Q&A with Brian Greenwood
Professor Brian Greenwood, who specializes in sports-based youth development in the Experience Industry Management Department, recently launched the “Experience Industry Management” podcast featuring alumni throughout the industry including a luxury suites and retention specialist for the San Francisco Giants and the senior program manager for global events at Uber.
Q: What inspired you to create the podcast?
A: The inspiration initially came from my Intro to Sport Management class. We live and work in a relatively remote area when it comes to intercollegiate and professional sport organizations. Since we have great connections with alumni working in sport, I decided to do my own podcast featuring students who are not only alumni of our program but who also were alumni of that class. I received great feedback from the students, and when we launched our department name change, I felt the need was there to expand to a program-wide podcast.
Q: How do you select the industry professionals who you interview?
A: The experience industry is a new concept, so we wanted to be sure we were representative of both our roots in community parks and recreation and some of our newer ventures into the corporate experiential marketing space (and everything "in between" from sports to tourism and hospitality to special events).
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of this project for you?
A: It’s most definitely been connecting with people. I obviously love reconnecting with former students, which is enormously rewarding in hearing how their careers are going, but I’ve also talked to several alumni who I didn’t know beforehand and love making those connections as well.
Q: What do you hope people will walk away with after listening to the podcast?
A: First, I think anyone can relate and gain an appreciation for both the breadth and depth of the experience industry through these podcast episodes, and second, we very much hope prospective and current students will make a connection that will hopefully help them to further see how they might find their niche in the experience industry.
Q: How can people tune in?
A: The podcast is hosted on Podbean at experienceourindustry.podbean.com. It is also accessible through Apple Podcasts and iTunes by searching and subscribing to “Experience Our Industry.”
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