On Sept. 28, the University appointed Ed Marsh, the founder of a global business advising firm and an expert in marketing, to the advisory board for its new Master of Science in Digital Marketing and Design degree.

Marsh is the founder and principal of Consilium Global Business Advisors, a firm that offers consultations to businesses in the United States looking to expand and market worldwide. He has expertise in B2B and B2G, or business-to-business and business-to-government marketing, respectively. Marsh previously served on the advisory board for the M.S. in Virtual Team Management and Communication program.

In an email to the Justice, Marsh wrote that he is looking forward to getting involved with the academic program. He wrote that, “I am a fan of learning — it’s simple. Education’s always been an important part of my life,” noting that his value for education stems partly from his grandmother, who founded the Norwood School, a private day school in Washington, D.C.

According to Marsh, his involvement with the University began in 2012, when he met Michaele Whelan, then the vice provost for academic affairs, at an event hosted by the International Business School. The two discussed Whelan’s plans to “invigorate” the advisory board program for the Rabb School of Graduate Studies, and suggested that Marsh — who has experience running a company remotely — might be a good fit for its virtual team management program. This program taught students how to manage companies and do business remotely, often with the use of computers and other technology.

Marsh wrote that he accepted the job partly due to his own experiences as a graduate student, writing that after graduating from Johns Hopkins University, he was “ready for a break from academics, but then started a pair of executive graduate degree programs while I was still in the Army. I’ve always regretted that ‘life got in the way’ of completing them, and have tremendous respect for folks that manage to complete programs while working, parenting, … and I love the remote capability that Brandeis incorporates in it’s GBS programs. I wanted to help.”

After the Virtual Team Management program was cancelled in 2014, Marsh was uninvolved with the University for a year but wrote that he was excited to be tapped by the University for its the new Digital Marketing and Design program.

Drawing upon his experience in digital marketing and design from both Consilium and other startups, Marsh also noted that he believes that the program should seek to tackle one of the biggest issues the industry is facing now: “a dissonance between marketing training and approach, and business objectives,” which hampers companies’ “ability to execute and create organizational friction.”

“Much of selling now happens virtually—and it happens in the form of education,” Marsh wrote. “That means that the role of [Chief Revenue Officer] … becomes important in managing the balance of activities that were traditionally considered marketing, but are now actually integral to selling. … That means that marketing leaders need to develop the business chops to sit at the table with the executive team and contribute strategic value.”

He added that the new program will attempt to solve this issue by concerning itself with “strategy and creation of enterprise value” as much as “technical and operational aspects.”