Omar Brown (MBA ’07) He’s been on a rocket ship’s trajectory throughout his career, serving as Senior Vice President of the Big Ten Conference and in the newly created position of Personnel and Culture Officer. Now, he’s back at his alma mater, where he just completed a year as an adjunct professor.
Brown taught a course on managing and motivating employees as part of the Baumhart Scholars MBA program at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. During the 10-week course, he encourages students to reflect on themselves to become better leaders.
“The journey has to start with yourself,” Brown said. “Managing and motivating people has to start with self-awareness. You have to know yourself, and then you can add the different tools we’re talking about to make yourself a better leader.”
make an impact
In partnership with the Big Ten, Deloitte, the Chicago Transit Authority and the University of Illinois, Brown has worked to increase social and cultural awareness. Last summer, Brown took Big Ten student-athletes and administrators to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and other historic civil rights sites in Montgomery, Alabama, as part of the Big Life series. There, they watched Bloody Sunday live, learned about black history, including the impact of students on the civil rights movement, and discussed Ph.D. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March from Selma to Montgomery.
“It’s time for a change,” Brown said. “I think it’s very important for us to push what diversity means to the Big Ten.”
be inspired
Brown’s mission to educate and teach diversity in the workplace brought him back to Quinlan. Back home, he hopes to shed light on how future leaders can shape their workspaces through their own experiences.
He hopes these experiences will also serve as an inspiration for black students.