Why I Joined EEA as Chief Academic Advisor
A Career Built on People-Centric Performance
Why Enterprise Engagement Matters More Than Ever
A Personal Mission in Academic Retirement
Economic and Societal Impacts
A Call to the Next Generation of Leaders
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By Gary Rhoads, Stephen Mack Covey Professor Emeritus, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University; Adjunct Professor, Marketing, Utah State University, and Chairman of Skavengerz, a consumer engagement app. After more than four decades in business and academia, I am honored to serve as Chief Academic
Advisor of the Enterprise Engagement Impact Academy of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA). My journey—from sales practitioner to professor, entrepreneur, and now advocate for a global field of enterprise engagement—is in many ways a reflection of what this discipline stands for: aligning people, purpose, and performance to produce measurable results. You can learn more about the program here.
As the original academic advisor to the EEA’s first book Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap, this is a natural continuation of my work.
A Career Built on People-Centric Performance
Early in my career, I learned firsthand that business isn’t just about processes or products—it’s about people. Before entering academia, I worked in pharmaceutical sales with Bristol Laboratories and consulted for diverse companies across the US, Europe, and Asia, helping leaders understand what it takes to engage sales teams and customers effectively. That real-world experience shaped my academic focus when I later served as Stephen M. Covey Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University. My research centered on salesperson performance, engagement, turnover, burnout, and service quality—topics deeply rooted in how individuals connect with their work and customers.
Along the way, I co-founded two ventures grounded in these ideas: Allegiance, one of the earliest companies to systematically connect employee and customer engagement to business outcomes, later acquired by MaritzCX; and Xvoyant, a platform focused on improving sales engagement. Whether in the classroom, the boardroom, or the marketplace, the central lesson was always the same: organizational success depends on how well people are engaged—employees, customers, partners, and communities alike.
Why Enterprise Engagement Matters More Than Ever
Despite billions spent each year on initiatives to boost morale, retention, loyalty, and performance, employee and customer engagement remain near historic lows. The reason isn’t the absence of tools; it’s the absence of a systematic,integrated framework for making engagement a measurable, strategic part of how organizations operate.
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance Impact Academy exists to change that. It teaches a standards-based operating system for stakeholder engagement that applies the same proven principles that transformed manufacturing—Total Quality Management (TQM)—to people. The result is a structured, measurable way to align stakeholder interests around shared purpose, goals, values, and results. Its principles and processes are covered Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap, which I provided insights for when it was first published in 2010 and later in Enterprise Engagement for CEOs.
By mastering enterprise engagement, leaders across functions—HR, sales, marketing, operations, finance—can design strategies that increase sales, improve retention, strengthen partner and community relationships, and deliver real, auditable ROI.
A Personal Mission in Academic Retirement 
In academic retirement, I continue to teach and write because I see an urgent need for enterprise engagement as both a practical discipline and a field of study. While stakeholder capitalism and people-centric business practices are increasingly discussed in boardrooms and global forums, too few leaders understand how to implement them in a way that yields measurable outcomes.
That’s where the Academy plays a unique role: it bridges the gap between theory and practice. It equips professionals and organizations with frameworks, tools, and metrics—not just concepts—to design and implement engagement processes that deliver measurable impact across the enterprise.
As Chief Academic Advisor, I help shape the curriculum and ensure it reflects the latest research and best practices in engagement, human capital management, and enterprise performance. This mission aligns with my lifelong belief in education that matters—education that deepens understanding and improves practice.
Economic and Societal Impacts
Beyond individual organizations, enterprise engagement has broader economic and societal implications. Research consistently shows that companies with strong stakeholder engagement outperform their peers on financial metrics, resilience, and long-term growth. Aligning people around purpose and measurable goals is not just good for internal performance; it creates value for investors, customers, employees, partners, and communities.
In a world marked by rapid change and increased expectations for corporate responsibility—including requirements tied to human capital reporting and sustainability standards—enterprise engagement offers a practical framework for organizations of all sizes to deliver on both performance and purpose. More than ever, we need leaders who understand how to orchestrate the human side of strategy, not as an afterthought but as a core driver of value creation. This is the promise of enterprise engagement: moving beyond siloed tactics to a holistic, measurable approach that unleashes the full potential of people for organizational and societal good.
A Call to the Next Generation of Leaders
For emerging professionals, scholars, and leaders, I encourage you to see enterprise engagement not just as a certification or career advantage, but as a new discipline that will shape how organizations succeed in the 21st century. The Academy is designed to help you apply rigorous principles to real challenges, ensuring that engagement isn’t a buzzword but a practice with measurable impact.
It is an exciting time to be part of this evolution—to help translate decades of research and practice into systems that improve how organizations engage every stakeholder. I am deeply grateful to contribute to be able to contribute to this work and look forward to seeing how a global community of practitioners and scholars will advance the field in the years to come.
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 17th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
