Brian DAmato is a seasoned executive and passionate leader who combines a broad range of corporate and entrepreneurial expertise with a multifaceted understanding of the game of soccer. After graduating from MIT with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, Brian was a member of the leadership rotational program at General Electric experiencing manufacturing, marketing, and finance. He followed up this initial corporate experience by starting two companies of his own – one focused on stock market trading and the other on technology. Both eventually dismantled due to market conditions, but Brian learned valuable lessons about defining value propositions and seeing both the details and big pictures simultaneously.
While getting his MBA at Emory University, he interned at Delta Air Lines and was ultimately hired full time before graduation. The complex web of pricing, asset management, and timing was exactly the type of analytical puzzle that excited Brian. Brian’s sharp eye for understanding and modeling the competitive marketplace led to him being appointed as Chief of Staff to the COO. While working with the senior team to take Delta into and out of bankruptcy, he gained exposure to the creation of new employee culture, the management of financial discipline necessary to drive short term revenues with long-term assets, and how to balance the varying stakeholders’ expectations. This unique and intense situation taught him to see business problems in multi-dimensional ways and attack the issues from different angles.
As Delta emerged from bankruptcy, Brian was asked to lead delta.com when corporate websites were in their infancy. He grew the online business to over $5 billion in just 2 years and made Delta the industry leader in leveraging the internet. He took this knowledge of website design, function, metrics/analytics, etc. and worked on homedepot.com for a while before venturing to the agency side to work with clients such as Verizon Wireless. The service mindset of agencies really resonated with Brian. In 2015, he moved to Jacksonville and joined MECLABS, an agency with an educational lens, allowing him to combine analytics with his passion for teaching and developing others.
In June 2016, his wife and he started Digital Solution Partners to bring their organizational culture, performance, and educational goals together in one organization. While working with Fortune 500 companies to drive value, they built an organization that was successful by every metric. By the end of 2023, they achieved their financial goals, wound the business down (ensuring all employees transitioned to new jobs) and set themselves up to work at their non-profit foundation.
Throughout his academic and business career, soccer was an integral part of Brian’s personal life. Brian began playing soccer at 4 years old, played in college at MIT, and still plays pickup games from time to time. He was also a professional referee working in the USL, the WUSA, and the US Open Cup and traveled around the country officiating games. He continues to mentor officials as a Referee Coach for Florida Soccer Referees. In addition, he became a coach and started a soccer academy in 2016 and received his USSF B license. His commitment to the game is significant. His extensive experience in analytics, business, and athletics provides an exceptional resource for the UNF students as we look to establish UNF as a thought leader and innovator in the Sports Performance and Analytics space.
