Mary Lee Gilliland, MBA — Adjunct ; Adjunct Professor, Department of Management ; Department of Management - Department of Marketing , Albers School of Business & Economics ; Areas of Expertise: Strategic Management | Marketing | Leadership | Operations, Global Management .

Mary Lee Gilliland is in her ninth year at Seattle University (Seattle), Albers School of Business and Economics, as Lecturer and Adjunct Professor, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the Departments of Business Management and Marketing. While at Seattle, she also served on the board of the Sport and Entertainment Management, MBA and as Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs, Seattle University Athletics with twenty NCAA Division I athletic teams. She was responsible for strategic multimedia marketing, revenue development, corporate partnerships, advertising, fan engagement, television, radio, social media, communications, ticket sales, research analytics, gameday experience, community relations, licensing, and merchandising. She is a Founding Board Member, WISE Seattle and a Commissioner on the Seattle Sports Commission.

Concurrently, while teaching at Seattle, Mary Lee has served as Principal, Madison Strategic Partnerships (Madison), a firm established to provide global strategic revenue development and property management for professional, collegiate and corporate organizations. During her tenure at Madison, Gilliland also led Key Strategic Partnerships at Opendorse, the leading technology company in name, image and likeness (NIL), where she delivered marketplace success for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), Twitter and Learfield marketing alliances.

Gilliland was a member of faculty and staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Illinois) as Executive Director and Lecturer for the Gies College of Business and the College of Media, where she launched and taught undergraduate and graduate programs. Mary Lee also served on the Dean’s Core Curriculum Leadership Committee in the Gies College of Business. While at Illinois, along with student, academic and industry leadership, Gilliland launched the annual Illinois Sports Business Conference, the Sales Certificate Program and the MS Strategic Brand Communication online degree program.

Prior to Madison and Illinois, Gilliland led national business development at Learfield, the multimedia rights holder for more than 120 NCAA Division I, FBS and FCS universities and conferences. She was responsible for corporate partner, multimedia sponsorship sales, naming rights, licensing, marketing, entertainment, merchandising, and corporate account management for

US collegiate properties, including Alabama, Oklahoma, Stanford, North Carolina, Clemson, Wisconsin, the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, and all national Learfield properties. This included the development of strategic advertising and marketing programs with corporate, media, licensing, institutional, athletic, and agency partners across media channels to achieve corporate revenue and marketing objectives. As lead negotiator for partnerships with Allstate Insurance, MillerCoors, Bank of America and others, Gilliland was able to secure several of the largest national sponsorships in the company’s 40-year storied history.

Prior to Learfield, Gilliland served as Managing Director for AAA, where she executed national marketing, brand and advertising initiatives across all business lines including insurance, financial services, membership acquisition and retention, travel, ecommerce, professional and collegiate sports, motorsports, automotive and national corporate partnerships. In this role, Gilliland oversaw AAA’s extensive sports and entertainment sponsorship reach which included the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, NASCAR, IRL, NHRA, more than 30 US racetracks and entertainment venues nationally.

Gilliland began her career in the National Football League with the Carolina Panthers, where she directed strategic marketing, communication and sales efforts to obtain the 29th NFL franchise and to raise $150 million in PSL sales to privately fund the team’s stadium. She was also a significant contributor for the league and a wide range of NFL teams for stadium, PSL and expansion efforts. Many projects included new revenue development and multimedia marketing for sports and entertainment venues and platforms.

Gilliland’s extensive global background also includes successful marketing and sponsorship management for high profile partners  including Microsoft, Apple, ESPN, Coca-Cola, American Express, Walt Disney, McDonald’s, NBC Universal, State Farm  Insurance, P&G, Bank of America, Netflix, Google, EA Sports, Amazon, Oracle, Accenture, and many university, conference,  agency and media alliances.

Gilliland is an annual speaker at the NFL Combine, SXSW EDU, MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, and the NCAA Leadership Symposium. As a Visiting Lecturer, Gilliland has taught at Georgetown, Stanford, Northwestern, and her alma maters, the University of Southern California (USC) and The George Washington University (GW). Gilliland received her Bachelor of Arts degree from USC as a Dean’s Scholar and her Global MBA from GW as an International Merit Scholar. Most recently, she completed the Sports Management Institute (SMI) executive education degree program held at the University of Michigan and the University of Georgia.

Throughout her career, Gilliland has been committed to philanthropic causes and has served on the Board of Directors for

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Paralysis Project of America, and the Gilliland Scientific Medical Fund, supporting pioneering research at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital to treat autoimmune diseases.