R. Ethan Braden serves as Executive Vice President and the chief marketing and communications officer at Purdue University and Purdue University Global, reporting to President Mitch Daniels, the former two-term Governor of Indiana. Ranked as one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Schools in America by US News and World Report for four consecutive years, Ethan leads a central marketing and communications team of 70 and a broader community of more than 300 individuals in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap by passionately positioning, promoting and protecting the precious Purdue University brand and portfolio worldwide. In 2021, Fast Company magazine named Purdue University a “Brand That Matters,” the only university and the only Indiana entity on the inaugural list, joining iconic brands including Nike, McDonald’s, Ford, 3M, Sonos and Yeti. In 2020, the American Marketing Association recognized Ethan as ‘Marketer of the Year’ and Purdue University’s central marketing and communications team as ‘Team of the Year’, both for higher education. He has been featured in Fast Company magazine, the Washington Post, AdAge, The Hechinger Report, and The Morning Brew. Ethan has spoken at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference and appeared on numerous podcasts related to brand management, marketing and higher education. Ethan teaches personal branding to student athletes in Purdue University’s Optimizing Personal Brand and Image class, an innovative partnership between the Krannert School of Management and Purdue Athletics. Previous to Purdue, Ethan worked for Eli Lilly & Company for over a decade where he served in a variety of senior marketing and sales leadership roles in the U.S. and globally, building, launching and managing some of Lilly’s and the pharmaceutical industry’s most successful and life-changing, billion-dollar brands including Cymbalta, Trulicity and Jardiance. Ethan earned his MBA in marketing and management from the University of Notre Dame and his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Spanish from Willamette University, where he played four seasons of football and joined Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Ethan lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, with his wife, Betsy, their son, Benjamin, and their daughter, Margaret.