Spartan Profiles: Jason Curis

DEFIANT APPRENTICE

            In NBC’s top-rated reality show The Apprentice, two teams tried to win business challenges by Donald Trump, the real estate magnate. Each week one contestant from the losing team was fired. In week two, Trump fired Jason Curis, ’01, an entrepreneur in Sterling Heights. He owns JMC Management, with 53 rental units and 22 properties. Despite his early exit, Curis believes one day he’ll be as successful as Trump. “Give me five more years and I’ll have my own building,“ he said in his parting video statement to Trump. “And then we’ll talk. I’ll call you direct.”

            Elected leader of the men’s team, Jason was depicted bypassing the client in building an advertising campaign—a mistake that led to his exit. “True, we didn’t meet face to face, but we had a conference call,” he points out. “We did exactly what the client wanted, but (the winning women’s team) did what Donny Deutsch (the advertiser judging the contest) wanted.”

            A native of Clinton Township, Jason hails from a thoroughly Spartan family. “I have two brothers, one sister, and 17 first cousins, and most of us are Spartans,” he says. “My father and mother met at State. I started going to Spartan Stadium at age one. It’s a great school.” As a sophomore, Jason was elected president of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. “That’s where I learned a lot about real estate,” he says. “I paid all the bills. At one point we ran into some trouble with the lease and had to go to court.”

            After graduation, he worked as a manager at one of his father’s Big Boy restaurants and also as a real estate broker. Eventually he decided to go fulltime into property management. “I was really not that interested in TV,” he says of The Apprentice, which picked him from 215,000 applicants. “I just wanted to see Trump first hand and learn from him so I can build my own empire. My goal is to see my name next to Trump’s on a couple of buildings in Detroit.”