Jennifer Urich, CEO and co-founder of Sparrow Strategy, was this year’s Worick Visiting Professor in Market Research at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Urich was on campus from Feb. 27 to March 11 and visited numerous classes, sharing her strategic expertise.
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In Urich’s 35-year career she’s been a management consultant at Bain + Company, a US Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines, a marketer with Cummins Engine in Latin America, and an advertiser at J. Walter Thompson/Mexico, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, The Community and Wieden+Kennedy.
Urich completed her undergraduate degree and MBA at Yale. She was the director of account planning at J. Walter Thompson in Mexico City for four years where she led strategy for the agency’s main account, Kellog de Mexico.
Urich spent 9 months at Wieden & Kennedy as the interim group planning director in 2000 and headed the strategy for Miller Beer, Nike Asia-Pacific and Nike Mexico. Following her time at Wieden & Kennedy, she started a freelance career and launched Sparrow Strategy, a boutique consultancy based in Portland, Oregon, in 2011.
While on campus Urich visited various advertising and public relations classes, including Jacht, CoJMC’s student-led advertising agency. Urich also led a Skill School workshop with Lincoln’s American Marketing Association (AMA) chapter. Her workshop, “In Praise of the Creative Brief (and Briefing),” focused on what makes a good brief, why they’re important and how to put them into action.
“We’re so grateful Jen was able to lead a Skill School workshop while she was in Lincoln,” AMA Lincoln Skill School’s Vice President of Programming, Whitney Hansen said. “We got such great feedback from attendees who learned a lot during the session.”
Urich spent the majority of her time on campus with UNL’s National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) team, even attending their weekend workshop before the team presented their findings for the first time to CoJMC faculty members during a dress rehearsal.
Jen Urich Bio
Co-founder of Sparrow Strategy, a boutique consultancy based in Portland, Oregon, Jen Urich’s 35-year career spans industries, countries, and cultures: from management consulting at Bain + Company to the US Peace Corps in the Philippines, and from marketing at Cummins Engine in Latin America to advertising at J. Walter Thompson/Mexico, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, The Community, and Wieden+Kennedy.
She has helped grow Fortune 100 companies, nurtured micro-enterprises in the developing world, and revolutionized social marketing, winning awards (Jay Chiat Account Planning Gold for the anti-tobacco TRUTH campaign) and admiration along the way.
A proud Canadian-American, fluent Spanish speaker, and inveterate traveler, Jen has a world-wise perspective. She brings the rare combination of Yale’s academic rigor (BA in economics and MBA), deep business experience, sincere interest in all people, and boundless energy to every engagement. When not working you’ll find her on her bike — in rural Oregon or on the Tibetan Plateau.
