Most recently, Brian served as the Director of Marketing at Baptie & Company. In his first few months on the job, he grew sponsorship revenue 30%, developed all new content for email and social media marketing campaigns and led a project to overhaul and integrate the organization’s website, CMS and CRM systems. Baptie & Company is now a client of Larx Advisors.
Brian worked in the higher education industry from 2010-2018. He served as the Director of Marketing, Recruiting & Alumni relations at his alma mater, the University of Illinois. There, he grew enrollment, increased the profitability of the program, reengaged alumni and developed a strategy to improve the program’s national ranking. He then joined Purdue University as the Assistant Program Director for the Krannert School of Management. He oversaw the development and launch of new programs and implemented a new website and CRM system for his department. During his tenure at Purdue, enrollment in the programs he was responsible for grew 20%. Brian was then offered an opportunity to lead the MBA programs at Oregon State University. There, he helped launch an innovative online-hybrid MBA program that grew from 9 students in the first cohort to over 70 in the second.
Upon moving to Colorado, Brian joined Elsmere Education, and was responsible for launching six new online master’s programs, expanding the marketing team and enhancing Elsmere’s market research capability. In 2016, Precious’ book, “Get In, Get Connected, Get Hired – Lessons from an MBA Insider” was published. The book offers prospective business school students a step-by-step guide to maximizing their business school experience.
Prior to his time in higher education, Brian led marketing & business development at SolarBridge technologies, a solar electronics startup, from 2005-2009. Under his leadership, the organization secured an “A” round of venture funding, an appropriation from the Department of Energy, and numerous grants. He also authored the company’s first marketing requirements document (MRD) and secured partnership agreements with two of the largest solar module makers in the world.
Brian’s tenure in the tech startup sector was born out of his own entrepreneurial orientation: while an M.B.A. student at the University of Illinois he co-founded a consulting firm, Illini Professional Services (IPS), which focused on supporting the emerging startup technology companies in the University’s research park. IPS services included business & strategic planning, market research, development of go-to-market strategies, and creation of financial reporting platforms. SolarBridge was the firm’s first and largest client.
Early in his career, Brian worked on a number of business process reengineering, business analysis, and system implementation projects in the management consulting industry, serving in roles at PwC and Headstrong, a global consultancy with deep project management expertise. He was one of 10 students out of the entire the University of Illinois student population selected for an internship at Accenture during the summer of his junior year.
