Michael E. Kopko

Don’t let his CEO’s demeanor, Lacoste-and-black-blazer combo, or slicked-back hair fool you. Michael E. Kopko ’07 is a people person.

Kopko heads an organization with 30 employees, hundreds of customers, and a million dollars in revenue. He’ll talk to you about DormAid if you ask, but he’d much rather tell you about the company executives he works and lives with.

“You can use the word ‘cult’ for those who don’t understand us,” Kopko says jokingly of the four “beautiful people” with whom he shares an apartment in Allston.

They go on team trips and even have matching DormAid jerseys. When their plans to go skydiving on Kopko’s birthday fell through, “we wore our jerseys and went go-carting instead,” says COO Robert D. Cecot ’08.

Matching jerseys aside, Kopko is passionate about building an organization dedicated to, in his words, “empowering the next generation.”

He believes that DormAid’s services allow students to focus on their priorities by taking care of the banal and time-consuming chores of college life, from laundry to room-cleaning.

Kopko’s next plan is to make college affordable for everyone. His idea is to get banks to award credit to students based on their potential earnings rather than their parents’ current finances.

His company gained infamy in March 2005, when The Crimson wrote an editorial calling for a boycott of DormAid, arguing that use of their dorm-cleaning service was “an obvious display of wealth that would establish a perceived, if unspoken, barrier between students of different economic means.”

The Crimson editorial led to a New York Times article and an interview for Kopko on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.”

“I was shocked by how some people reacted,” Kopko says of DormAid’s early days. His goal was not to sell an exclusive product but to “make people productive and happy.” DormAid’s upcoming work in student finance is an example of its commitment to increasing all students’ productivity, he says.

Kopko’s “judgment day” is Jan. 17, the day he hopes to receive a thick envelope from Harvard Business School. If it comes his way, Kopko plans to attend HBS next year and to continue to run DormAid.

But no matter what, Kopko says his long-term goal is to keep doing what he enjoys most: building “wonderful businesses with people I love.”

Donald Trump, take note.