Founded in 1948, Robert Half International places temporary and full-time workers through seven divisions, including Accountemps, Robert Half Finance & Accounting and Robert Half Management Resources, which specialize in accounting and finance staffing; OfficeTeam, for administrative support personnel; Robert Half Technology, for IT professionals; Robert Half Legal, for attorneys, paralegals and legal support staff and The Creative Group, which places people in advertising, marketing and web design. The Menlo Park-based company also operates Protiviti, an internal audit and risk consulting division, and has more than 350 offices in 40 states and 20 countries.
THE QUICK BIO
Steven Karel had graduated from Stanford and passed his orals for his Ph.D. in mathematics at UC-Berkeley when in 1973, he entered the U.S. Army as a lieutenant through an ROTC commission. Karel was loaned out to NASA before being stationed in Korea until his last year of service in 1977. At NASA, he did acoustics research and research into the solution of partial differential equations. The prospect of a career as a math professor had faded by the end of his Army career which he left at the rank of captain. He applied to Harvard Law School, where he graduated cum laude in 1980. “I wanted to be a math professor, but my assignment at NASA convinced me I didn’t want a career in research, so I thought maybe I should go to law school instead,” Karel said. He joined the firm that was then known as Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro after graduation, specializing in securities law, and realized “I wanted more variety. I didn’t want to spend my time building a book of business, so I began to think about going in house.”
