Mark Shay

•    Founder, Lead investor and business advisor to new Internet venture featuring an online guide to wines and a series of online tools serving people interested in wine at all levels.•    Developed the original platform and business model that is now the basis of operation for this seven person firm that is becoming the Internet's premier marketplace for online wine merchants and direct-shipping wineries•    Advise company on marketing strategies, perform operational reviews and oversee strategic planning and business development.

IDP is a joint venture, half owned by Australia’s 38 universities and half owned by a private firm called Seek.com. In addition to being a partner in the IELTS exam (English proficiency), IDP has a network of over 70 field offices in 25 countries that work with local students and their families to gain admission to private high schools, ESL, vocational and university programs in Australia. Now in their 40th year, IDP has placed over a quarter of a million students into Australia to date and has become synonymous with the internationalization of Australia’s universities. IDP has decided their next area of expansion should be directed to the American market and I will be a big piece of getting this started.Over the next months, I will be overseas, understanding how the IDP network works and working with their team of talented business analysts and computer developers to outline processes and systems to bring more foreign students to the USA. Once systems are in place, I will head the American university sales operations.

Schiller International University serves a globally diverse student body from a network of six campuses in Europe, one campus in Florida and as a relatively new participant in online education.  As a Marketing Consultant, reporting directly to the new university president, I completed a consulting project designed to increase enrollments and boost the marketing systems of this very unique university.Oversaw the consolidation of the university's marketing functions into a central office and introduced a number of process and productivity improvements that included:

• executing an RFP process to bring Internet lead generation vendors as a source of prospective students
• cutting over to a new university web site and implemented an editorial workflow for all university outreach defined as ”publish first to web, then to print”
• rationalizing two underperforming recruiting methods and focused internal sales efforts on improving conversions/yield
• hiring a sales coach to rewrite sales scripts of telemarketing portion of admissions and hiring a Salesforce Integration specialist firm to automate prospective student communications

After orienting my successor and overseeing a smooth transition, I began the planned second portion of the engagement with Schiller; that of building a truly global study abroad program. Using Schiller’s international study body and network of campuses in Europe and the United States, the transnational study abroad program proposed for Schiller is one of a kind, and will position Schiller in a class by itself. Along with two other consultants I put together a very ambitious plan, which Schiller will begin to implement shortly.

•    Editor and Publisher of EDUInsight.com, an online academic journal of best practices in recruiting, retention and communicating with students.•    Developer and project manager for "National Dialog on Student Retention" survey and conference addressing one of the major concerns for colleges today.•    Guided company marketing, public relations and brand development as Chair of the company's Brand Committee, overseeing the implementation of new corporate brand standards to acquired companies.•    Advocate for the support of traditional university values and business practices through internal consulting, research, meeting planning and public speaking; outlets include the company's Board of Advisors and various academic and trade associations.

•    Developed a business model and supervised construction of an enterprise that brought to market the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, a method to measure the performance of doctoral faculty outside the classroom.•    Negotiated license terms with inventors, their employer (SUNY Stony Brook) and leading publishing company.•    Guided the business into a mature enterprise and transitioned it to new ownership and leadership.

Leader, spokesperson, and driver of the well-respected, high-growth educational services company that focuses on student recruitment tools for higher education institutions. Steered the company through the turbulent "dot com" craze by focusing on a simple mantra: "to grow as fast as possible, profitably" which lead to the sale of the business to a private equity firm.

• Employed a coaching style of management across all corporate disciplines which tasked everyone to have a stake in the company and for  all to share in its success while remaining accountable for their individual contributions
• Oversaw a creative process that developed an inter-related series of products and services designed to help universities reach prospective students.  
• Coordinated a talented staff to deliver high quality, measurable advertising and recruiting services to the higher education community.  
• Orchestrated a marketing strategy that employed co-op style advocacy, citing the benefits of further education while delivering a product that was student-focused.
• Provided technical stewardship that used common business tools to solve complex system designs, cutting product development time and costs to a fraction of the competition
• Achieved and maintained market leadership in traffic, student inquiries and advertising dollars with StudyAbroad.com and GradSchools.com
• Created an environment where individuals can prosper but teamwork and common goals are rewarded.  
• Brought a sense of responsible commercialism to the circles of higher education by participating in trade associations and advocacy initiatives
• Developed business partnerships with non-profit organizations such as the Institute of International Education (IIE) and University Continuing Education Association (UCEA).

Founder of a collegiate marketing service that represented national agencies and their advertising campaigns on campuses throughout the Philadelphia region. Leading a small staff, campus visits would place advertisements on school provided bulletin boards, maintain store displays, and conduct direct solicitation for clients at events.  Developed several new innovative product offerings and coordinated a network of cooperating service vendors.  Brought a high level of professionalism and entrepreneurship that still positively affects the business today.

Participated in the Computerized Train Control project where the company invested hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrading its communications, control and dispatching systems. Specific responsibilities included evaluating and designing communication networks and computer programming systems for remote control.  Also served programmer and project manager for new companywide billing system and provided technical support and engineering for the company’s private telecommunications network