News 2023: UMass Dartmouth appoints first-ever Chief Marketing Officer

Sam Mead to lead the University's Enrollment Marketing efforts

Chancellor Mark A. Fuller recently announced that Sam Mead will become UMass Dartmouth's first Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), effective January 8, 2024. As CMO, Mead will lead the university's marketing team and serve as a resource for colleges' and schools' efforts to recruit and retain students and engage alumni and other stakeholders.

"UMass Dartmouth has an extraordinary story of student success and opportunity, and I am excited to see Sam and the marketing team work with campus partners to share our incredible momentum with the world," said Chancellor Fuller. "Sam is a powerful storyteller and has a proven track record of working effectively and collaboratively with campus partners to help hone messaging, enhance student recruitment, and measure success. I think the campus will benefit greatly by his addition to our already strong marketing group."

Most recently, Mead served as the Senior Director of CRM in the University Relations division at UMass Amherst, where he led the rollout of Salesforce and Marketing Cloud—a comprehensive marketing platform used for student recruitment and all forms of communication and engagement of internal and external stakeholders. He was instrumental in helping to develop and align marketing messaging across the institution and monitoring the effectiveness of these communications. 

From 2015 to 2019, Mead served as Director of Marketing & Communications for the Isenberg School of Management, where he oversaw content creation, production, and performance and spearheaded the creation of dashboards and digital reporting to assess marketing campaigns' effectiveness better.

"I am incredibly honored and excited to work with Chancellor Fuller and the team at UMass Dartmouth as the Chief Marketing Officer," said Mead. "The institution is special and unique among the UMass campuses. I look forward to leading the effort to support the recruitment and retention of students and engaging with alumni and other constituents."

Before joining UMass, he worked for roughly 16 years for various arms of Disney, including as the Senior Editor of Family PC at Disney Internet Group and as Digital Manager of Family Fun magazine at Disney Publishing Worldwide. Sam also has extensive experience as a journalist, including a reporter for People magazine and an editor at Cobblestone Publishing. Sam earned his BA in Economics and English at the University of New Hampshire and holds an MBA from UMass Amherst.