Stephanie Burset ’09 Manages Vanderbilt University’s Brands and Marks

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Courtesy of Stephanie Burset ’09

Stephanie Burset ’09 has a particular affinity for college campuses from her undergraduate years at Princeton, where she spent her time studying U.S. history and running between the club field hockey and softball fields. Now she works at Vanderbilt University as senior director of brand marketing, charged with ensuring that the college’s story is told responsibly. 

“We look after the use of all of our marks all over, whether it is on a T-shirt or it’s on ESPN or a sign in the airport,” Burset says. “That should come through our team to make sure that we’re protecting the use of the marks and that we’re getting paid royalties.” 

All royalties from licensed merchandise supervised by Burset’s team go to Opportunity Vanderbilt, Vandy’s financial aid program. “You’re going to invest in this high-quality Peter Millar shirt or this really nice Stoney Clover Lane backpack, but a significant portion [is] going to literally help your classmate, and it feels really good to work on,” Burset says. When getting the word out about Vanderbilt, Burset ensures that the message is “intentional and strategic.”

Her path from one college campus to another featured lots of stops in between. In 2008, as a student, Burset joined the Princeton recruiting team of Teach for America, a program founded by Wendy Kopp ’89 that places recent graduates temporarily as teachers in under-resourced districts around the country. While recruiting classmates she also recruited herself and began teaching middle school history “from Columbus to Reagan” in Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

After several years in the classroom, Burset says, she realized she “had not found her forever job.” She decided to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where behavioral scientist Katy Milkman ’04 shepherded her toward that “forever” career in a consumer marketing class, sparking her interest in “consumers’ decision making, why they buy something, and how marketing works on people,” Burset says. 

As a new MBA graduate, Burset began telling stories for a living, working with big brands like Weight Watchers, Mars, SmileDirectClub, and Fireball Whisky and telling their stories to consumers through advertising, merchandising, and mark management. For Burset, brand management is “the sweet spot of right-brain, left-brain storytelling, but also heavy duty analytics,” skills she attributes to her “classic liberal arts education” at Princeton.

After working in consumer goods for several years, Burset was ready for “a little bit more [of a] mission driven approach,” especially in light of her background in teaching and nonprofits, and to get back on a campus. She took a job in 2022 at Vanderbilt, appreciating how all proceeds from the university’s marks go toward scholarships. After being immersed in the Vanderbilt story as senior director of brand marketing, she finds that her alma mater and her workplace have a “very similar ethos.” Both Vanderbilt and Princeton students “are studious but work hard and play hard — both places have happy students.” 

On the last Saturday in October, ESPN’s College Game Day came to Burset’s city, and she had the opportunity to show off Vanderbilt’s marks in conjunction with the school’s recent (and rather newfound) SEC football success. It was one of the biggest days for Vanderbilt marketing in recent memory: Burset and her team gave away 2,000 T-shirts and other merch, encouraging thousands of students, faculty, and alumni to “take that shirt home and think about that time they watched Vandy’s football program have their best season in 70 or 80 years.”