{"id":24951,"date":"2023-01-20T15:53:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T20:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/?p=24951"},"modified":"2023-01-20T15:54:54","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T20:54:54","slug":"president-brad-d-smith-ad-christian-spears-headline-pacnet-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/2023\/01\/president-brad-d-smith-ad-christian-spears-headline-pacnet-23\/","title":{"rendered":"President Brad D. Smith, AD Christian Spears to headline PACnet \u201923"},"content":{"rendered":"
Marshall University President Brad D. Smith<\/a> and Director of Athletics Christian Spears will deliver a keynote address on \u201cLessons in Leadership\u201d at PACnet \u201923 in California Tuesday, Feb. 28.<\/p>\n

The keynote address will be delivered as part of Paciolan\u2019s four-day event in Huntington Beach, California.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am honored to receive an invitation to join the talented PACnet community for its 2023 \u2018Lessons in Leadership\u2019 conference,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI look forward to the opportunity to share insights I\u2019ve learned from my own journey, but I\u2019m also equally excited to learn fresh perspectives from the leaders I\u2019ll be spending time with there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spears said he is eager to share the message of Marshall University and its successful rise on the national scale while teaming with Smith for this keynote address.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a leader like Brad Smith as your president, you are going to have the opportunity to present nationally,\u201d Spears said. \u201cI\u2019m so unbelievably thankful to be working for Brad, and I can absolutely validate the impact great leadership can have on an organization because of what I have seen from Brad over the past 10 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cPACnet will benefit immensely from his thoughts on driving an organization, getting to YES, how someone can contribute in a meaningful way and keeping those you work with informed and inspired. It\u2019s going to be a great event in California, and we can\u2019t wait to get out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith became the 38th president of Marshall University in January 2022 and is the first alumnus to serve as leader since the university\u2019s founding in 1837. Prior to his time at Marshall, Smith served as the CEO of Intuit for 11 years. Under his leadership, the company\u2019s stock rose 500 percent as the company transformed from a North American desktop software company to a global cloud-based platform. In 2016, Smith was ranked among the top CEOs in the country by Fortune magazine, coming in at No. 6 on their list.<\/p>\n

Spears arrived at Marshall in March 2022 from Pitt and immediately led Marshall on an upward path as it transitioned from Conference USA to the Sun Belt Conference. In his first 10 months as director of athletics at Marshall, Spears has directed fundraising initiatives totaling $25 million toward construction of an on-campus baseball stadium while re-instituting Men\u2019s Indoor and Outdoor Track to the university\u2019s athletics fabric after a 20-year hiatus. Recently, Spears also negotiated a new seven-year deal with Nike and implemented a revitalization effort to upgrade sports facilities with new courts, graphics and branding elements that enhance the student-athlete and fan experience.<\/p>\n

Matt Roberts, founder of D1Ticker, will moderate the Feb. 28 session, which will discuss all aspects of building a pathway to success within the university and athletics settings. Those aspects include formulating a strategic vision, elevating organizations and nurturing a strong workplace culture.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1980, Paciolan is a national leader in ticketing, fundraising, marketing, analytics and technology solutions. Paciolan powers more than 500 live entertainment organizations that sell over 120 million tickets per year.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marshall University President Brad D. Smith and Director of Athletics Christian Spears will deliver a keynote address on \u201cLessons in Leadership\u201d at PACnet \u201923 in California Feb. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24951"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24953,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24951\/revisions\/24953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}