Start-up entrepreneur, youth hockey coach, NHL executive, and most-recently, filmmaker Bryant McBride ’84 will be the Williston Northampton School’s 179th Convocation speaker on September 13, 2019. McBride has more than 20 years of experience as an executive, entrepreneur, and investor. In the past 10 years, he has focused on building businesses that link technology, family, and sports.
McBride is the CEO and founder of Burst, a technology platform that allows content creators to share mobile video into live television systems without requiring consumers to download an app.
He worked to create, grow, and sell four companies: myteam.com, Vision Sports and Entertainment Partners, Football Scouts Inc., and Sports Technologies Inc. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and leading consumer brands, including M&M Mars, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, Kraft Foods, Sunkist, Sam’ s Club/Walmart, Bank of America, Choice Hotels, and United Technologies.
Before that, McBride was the vice president of business development for the National Hockey League, where he led the evaluation and creation of new businesses, including international broadcasting, rink development, and multiple grassroots fan-base-building initiatives. While at the NHL, he brought on Willie O’Ree, the first black hockey player, to be a diversity ambassador. O’Ree was inducted into the NHL Hall of Fame in 2018. This spring, a documentary McBride produced, Willie, premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the largest documentary festival in North America. The Boston Globe review of the film is here.
After he graduated from Williston, McBride was elected the first African American class president at The United States Military Academy at West Point where he served as a Cadet from 1984 to 1986. He graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut in 1988 where he also became the first African American to be elected class president and was voted an All-American defenseman for Trinity’s Championship hockey team. In 1990, McBride obtained a master’s degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Outside of work, McBride serves on the boards of directors of the New York City Track and Field Armory and the New York Road Runners Club, the biggest running club in the world and organizers of the New York City Marathon. He also serves on the Board of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in downtown Boston. In his spare time, McBride is a youth hockey coach and he has started and completed 26 marathons.
Read a profile of McBride that ran in the spring 2019 issue of the Bulletin.