Hi, I’m Elliot.

I’m an author, speaker, teacher, father, and consultant to more than a hundred colleges and universities. I use my background in design to make college work for all students by improving the spaces they live and learn in, the support services they rely on, and the technology they use.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve spoken at SxSW Edu, taught courses on innovation, and worked with top universities like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, NC State, and the University of Virginia. Through my consulting work, I’m proud to have improved the experience of more than 1,000,000 students.

You can find my work in Fast Company, Forbes, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. My book How to Get the Most Out of College was published in January 2022 and received a blue star from Kirkus Reviews, calling it “A knowledgeable, enthusiastic guide packed with strategies and encouragement.”

My upcoming book The Connected College: Leadership Strategies for Student Success is arriving early 2025. I live in Minneapolis with my son Theo, daughter Nora, and wife Liz.

 

How to Get the Most Out of College

 

A practical guide to creating your best college experience so you can find your place, people, purpose, and path.

 
 

My Story

 

A college degree has never been more essential, but the barriers to graduate remain dauntingly high.

Four out of ten college students drop out, often for reasons that have little to do with academics. Some blame financial woes, others say they never felt like they belonged. Many fail to see how their classes will lead to a career.

Part of the problem is that students often see higher education as an obstacle course to get through, rather than an experience they help create. Many are so worried about getting into college that they lose sight of what to do once they get there. It can be all too easy to feel overwhelmed by all the choices, to miss out on opportunities, and even to slip between the cracks.

The pandemic has merely exacerbated many of the structural problems in higher education. At a time when enrollments are declining and tuition keeps rising, many schools are having trouble meeting the evolving demands of a changing student body.

 
Over the course of a lifetime, students with a college degree earn $1 million more than those with only a high school diploma (Georgetown University Center of Education and the Workforce: The College Payoff)
 
 
 
Leading a Workshop at Georgia Institute of Technology
 

As the founder and CEO of brightspot Strategy, a higher-education consultancy, I have worked with more than a 100 colleges and universities to address these problems head on.

To understand how best to improve the services, systems, and spaces at places like MIT, NYU, NC State, and the University of Virginia, my team and I have conducted thousands of interviews, focus groups, workshops, town-hall meetings, and surveys with students, faculty, staff, and university leaders.

These fascinating conversations have guided our efforts to help clients reimagine their libraries and classrooms, redesign their support services, grow their business and engineering schools, and meet the needs of students who are increasingly older, poorer, and more racially diverse. My work to enhance the experiences of students across the country has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, Library Journal, and Times Higher Education.

 
 

As a consultant, advisor, speaker, and guest lecturer, I’ve seen first-hand how many students struggle to feel at ease, get the support they need, or see how their classes will help them in the future.

This is why I decided to write How to Get the Most Out of College, which packages insights from decades of research into which strategies pay off for both colleges and students. Written for any student who feels eager but uncertain, ambitious but disoriented, the book is full of practical tips for making choices each day that better everyone’s chances to learn, grow, belong, and succeed.

This book is the culmination of my own evolution as a design thinker and problem solver, a teacher and a father. My desire to use design to solve problems led me to study architecture, first as a foreign student in Belgium, then at the University of Virginia. I figured I would spend my life designing inspiring buildings. But after working at a top firm in New York, I learned that there is often a gap between a building’s blueprints and its users – architects often don’t know enough about the people they are designing for and the problem they are solving isn’t defined well.

 
How to Get the Most Out of College
 
 
 

Whether I am giving a talk, writing a whitepaper, or consulting for a client, my ultimate goal is to help college students of all ages and backgrounds find their place, people, purpose, program, and path.

 
 
PLAYING WITH NORA AND THEO AT THE CREEK
 

To better align designs with desires, I studied architecture and design at MIT, where I got a great education both in the classroom and as a member of the student government.

Using surveys and town-hall meetings, we gathered insight into the frustrations of our fellow graduate students, and took this information to the Dean. Our advocacy doubled the pay of teachers’ assistants and created a proper showcase for thesis projects, among other things. The experience taught me the value of collecting qualitative and quantitative research—ie, stories and stats—as a way to both recognize problems and conceive ways to solve them. (This is also where I met my lovely wife, Liz, with whom I have two young kids–who are excellent at testing the limits of our creative problem-solving!).

 
 

My appreciation for stories and stats took me to DEGW, a strategy consultancy.

I spent five years at DEGW using surveys and workshops to craft design briefs for top universities and tech companies, and co-lead the higher education consulting practice in North America. When I sensed that colleges and universities needed to improve not only their spaces but also their systems, staff and support services, I founded brightspot in 2011. It was acquired by Buro Happold in 2020 where I lead the higher education advisory practice.

I work closely with institutions of higher learning to transform campuses, update services and harness the power of technology to serve every student. Whether at brightspot or in my time on advisory boards for UVA’s School of Architecture, George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, my aim has always been to help colleges and universities make the kinds of changes that will attract and retain more students, and help students not only pursue their dreams but achieve them.

My own dreams of college started when I visited my older brother at his freshman dorm.  Thirty years later, I hope to be a kind of helpful older brother to students thinking about or attending college today. I'm sharing what I’ve learned about how higher education works so they can get the most out of it.

 
Visiting my brother Marshall in College in the early 90's