METHOD is the brainchild of Brad Gillespie, former vice president and general manager at Cvent. Brad has spent the last 25 years operating at the intersection of business and technology at industry-defining companies, and as an award-winning entrepreneur. 

Meetings and events have played a significant role in Brad’s career. In 2012, Brad joined SiriusDecisions, the market-leading research and advisory firm specializing in B2B Go-to-Market functions. Working with tech industry titans like Microsoft, GE, IBM, SAP, and Google, as well as fast-growth unicorns like 6Sense, G2, Box, Okta, LinkedIn and others, Sirius became the industry standard for operating models and frameworks, industry benchmarks and other tools to help leaders elevate performance. 

Brad’s scope at Sirius also included the meetings and events program, a global program featuring two annual flagship summits, executive programs, and regional forums that reached more than 5,000 in annual attendance. He also conceived and launched one of the industry’s most popular tech-focused events, SiriusTechX, which still continues today as the Forrester Technology and Innovation Summit. The events program at Sirius was essential to building one of the most vibrant and active communities in the industry. 

Backed by JMI Equity, Sirius was acquired by Forrester Research in 2019. While at Sirius, Brad collaborated with various agencies, DMCs, and technology vendors, most notably, Cvent. A customer for nearly five years, Brad went on to join Cvent in 2017, leading corporate and enterprise marketing, and later, launching Cvent’s Consulting group, which works with the company’s largest enterprise customers to leverage technology across the meetings, events, travel and hospitality ecosystem. The 12 years spent as both a customer of Cvent and working with Cvent’s enterprise customers is the inspiration for The METHOD Project (read more in Backstory).

Prior to Cvent and Sirius, Brad’s career spanned Fortune 100s to start-ups. His career began in human resources at Columbia/HCA (now HCA Healthcare) and continued at Paychex where he supported new business and customer onboarding for Paychex’ PEO services. He later joined one of his Paychex customers, Newton Park, a digital agency that skyrocketed in growth during the Dot Com boom of the late 90’s. There, he had the opportunity to build the firm’s business consulting team, supporting organizations transitioning from brick and mortar to the web, and helping build some of the world’s first Dot Com businesses. He would later join Red Sky Interactive, a spin-off of Red Sky Films, where he was a quota-carrying sales rep focusing on media and entertainment industries. Part of the Omnicom Group, Red Sky built industry-defining experiences and was one of the most awarded digital agencies in the world at its time, working with major brands including Nike, Levi’s, HP, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Sony, Johnnie Walker, Absolut Vodka, Miller Brewing, and many others.

In 2001 he co-founded MFGA, which operated through 2008 as a boutique consulting firm helping organizations improve customer experience and supply chain management. MFGA initially focused on advanced manufacturing (electronics, med device, military, and communications), and later expanded into software, biotech, and consumer services. Through one of his MFGA client projects, he co-founded PEARL Protected and served as president. PEARL operated from 2004-2010 as a manufacturer and distributor of the Permanent Escape and Rescue Ladder, a patented safety ladder for residential and commercial buildings. Following its commercial launch in 2005, PEARL became one of the most recognized home safety products in the market appearing on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Today Show,  and The Early Show. In 2006, PEARL earned the Product Innovation Award from the Home Safety Council and was recognized by Building Products magazine as one of the Top 100 Building Products for 2007. In 2009, PEARL entered a licensing and distribution agreement with WernerCo and wound up operations in 2010. 

In 2007, Brad went back to corporate life, joining leading mid-market business and technology consulting firm, Zanett, where he led Marketing and supported alliance relationships with Oracle, Microsoft, and Zynx Health. It was at Zanett where Brad first became a client of SiriusDecisions, implementing the core Marketing frameworks that have since become ubiquitous in B2B marketing and contributing to Zanett’s rapid growth in the healthcare segment to become Oracle’s #3 partner behind only Accenture and Deloitte. This growth led to an acquisition by KPMG in 2014. Brad then joined former Zanett colleagues at ROLTA, a leading provider of technology solutions and domain expertise for State & Federal Government, Utilities, Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail, and Healthcare. 

Brad graduated from the University of Kentucky where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a focus in public policy, and was a member of ​​Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society. He has also completed professional education at MIT focusing on technology roadmapping and development. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and two sons. You can follow Brad and The METHOD Project’s work on social media.