Faculty of the sports communication graduate certificate | Northwestern University School of Professional Studies: School of Professional Studies

Program Faculty

Ryan Chenault

Ryan Chenault currently serves as the Vice President of Marketing for the Columbus Blue Jackets. Prior to his role with the Blue Jackets, he served as the Team President of the Ohio Machine franchise of Major League Lacrosse. In this role, he was responsible for all business and lacrosse operations for the franchise with a focus on the growth of season and single-game ticket sales, sponsorship generation, boosting brand equity, building community partnerships and enhancing the overall game day experience. He has more than 15 years of experience in sports management at both collegiate and professional sports organizations, including Northwestern University, Chicago Wolves and Xavier University.

Prior to his time with the Machine, he served as the Assistant Athletic Director for Marketing, where he oversaw that day-to-day management of the athletic department’s marketing efforts for all 19 varsity programs. He also served on the athletic department’s senior administrative team and was a sports administrator for women’s lacrosse as well as the men’s and women’s swimming programs.

He received his bachelor of business administration in marketing and bachelor of arts in history from Ohio State University in 2002. In 2005, he earned his master’s of education with a specialization in sports administration from Xavier University.

Scott Kirkpatrick

Scott Kirkpatrick, currently of Chicago Sports & Entertainment Partners, has more than 20 years of experience in the sports marketing industry. He was a senior vice president and director of Hill & Knowlton’s sports marketing practice, where he worked with Allstate, NASCAR and BCS sponsorships; the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid; the Pittsburgh Pirates; the Tampa Bay Rays; Allianz; Adidas; and others. Prior to joining H&K, Scott was at Draft Worldwide and at Kemper Sports Marketing, where he worked on major golf tournaments, built a premier college basketball tournament and developed sports marketing programs for NutraSweet, Equal Sweetener, Fresh Look Contact Lenses, the Oprah Winfrey Show, Frontier Communications and Glenlivet. Kirkpatrick earned his MBA at Northwestern.

Christopher Russo

Chris Russo is a recognized industry leader and innovator in digital sports media and technology. He currently serves as a Managing Director at investment bank Houlihan Lokey, focusing on sports and media transactions. Prior to Houlihan Lokey, Russo served as Senior Vice President, New Media and Publishing, for the National Football League. In that role, he had broad P&L responsibility for the digital media and publishing business units and oversaw all day-to-day operations, including content, advertising sales, marketing, and business development. Russo began his media career in television, first serving as Vice President, Marketing for NBC and later as Executive Vice President, Franchise Programming & Marketing for Time Warner's New Line Television. Russo is a member of the SportsBusiness Journal 40 under 40 Hall of Fame. He received his his MBA from Harvard University.

Lauren Johnson

Lauren Johnson is the coordinator of the Interaction Design major and the User Experience and Web Development minors in the Interactive Arts and Media (IAM) Department at Columbia College Chicago, and has been a faculty member in this program since 2006. She received her Masters in Education, Learning Design and Leadership, New Learning, from the University of Illinois, where she studied knowledge acquisition and educational theory through the lens of usability and technology. She teaches interface design, interaction theory, user experience and usability, and collaborative development. She also runs an interaction design company, Goodspark, which focuses on content management systems and usability analysis for small businesses, with a specialization in women-owned businesses.

Randy Hlavac

Randy Hlavac is an expert in digital marketing and how to use consumer and business big data to define, target, and develop high value markets. Randy teaches Digital, Social and Mobile Marketing Strategies in the Medill IMC program, Marketing Analytics in the McCormick Engineering Management program and Social Media and Content Curation in the School of Professional Studies. Randy also works with The Garage and the Farley Entrepreneurial program to assist entrepreneurs to grow and position their brand using social and digital marketing. In addition to teaching, Randy is director of the OmniChannel Initiative – a joint venture with IBM to bring new business and marketing technologies into the college curriculum at Northwestern.

Kevin Budelmann

Kevin Budelmann is the president and co-founder of Peopledesign, a design strategy firm based in Michigan. Kevin oversees the firm’s strategic direction and helps manage client relationships as designer, strategist and change catalyst. Budelmann has been a designer at Herman Miller Inc, served as the president of APDF (Association of Professional Design Firms) and AIGA West Michigan (Professional Association for Design) and is on the board of IxDA (Interaction Design Association). His co-authored book, Brand Identity Essentials (Rockport 2010) has been translated into six languages and is available worldwide. He received a Master of Design Methods from IIT Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker and guest blogger on brand and design innovation.