Building a corporate engagement office: Insights from Georgia Tech and beyond

In this episode, we explore what it takes to build a corporate engagement function that truly works across the whole university with Mark Nolan, Associate Vice President of Corporate Engagement at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

We unpack why fragmented structures and siloed interactions with industry often lead to missed opportunities, how universities can move beyond disconnected touchpoints, and what it means to create a coordinated, institution-wide approach to corporate partnerships. From rethinking relationship ownership to designing processes that expand engagement across multiple channels, we examine how institutions can shift from transactional interactions to more strategic, resilient collaborations.

You can read a summary below, and listen to the full interview in our podcast:

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Summary

Universities often do not struggle because they lack industry touchpoints, but instead struggle due to an abundance of: research offices, development teams, licensing units, colleges, career services and faculty relationships all opening separate doors to the same institution. Mark Nolan, Associate Vice President of Corporate Engagement at the Georgia Institute of Technology, sees that fragmentation not as an organisational inconvenience, but as a strategic risk. When companies receive only partial answers, internal teams duplicate effort, and opportunities remain siloed, the university leaves value on the table.

At a time when institutions are under pressure to deepen industry collaboration, diversify revenue, strengthen talent pipelines and demonstrate broader impact, corporate engagement can no longer be treated as a set of disconnected transactions. The core message of Mark’s approach is clear: a corporate engagement office should not replace the campus. It should orchestrate it, giving companies a coherent route into the university while helping internal teams build broader, more durable and more valuable partnerships.

The problem is not too few door, it is too many problems

For Mark, the case for a dedicated corporate engagement office starts with a common institutional reality: multiple units often interact with industry, each through its own lens. Research, development, licensing, career services, colleges and individual faculty members may all have valuable relationships with corporate partners. The difficulty comes when those touchpoints are not coordinated.

That complexity can be felt both externally and internally. A company may not know where to begin, who owns which part of the relationship, or whether the answer it receives represents the full breadth of the institution. Internally, fragmented structures can create poor collaboration, damaged relationships and missed opportunities.

It’s very confusing for external partners and even confusing for internal clients and stakeholders.

Mark also points to leadership change as a recurring trigger for building these offices. Across his experience at the University of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech, the decision to rethink corporate engagement often came when senior leaders saw that the institution was not getting the results it should.

A central office should amplify, not compete

A corporate engagement office can easily be misunderstood as a gatekeeper. Mark’s view is different. The central office should provide a “front door” for industry, but its internal role is to support and strengthen the work already happening across campus.

At the end of the day, that central office needs to not duplicate the efforts, but augment the efforts of the units by being a service provider.

That distinction matters because universities already have expert teams doing important partner-facing work. A central office adds value when it helps connect those capabilities into a broader institutional picture.

At Georgia Tech, Mark’s office manages major relationships with companies such as Hyundai, Ford Motor Company and Microsoft. But he is clear that the model can vary by institution. The important principle is not that every relationship must sit centrally, but that the central office must avoid competing with the metrics and incentives of campus units.

From flower relationship to tree partnerships

One of the most persistent challenges in university-industry engagement is relationship ownership. Faculty members and individual units may have long-standing personal contacts inside a company, and those relationships can be deeply valuable. Mark argues that the solution is not to take those relationships away, but to build around them.

What I want my people focused on is what I refer to as creating a tree relationship with the company, to have as many different contacts at the company with multiple roots into our campus.

He describes a single contact as a “flower”: one person in the company with one route into campus. That flower may be important, but it is fragile. If the contact leaves, changes roles or loses influence, the relationship can quickly weaken.

A tree relationship has multiple contacts inside the company and multiple roots into the university. It is more resilient, more strategic and more capable of supporting activity across research, talent, professional education, licensing, startup connectivity and other channels.

This shift also changes the role of the corporate engagement team. Rather than extracting more value from one existing contact, the team looks for new points of connection and new opportunities to expand the partnership over time.

Treating inbound interests as a strategic process

When a company approaches a university, the instinct can be to assign the inquiry immediately to a relationship manager. Georgia Tech takes a more deliberate approach. Mark describes a vetting process that looks closely at who the company is, what it wants, whether the university should align its brand with the company, and whether the company understands what it means to work with a research university.

In the past 12 months, we’ve screened 372 companies. We want to make sure that when we’re contacted by a company, we understand who they are.

That screening process is especially important for startups and smaller companies, where questions around investors, brand alignment, intellectual property, research expectations, and investment levels may need careful consideration. For Mark, the goal is not simply to respond quickly. It is to qualify the opportunity properly and understand the wider potential of the relationship.

A company may initially ask about student engagement or research, but Mark’s team uses a broader framework to explore whether there are other forms of engagement that could create value later.

This approach keeps relationship managers focused on the accounts already in their portfolio while a strategic initiatives team handles the path from first contact to first contract. If the opportunity proves valuable, the relationship can then transition into longer-term account management.

Metrics, mandates, and the conditions for change

For Mark, metrics are not a back-office detail. They shape culture, and they determine whether teams collaborate, protect silos, or compete with one another.

At Georgia Tech, Mark frames success around total corporate investment, including gifts and research funding, but it also extends to professional and executive education, licensing, leasing, core facilities, and sponsorships. This broader view reflects the reality that industry partnerships create value through multiple channels, not only through one type of transaction.

Stories matter too. Mark sees success when a company that had only recruited from the university begins investing in research, or when a broader framework conversation leads to a physical presence near campus. Those outcomes show that the relationship has expanded beyond a narrow use case into something more strategic.

For institutions at the beginning of this journey, Mark’s advice is direct: do not start with structure alone. Start with the authority to make change across the enterprise.

Before you start, make sure you have a leadership mandate. You can’t do it through command and control, that just won’t work.

Mark also cautions against assuming that more relationship managers will solve the problem. Institutions need internal strategy, inbound response, operations expertise, stronger systems, broader metrics and better communication. Above all, they need to break down silos without relying on top-down control.

As university-industry partnerships become more complex, the institutions that succeed will be those that can act with both coordination and flexibility. Mark Nolan’s experience shows that the corporate engagement office of the future is not simply a front door; it is a connective system that helps the whole university show up more clearly, strategically and effectively.

The core insight is that corporate engagement is not owned by one office. It is enabled by one office, when that office is built to align people, relationships, metrics and opportunities across the institution.

Ready for more?

If Mark Nolan’s insights on building effective corporate engagement resonated with you, you might also enjoy our other article, University of Twente’s reimagined model to stimulate external engagement. This article explore practical strategies that researchers from universities and industry can use and adapt for more effective collaboration.

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