Harbert College of Business alumna Linda Rebrovick (marketing, 1977), an accomplished corporate executive, consultant, and entrepreneur, served as an executive in residence this past week on campus, presenting guest marketing lectures, coaching students competing in a start-up pitch competition and networking with members of the Women in Business student group, among other activities.

“I aspired to have the opportunity to come back here and pay it forward,” said Rebrovick. “I love Auburn. I love the students. I love the passion that everyone has for this school. The College of Business changed my life, and if I can do anything to help the students and professors have that same experience, then that’s what I want to do.”

Rebrovick’s life-changing moment occurred when she switched majors thanks to the encouragement and guidance of Marketing Professor Larry Magness who suggested she go into sales and marketing rather than office administration.

According to Rebrovick, she had worked for her father’s insurance company during the summers and thought office administration would be the best fit for her major at Auburn because a woman filled the role of office manager at the company.

“When Professor Magness pulled me aside and asked why I was majoring in office administration, I said, ‘that’s the only business leadership job I know of that I can do as a woman.’ He literally changed the trajectory of my life.”

When she graduated in 1977, she went to work for IBM as a marketing representative. During the next 16 years, she learned to sell and program computers, served as a marketing manager, and launched a new consulting business for IBM in Nashville.

She brought her consulting expertise to KPMG in the 1990s, initially running their consulting business in the Southeast, then serving as executive vice president and managing partner of KPMG Consulting Healthcare, where she grew revenues by 57%.

She eventually became KPMG Consulting’s chief marketing officer and successfully managed its global rebranding effort in 2002. During the rebranding process, she and her KPMG marketing team considered more than 500 new name ideas suggested by clients, employees and various outside marketing firms before settling on BearingPoint Inc.

As a public company, Rebrovick said, she and her marketing team had to keep the new name a secret until the official launch.

“We definitely engaged outside firms to bring expertise and design to help us come up with a successful launch,” she said, noting that her small but very talented KPMG marketing team led the effort. “It was fascinating that we pulled it off and we did it with a lot less cost than other accounting firms did when they rebranded.”

At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported KPMG’s rebranding cost between $25 million and $40 million compared to the $150 million that Andersen spent when it spun out Accenture in 2000.

---

Linda Rebrovick

---

In 2005, she became area vice president of Dell, where she led the healthcare sales segment. She and her team served the largest U.S. health care providers and achieved $1 billion in revenue.

Four years later, Rebrovick became CEO of Consensus Point, a Nashville-based tech startup. She led the company’s growth as a leading provider of SaaS business intelligence solutions serving some of the world’s largest consumer product and services companies. She left the firm in 2014 to run for mayor of Nashville.

Today she is president of Impact Corporate Consulting and serves on the board of directors of Guidehouse Inc., one of the fastest growing global providers of management consulting and technology services to the public sector and regulated commercial industries, and HealthStream, Inc., a leading provider of workforce development and provider solutions for the healthcare industry.

Rebrovick, who shared some personal career stories during her executive in residence visit, has two pieces of advice for Harbert students.

First, she said, take the opportunity to speak with the executives in residence because we want to help Harbert students learn about career options. 

“I will be looking for students who are interested in working with the companies that I serve as a board director,” she said. “I’m thrilled to network [for students].”

In addition to her board membership with Guidehouse and HealthStream, Rebrovick had previously served on the board of directors of KPMG LLP, private equity firm Tribridge Enterprises, and public companies Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc., and Reliant Bank Inc. She is also a founding board director of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.

Her second piece of advice for students is to have the courage to speak up and always do the right thing even if there are some people who won’t understand.

While at KPMG, Rebrovick was being recruited by a group of fellow executives who were planning to leave the firm to start their own consulting business. She learned that they planned to recruit many other consultants to leave with them.

“It kept going through my mind that these guys shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “The challenge for me was what to do about this.” 

After they left KPMG, she ended up telling the chairman about their plans to recruit many of the top consultants and leaders to also leave the firm for this start-up venture, but that he could still try to retain some of them if he acted quickly. In the end, only about two dozen employees left, and KPMG was able to maintain the strength of the firm’s consulting business, she said.

“I had to follow my heart and do what I knew was right,” she said. “Your values, your ethics, and your morals are important and sometimes you have to have the courage to do what you know is right.”

About the Harbert College of Business Executive in Residence (EIR) program

Established in 1974, the executive in residence program brings Harbert graduates back to campus for an extended visit so they can share their professional career experiences and advice with current Auburn students through classroom lectures, networking opportunities and other career-focused activities. For more information about serving as an EIR, contact Patrick Allen, senior director of advancement, or Kurt Sasser, associate director of development.