Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO — with Jaime Hunt

Resource mentioned in the show: https://www.solvehighered.com/higher-ed-glossary

Jaime Hunt welcomes a special guest, Dave Hunt, to celebrate his new role as the Senior Strategic Advisor for AI Enrollment Marketing and Brand at Solve Higher Ed. The conversation moves beyond the typical discussion of marketing tactics to explore the philosophy of professional growth and strategic leadership within higher education.

Jaime and Dave unpack the common misconception that career success is solely defined by linear, upward movement on a corporate ladder. Instead, they champion the value of the lateral move. They argue that the most successful higher ed professionals are those who prioritize expanding their portfolio of skills over seeking new titles. By intentionally seeking roles that expose them to different departments—such as academic affairs, digital strategy, and creative operations—professionals can build the range necessary to see the university as a fully integrated ecosystem rather than a series of isolated silos. This is the essence of the T-shaped professional: deep expertise in one area coupled with a broad, empathetic understanding of how every department contributes to enrollment outcomes.

Guest Name: Dave Hunt, Senior Strategic Advisor for AI, Enrollment Marketing and Brand, Solve Higher Ed Marketing

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-hunt-a343048/

Guest Bio: Dave Hunt serves as Solve Higher Ed’s senior strategic advisor for enrollment marketing and brand. With 18 years of experience in higher education, Dave brings a depth of expertise in enrollment marketing, digital strategy, brand management, reputation building and alumni communications. His career has focused on helping colleges and universities reach prospective students more effectively, differentiate academic programs in competitive markets and connect brand strategy to enrollment outcomes.

Most recently, Dave served as Executive Director of Strategic Brand and Enrollment Marketing at Old Dominion University’s ODUGlobal, where he led a team responsible for marketing online graduate and undergraduate programs. His portfolio included enrollment marketing, digital marketing, creative services, branding, content strategy and social media, giving him direct experience managing the full ecosystem of modern enrollment-focused marketing. 

Prior to joining ODUGlobal, Dave was the inaugural Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications Miami University’s Miami Online. There, he built the marketing operations for a new and expanding online education portfolio from the ground up, with a focus on enrollment growth, lead generation, program positioning, digital marketing and prospective student engagement.

At Wake Forest University, Dave worked within the School of Business in a role focused on marketing graduate business programs and supporting the school’s branding, rankings and reputation-building efforts. That experience gave him a strong understanding of how academic reputation, program differentiation, rankings strategy and prospective student communications intersect in highly competitive markets.

Previous higher ed positions included serving as Director of Alumni Communications for Virginia Tech and as a graphic designer for Lawrence University.

Dave holds a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies and a master’s degree in Marketing. He lives in Coastal Virginia with his wife and their surprisingly social tortoise.

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Connect With Our Host:
Jaime Hunt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/
https://twitter.com/JaimeHuntIMC
About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is your team really at capacity, or is your operating model broken? In this episode, Jaime Hunt speaks with Joanne Giles about the common friction points in higher education marketing teams. They discuss why buying project management software isn't a "silver bullet" solution and how to diagnose deep-rooted operating issues before trying to fix the system.

Guest Name: Joanne Giles, Founder, All Things Content

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanneaugustingiles/

Guest Bio: Joanne Giles is the Founder and Principal Consultant of All Things Content, a strategic consultancy that helps higher education institutions and complex organizations bring structure to the way work moves across teams. Her work focuses on building workflow foundations for highly cross-functional, multi-stakeholder environments where intake, approvals, handoffs, visibility, and tool adoption often break down. Joanne has supported institutions including Hofstra University, Georgia State University, and Abilene Christian University, helping teams turn operational overwhelm into documented workflows, clearer ownership, and practical systems they can actually use.

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Connect With Our Host:
Jaime Hunt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/
https://twitter.com/JaimeHuntIMC
About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Writing an RFP can feel overwhelming, especially when you're tasked with creating one for the first time. In this episode of Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO, Jaime Hunt sits down with Louis Miller to demystify the RFP process and share practical advice for higher education marketers navigating agency partnerships, procurement requirements, and major marketing investments. Drawing on years of experience from both the campus and agency sides, they explore what separates effective RFPs from frustrating ones, how institutions can attract stronger vendor responses, and why clarity around goals, timelines, and budgets leads to better outcomes. Whether you're preparing for a website redesign, brand refresh, media campaign, or another strategic initiative, this conversation offers actionable guidance for creating RFPs that drive real results.

Guest Name: Louis Miller, Executive Partner, Electric Kite

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louismiller/

Guest Bio: Louis Miller is an Executive Partner at Electric Kite, a full-service creative marketing agency specializing in helping higher ed partners tell their stories in engaging ways. He is also General Manager of Volt, where higher ed marketers go to sharpen their skills to be the force that pushes their institutions forward. . He has worked with partners from the Ivy League to K12 and everything in between. Prior to his current roles, Louis held marketing and digital strategy roles at Comcast and Audible.com.

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Connect With Our Host:
Jaime Hunt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/
https://twitter.com/JaimeHuntIMC
About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaime Hunt sits down with Eden Bloss, Chief Marketing Officer at UNC Asheville, to explore how faculty thought leadership can strengthen institutional brand, reputation, and visibility. Together, they discuss why faculty experts are one of higher education’s most powerful storytelling assets, especially when their research and expertise connect to timely conversations in the media, on LinkedIn, and across digital channels.

Guest Name: Eden Bloss, Chief Marketing Officer, UNC Asheville

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eden-bloss-46a796ba/ 

Guest Bio: Eden brings more than two decades of experience in strategic marketing communications to UNC Asheville in both corporate and agency settings, as well as a depth of experience in higher education within the UNC System. As Associate Vice Chancellor for Communications at UNC Greensboro, she led a team of communications professionals – editorial writers, social media managers, multimedia specialists, in addition to a group of cross-functional communicators across the university’s schools and programs. With expertise in crisis communication, brand and image development, media relations, website development, strategic and celebrity partnerships, brand ambassadors and community and government relations, Eden has a proven track record for developing collaborative relationships, creating a positive and productive team culture with a commitment to delivering results that exceed expectations. She is on the Board of Directors for PublicEd Works, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) charitable organization that focuses on increasing residents’ knowledge of public education in North Carolina, a CASE Awards Circle of Excellence Judge, Women in Leadership and PRSSA mentor. An avid runner, she has completed multiple marathons, including Boston and Marine Corps, and enjoys hiking across national parks – Big Bend, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons are recent favorites. She is married with two adult children.

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Connect With Our Host:
Jaime Hunt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/
https://twitter.com/JaimeHuntIMC
About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaime Hunt sits down with Abbigail Tumpey, Vice President for Institute Communications at Georgia Tech, to unpack how AI in higher education is reshaping the future of enrollment marketing, communications strategy, and institutional leadership. From synthetic audience testing to AI-powered workflow optimization, Abbigail shares how Georgia Tech is embedding artificial intelligence into the fabric of its communications culture.

The conversation explores what it actually looks like to operationalize AI across a university marketing team — not just experiment with it. If you’re wondering how higher education marketers can move beyond AI hype and start building smarter systems, this episode offers one of the most practical and visionary conversations in higher education podcasts today.

Guest Name: Abbigail Tumpey, Vice President for Institute Communications at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Guest Social: LinkedIn

Guest Bio: Abbigail Tumpey is the vice president for Institute Communications at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she leads the Institute’s marketing and communications strategy. As Chief Communications Officer, she oversees brand and reputation management across media relations, events, research communications, marketing and internal communications, executive communications, creative services, and digital strategy.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Abbigail spent 25 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including 21 years in senior communication leadership roles. She served as head of communications from March 2021 to March 2022, overseeing the agency’s communication efforts during the COVID-19 emergency response. In that role, she reimagined CDC’s communications function and led the agency’s largest communications reorganization in more than a decade. 

During her tenure at CDC, Abbigail expanded clinical outreach capacity and built public-private partnerships and coalitions that advanced patient safety and public health initiatives. She spearheaded numerous national and international campaigns, including serving as one of the founders of the World Rabies Day initiative in 2007 and overseeing CDC’s antibiotic resistance communications from 2009–2016. She also played lead communication roles during major outbreak responses, including the 2012 multistate fungal meningitis outbreak, the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 mpox response.

In 2016, Abbigail was named one of 36 Champions of PR by PR Week magazine for their inaugural Hall of Femme. In 2021, she was recognized as a PRWeek Health Influencer for shaping the national dialogue around the COVID response, vaccine distribution, booster efforts, and improving health outcomes.

Abbigail earned a Bachelor of Science from Michigan State University and a Master of Public Health from the University of South Florida. She is married to influenza researcher Terrence Tumpey and is the proud mother of two sons.

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Connect With Our Host:
Jaime Hunt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/
https://twitter.com/JaimeHuntIMC
About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.