UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Since graduating from Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts in 2005 with a degree in communication arts and sciences, Eric Malis has made a career for himself in the startup world using the foundation he built at Penn State.
Malis is the co-founder of Talis Partners, an innovative law and strategy firm in the San Francisco Bay Area specializing in the startup community.
While he’s now enjoying a successful career helping other startups, the journey to get there was not linear.
When Malis graduated from Penn State, he knew he wanted to gain experience in business, but he was unsure about what he wanted to specifically do with his life. After a few years in sales, he ended up going to law school.
Malis explained how instrumental his studies at Penn State were in his decision to attend law school.
“I knew I didn’t want to necessarily be a lawyer for that long,” Malis said. “I was excited to apply a lot of what I learned from Penn State in the communication arts and sciences program around communication.
“At Penn State, I studied various topics regarding organizational communication and cultural communication — understanding what motivates people, how people perceive the world, how people communicate messages and where that can become complicated or confused — and those sorts of topics felt really natural for me.”
Malis says he went to law school to develop a more acute skillset in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and writing and to understand the underlying structure of business transactions and government organizations so that he could have a harder skillset to pair with his natural curiosity around people, communication and systems.
While attending George Washington University Law School, Malis said he was fortunate to have some really interesting opportunities.
“I interned at the Obama White House, the State Department, and for a federal judge,” Malis said. “Before law school, I ran a debate clinic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C., which was my transition into law and policy.”
After he graduated from law school in 2010, Malis did a judicial clerkship in New York and spent a few years working in D.C. at a law firm doing mergers and acquisitions and private equity.
Malis said he knew he was developing a skillset that was useful and gaining general knowledge, but for him, it wasn’t necessarily fulfilling a passion.
Then, at the age of 30, Malis was faced with a life-changing experience — he was diagnosed with cancer.
“I was really lucky that I was able to overcome it through medical treatment, and it helped me think about what I really wanted to do,” Malis said. “I have always been passionate about helping people build structures out of ideas. I like building things. I like helping people build companies by putting together legal and strategic pieces in order to develop a team, raise the capital, understand the customers, produce the product, and scale.”
Malis made the pivot to the startup world, first working at one of the premier law firms in the country for startups, technology and venture capital, Cooley LLP. After working there for a few years, Malis wanted to pursue his own opportunity — starting his own business.
Malis co-founded Talis Partners with a colleague from Cooley. The two provide outside general council to early-stage companies while also providing strategic guidance. They help companies with everything from building out their financial model and evaluating and developing a market strategy to connecting with potential customers and working through strategic decisions around hiring and culture.
“Basically, we make really important decisions coming from a legal and business background, and that’s been really fun. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years.”
Malis recently made another transition in his professional life as he is now in the process of joining a technology company. As he talked about this next step in his career, he couldn’t help but reflect on his time at Penn State with an organization he holds close to his heart: Penn State THON.
“I really got started in my professional journey with THON,” Malis said. “In addition to how exciting THON is and the ability to have a direct impact on people’s lives, both short-term and long-term, THON for me was also a way to connect with other students who, like me, wanted to do something helpful, relevant, beneficial, etc.
“It helped channel that energy into a way that could build structures and experiment in different ways and expand the organization. That created in me a real sense of curiosity and a work ethic, as well as a profound sense of wanting to do something important with my time. It really set me on a strong career path to fulfill those values that were grown through my experience with THON.”
In addition, Malis credits his outlook on life and success in the professional world to the communication arts and sciences classes he took.
“In terms of CAS [communication arts and sciences], developing an interest and understanding in how people perceive and interact with the world as a mix of psychology, sociology, rhetoric and philosophy and then applying that perspective in practical ways is a really important skillset that can applied in any profession,” Malis explained. “It’s one that I took to heart and really focused on throughout my entire career.”