From B School to Barbaro | WVUD's Campus Voices

Back when people considered the World Wide Web–and maybe even “this Internet thing”–to be a passing fad, Alex Brown, from the department of Business Administration, was enthralled by the technology. In this interview, Brown discusses the development of Internet marketing over time, reflecting on teaching one of the first online marketing courses in the world and his experiences using the Internet to promote his efforts to end horse slaughter and to promote Greatness and Goodness: Barbaro and his legacy.

Listen to the interview

Alex Brown (10/4/12)
27:26
26.3 MB

About our guest

Alex Brown, supplemental faculty in UD’s Department of Business Administration, taught retailing, marketing, and online commerce/Internet marketing classes at the University from 1992 to 2006, returning to teach at UD in spring 2012. When Alex taught his first Internet Marketing class at the University of Delaware in 1997, it was one of the first two university-level classes on the subject–anywhere in the world. He is teaching Information Technology Applications in Marketing (BUAD477) in the fall 2012 semester.

His work at UD and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school has included pioneering work in social media; Alex became a sought after speaker at national conferences, including the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s annual meeting, NAFSA, and the American Marketing Association. He also taught in the Professional Development Program for the MBA Admissions industry for several years.

In addition to his academic career, Alex has had a career in horse racing spanning twenty-five years. Alex started his career in his native U.K., moving to the United States in 1987. Since that time Alex has worked as an exercise rider and assistant trainer for leading trainers including Steve Asmussen, Michael Dickinson and Barclay Tagg. All through his academic career, Alex has maintained his ties to the horse racing industry.

Alex combined his interests in social media and horse racing when he established the timwoolleyracing.com blog in 2004. This site became a “go to” Internet resource for the global media following Barbaro’s progress at the New Bolton Center. Alex maintained the site while Barbaro was fighting for his life, and then for three years afterwards while he traveled North America, visiting racetracks to do additional research for the book Greatness and Goodness: Barbaro and his Legacy. The book is more than narrative of Barbaro’s life. It also examines whether Barbaro was a truly great racehorse, why he was so inspirational, and some of the outcomes that Barbaro has inspired. These outcomes include a heightened need for more research into the disease of laminitis, the end of horse slaughter, and the appropriate retirement of racehorses.