for a master of fine arts, which he was awarded this year, took him to Iraq in the early days of the war last year. Making a documentary while the Saddam Hussein regime was still in power proved difficult, but O’Sullivan found work as a freelance journalist in the country, eventually returning to Los Angeles in May. There, with the memory of Iraq fresh in his mind, he conceived the idea of JumpStart based on the principle that helping people become self-sufficient is the long-term solution to global political and economic instability.

His first trip to Iraq left O’Sullivan with the impression of the Iraqis as “strong, independent and free-spirited people,” who were hoping for a better future. Building on this hope, he created JumpStart to spur employment and generate private businesses and public opportunity for the Iraqi people. “Many of them were already entrepreneurs, and thousands of businesses were already thriving in Baghdad,” he says.

O’Sullivan raised more than $2 million from colleagues in the software industry to kick off his efforts, which initially focused on clearing damaged buildings. He donates his labor, figuring he could give a year to the project. “I view it as a Peace Corps year. I’m a volunteer,” he says.

While the CPA reconstruction projects focused on rebuilding the infrastructure, O’Sullivan says he believed Iraqis needed to see tangible evidence of progress in their war-scarred country. “The Iraqis have noticed a big change in Baghdad in terms of the cleanup work that JumpStart has done — and it has made possible the reconstruction of government ministry campuses.”