Graduation Year: 2005
Major: BSBA: Entrepreneurship; BA: Interpersonal Communications; MBA: Marketing & Strategy
Role in BBC: 2nd President (following the amazing founder, Nate Hurd)
What have you been up to since leaving the BBC? After graduating from Fisher with my MBA I went to work for P&G in brand management. After that, I left P&G and took time off. I went on a backpacking adventure around the world and also became a Laughter Yoga instructor. When I returned, I started A2E.
What are you working on now? At Ability to Engage we help clients around the world connect with their audiences, with a focus on human motivational understanding and brand strategy. We help companies with team motivation and effectiveness, consumer research and segmentation, brand architecture and marketing strategy, and commercial and product innovation. Clients include some of the largest brands in the world and we also help non-profits and small women owned businesses with their marketing as part of our community efforts.
How has BBC helped you get to where you are today? BBC taught me the importance of planning in entrepreneurship. In college, we had lots of great ideas but didn't always have the experience and foresight to write a business plan, think through all the details and develop back-up plans.
What advice do you have for current BBCers? Be better than yesterday. This is something I learned as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs tend to have a lot of ideas and want to do it all. We can overestimate what we can achieve in a day, week or month but underestimate what we can achieve in one year. Take it one day at a time with a focus of each day being better than the last.
Check out Ida's feature in the Ohio State Alumni Magazine in 2017.
