Josh Gildea attended Brigham Young University a couple years after a traditional student’s path, following post-high school mission work he had committed to through his church and a year at the University of Utah. He studied communications and public relations, worked some traditional internships, and kicked off his career with the public relations firm Weber Shandwick in New York.
“That’s what I thought I wanted to do,” he shared when we talked recently. “I come back to that training every day—putting together a problem statement, a goal, and a strategy for how to communicate and move an audience.”
He loved working in New York as a young professional, but the love of his life to this day was back home in Utah.
“The great thing about working in New York is there’s always something going on. And the bad thing about living in New York is there’s always something going on,” he reflected.
Josh ended up moving back to Utah to work for a small boutique PR firm and not long after decided he wanted to be on the client side to get closer to decisions being made. His first non-agency role was for a Microsoft Corporation contractor, promoting and marketing Microsoft Office® software. Eventually he went back to school for an MBA degree at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and upon graduation went to work for GE.
Josh’s two-year management rotation program moved him throughout the GE Consumer & Industrial business for stints at Appliances in Louisville, Kentucky, Electrical Distribution in Plainville, Connecticut, and Lighting at one of the world’s first industrial parks, Nela Park, in East Cleveland, Ohio.
I met Josh through our work for GE Lighting and its fledgling light-emitting diode (LED) business, first known as GELcore and operated locally but offsite as a start-up, and later, pulled closer to the legacy business and rebadged as GE Lumination.
Our paths crossed when Josh arrived to support the LED business in a product management position. My PR program management role supporting Lighting, Electrical Distribution, and Motors (Fort Wayne, Indiana)—which felt uniquely entrepreneurial for such a big company—gave us the chance to work together.
Inside the Lighting Industry Transformation
The early 2000s were an invigorating time to be in the lighting business because LEDs were moving from strictly commercial applications such as parking lot and roadway lighting into the consumer realm. Think LED light bulbs sold at Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware. Here’s an interview that I conducted with the inventor of the LED, Nick Holonyak, to mark the launch of GE’s alternative to the traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulb.
Commercial LED solutions, including controls, were spreading their value across building envelopes. Newer applications included the responsive LED display lighting you now see in grocery store frozen food sections. It lights up as you make your way down the aisle—an energy savings because it shines brightest only when you need it. Lower light output means less energy consumption.
Our collaboration marketing LED systems is not what I remember most about working alongside Josh. It was his approach to people.
Josh projected a calmness and confidence that, in retrospect, signaled his seriousness about generating results. He was unusually thoughtful and well-studied—someone you wanted to work with or be around.
“I learned more about sales in those roles than anything,” he recounted. Without the perspective of extensive work experience, he thought he didn’t want to be near sales at all. “You know, as a young professional, I had a lot to learn.”
He realized that for all the fun and work of marketing, you don’t get anything done without sitting in front of customers. One ah-ha moment for Josh, looking back, came when he joined presentations hosted by former GE Lighting sales executive Vicky Garten.
“I learned a lot watching her,” Josh remembered. “She would bring big retailers to Nela Park and she would ask questions that I knew she knew the answer to. She was doing it because she was there as an advocate for her client, making sure they heard the things they wanted and needed to hear.”
His experience at GE set him up for future leadership opportunities at Carlisle Brake & Fiction and Vita-Mix Corporation later in his career.
Where Do Professors Come From?
Josh never considered higher education as a career path while he was in college.
“I don’t come from a family of teachers or professors. I didn’t have access to what that would look like,” he noted.
Josh credits certain professors from his undergraduate years at BYU and graduate experience at IU with planting the seed for a career in academia. “I had professors who were practitioners for 25 to 30 years that came back to teach for maybe the last five or 10 years of their careers. You could tell when they spoke it was from a place of experience. When they gave you advice, you knew you could count on it.”
They made Josh think: “I want to someday be that kind of person who could dispense that kind of knowledge, wisdom, and advice. I just sort of tucked it back in my mind and said, you know, when I’m 60, I’ll start looking.”
One of those inspirational educators for Josh was his mentor during graduate school, Fred Roedl, clinical professor emeritus at IU. They maintained contact over the years through Josh’s sustained support of the graduate program’s recruitment efforts, the occasional breakfast or lunch, and collaborations tied to a career academy the professor had established at the school.
It was called the Business Marketing Academy (BMA), one of six academies at Kelley designed to give students exposure to the corporate functions they aim to work in after graduation.
After Josh shared his idea for a move to academia, during one of their regular conversations, Fred shared that he wished he had made the leap 10 years earlier. Josh started doing the math and realized he might want to tweak his imagined career shift.
He said to himself: “Well, okay, so that's about 40. Actually, I'm not far from that.”
Josh started to move on the idea, interviewing for a position at Case Western Reserve University in a clinical professor role that didn’t require a PhD. It didn’t work out but not long after, Fred reached out to announce his retirement and ask Josh if he might consider taking over the BMA.
While he initially declined the idea, in part because he was thoroughly enjoying the work and travel of a global marketing leadership role at Vita-Mix, Josh kept it under consideration.
One colleague, a fellow lecturer from industry, helped him see how unique the BMA leadership role would be in terms of classes he could teach and the overall responsibilities. Josh remembered the colleague saying, “If you’re going to go into academia, it’s never going to get better than what they’re offering you right now.”
Josh vividly remembers the moment his career shift became inevitable: “I was standing in Idaho on vacation when I talked to him, and I was like, well, I guess now’s the time.”
He accepted the job about 10 months before leaving Vita-Mix, allowing time for his photographer wife to organize moving her business. They didn’t tell the kids—their oldest was in sixth grade—until closer to the move.
Up to that point, Josh’s whole identity had been working for big companies and being a marketer. “I was pretty sure I’d like teaching and that I could be good at it. I told myself, if I’m not, I’ll just go find another job again.”
Josh was 39-years old when he started working for IU as the new leader of the BMA.
What is the Business Marketing Academy?
“It sits between the classroom and potential careers for students,” he said. “You’re introducing students to different jobs and careers and traveling with them. You’re not career services. It’s kind of a sage thing where I help them look at what’s possible.”
Teaching was not as different as he thought it would be. “The thing I loved about being a marketer working for a company was training my peers, being in front of customers, and working with my direct reports—the coaching piece of it,” Josh reflected.
The IU role involved outreach to industry, relationship building, helping students career plan, one-on-one coaching, plus the classroom teaching. The biggest difference for Josh was the pace of change in academia, which by design moves slower to allow for thoughtful and deliberate change.
Josh didn’t start from scratch to create course or lesson plans. He credits a culture of sharing at IU and within the Kelley school for his smooth start. “I walked into classes with all kinds of slide decks and course structures,” he said. He just had to make them his and really embrace the content.
“But I was terrified the students would find me to be a fraud. I don’t have a PhD and at the time, I had maybe nine or 10 years of post-MBA experience,” he added. “I was closer to the students in terms of age and experience, than I was to the end of my career.”
Over time, Josh learned that he didn’t need to be an expert with answers to everything. He didn’t need to be the "sage on the stage,” as he put it, holding court for students. Instead, he needed to help each student guide their own journey.
“I’m more of a facilitator of learning, standing next to the student.” He gets students thinking and if they ask a question he can’t answer, sometimes the best help is pointing them in a direction they can use to search for answers.
Josh said it took him about two years before he could walk into a classroom and feel fully confident that he’d be okay. That was a function of course content becoming more familiar—more his own. The jokes and stories from industry or the news needed his perspective to really sing for the students.
“I think there’s real power in owning what you’re teaching as opposed to just teaching something out of a book and saying let’s go over this concept,” he noted.
Eight Years Later
There’s an entrepreneurial spirit in much of Josh’s work for the students involved with the BMA. “I love the autonomy and freedom of time,” he noted. “My interactions are focused on the students.”
He threads advice based on his experience throughout the BMA experience. Something valuable from his GE days that he often passes down to the future business leaders learning at IU: “Be the first to raise your hand to go to a trade show early in your career because you will learn more in those three days than you will learn in six months listening to chatter at work.”
It’s not as simple as recounting stories, he clarified. “It’s my way of looking at a topic. I can feel confident sharing that because it’s mine. I’m not pretending to be someone else or pretending to know everything.”
He is simply guiding the students. “Learning that came hard for me, but it took the edge off a lot,” he shared.
Josh believes Fred picked him for his industry and implementation experience. “He wanted someone in the BMA role who had that kind of insight because it resonates with the students,” he reflected. “I am able to stand before our students and say, listen to me because I’ve been where you’re going, and I want to give you everything you need to be successful.”
What brings you the most joy in your work life?
“It has to be watching students succeed. I don’t know if you know the Daniel Pink framework for career happiness. It’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I have a lot of autonomy in what I do, mastery in the sense that I’m seen as someone who knows something about a particular topic, in my case, business-to-business marketing. And the purpose angle is the most impactful. When you get a letter from a student on how your class or coaching made all the difference. That just sends a tingle down your spine.”
How can people support your work?
“Be guest speakers or guest lecturers. It’s fun to be with people who are at the beginning of their career and asking a lot of questions. Be more open to having conversations with young professionals. Make more space to do that and don’t be so quick to dismiss someone on LinkedIn. Offer to do it for someone, even when the student doesn’t know to ask.”
Have you come across the BMA’s next Fred or Josh?
“I think about it a lot because the academy is a lot of work—a labor of love. I've been here eight years, so I have some MBA students getting close to where I was when I started thinking about making this move. I have a few people in mind that I think would be great at it.”
Any parting thoughts?
“We need more industry in academia. You don’t have to go full-time to be connected to students. Come be involved. There’s lots of things you can do.”
About the Author: Dave Schuellerman is a professional writer and communication consultant with 30 years of experience helping B2B and B2C companies inform and influence targeted audiences. Learn more about his background, perspective, and available services such as feature writing at FEND Communication. Ready to engage on a project? Reach him directly at schuellerman@gmail.com.
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