Mike Wesner

Mike is the company’s founder and the creator of the big ideas that FUEL our company. He brings his entrepreneurial energy to every project and has led growth in fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and more than 100 higher education campuses. He has crafted the solutions strategy for more than 1,000 Student Search campaigns and has reengineered the communications ecosystem on several college campuses. “Coach Mike” as he’s affectionately called by many is a former Navy Commander whose last Navy tour was at the Center for Naval Leadership. He spent his undergraduate days at UNC Chapel Hill and later received a MEd in Higher Education Administration from the University of New Orleans. Mike is the son of a WWII Holocaust survivor and a family that provides him great inspiration. He is focused on family, friends and developing others around him. He spends his time exercising, coaching youth basketball, gourmet-cooking, volunteering at his church, rooting for the Tarheels, and leaning into life with others on new adventures. Mike and his family live in Cary, NC but he loves spending most of his time at the NC Outerbanks where you’ll often find him leading brainstorming sessions, leadership team retreats, and helping clients and their teams energize themselves for the next enrollment cycle.

Can Look-Alike Modeling Replace Traditional List Purchasing?

As the enrollmentFUEL team talks to enrollment vice presidents around the country, one topic comes up again and again, and that is how to find leads when fewer students take tests. We have researched this topic since 2018, when I wrote an Octane article titled, “360 Degree Digital Advertising Strategies.” There has been an obvious trend for many schools to explore becoming test-optional, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this timeline. Many enrollment strategists feel we are still a few years away from not being able to buy names from testing agencies. Still, schools are already starting to feel the strain in this cycle because the volume for certain profiles of names has been limited. 

microSEARCH™—A Small Solution with Big Wins and How it Can Help You

In 2009, I met with Christoph Guttentag of Duke University. Our conversation covered many topics,...