BV Grad Makes His Way to Belmont Stakes Winner’s Circle
Brian Gillette enjoys being part of Donegal Racing team
Brian Gillette ’90 shouted and threw his arms into the air as Mo Donegal pulled away to win the Belmont Stakes in June 2022. Gillette then headed to the winner’s circle, a member of the Des Moines-based Donegal Racing team, which owned the champion thoroughbred.
“Throwing our drinks into the air and celebrating with my team and our champion in going to the winner’s circle are moments I’ll never forget,” said Gillette, an Ankeny resident who teaches at Iowa State University.
It wasn’t the first Triple Crown race for Gillette, who joined the Donegal Racing ownership group several years ago. He watched as thoroughbreds from Donegal Racing competed in the Breeder’s Cup, Kentucky Derby, and other major races.
His spot in the winner’s circle represented the latest in a series of career developments for the communications major who transferred to Buena Vista in the midst of his sophomore year in January 1987. He joined the wrestling team, served as a football and basketball cheerleader, and gained a following for his humor and commentary in news and sports broadcasts on Innovation Video, precursor to BVTV.
Brian happily confesses he didn’t find his stride academically until the second semester of his senior year, as Dr. Andrea Frantz, Professor of Digital Communications, took over instructing a class the last half of the semester.
“But that short conversation with Andrea Frantz changed my life. I owe much of my success to her; that isn’t hyperbole.”
-Brian Gillette, 1990 BVU graduate
Gillette laughed and said he might have been failing the class before the arrival of Frantz. He flourished under her guidance and finished with an A in the course, a detail Frantz shared with him as they walked from Lage Communications Building to Dixon-Eilers, where Frantz turned in grades at the end of the semester.
“You are clearly going to graduate school, aren’t you?” she asked.
Years later, he reflected on the conversation and offered an answer in the form of a punchline: “I clearly wasn’t going to graduate school.”
He hadn’t even considered the prospect of graduate school. “But that short conversation with Andrea Frantz changed my life,” he said. “I owe much of my success to her; that isn’t hyperbole.”
Gillette waited tables at a restaurant in Omaha for a year after graduation as he prepared for the GRE. He took the exam, earned a high score, and, with a recommendation from Frantz, made his way into grad school at Iowa State University. He became a Teaching Assistant and earned honors for being one of the top TAs at ISU at the time. He earned a master’s degree in rhetoric and professional communication, boasting a GPA of 3.97.
A position as a Contract Editor at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa would follow. After two years, Gillette moved into product development. He would become a Network Manager then transition into sales, eventually earning a position as Vice President in the sales division.
He left Blue Cross Blue Shield to join three additional partners building an upstart company, Group Benefits Ltd., which was founded in 1995. With Gillette as part of the team, GBL, which recruited and trained insurance agents and agencies while offering marketing and business support, grew to include 70 employees, 20,000 individual clients, and 3,000 business clients. Gillette served as Chief Operating Officer and gained a stake in the company.
“GBL was the largest general agency in Iowa,” he said. “But more importantly, we earned a sterling reputation for having a terrific culture and always doing the right thing for our agents, clients, and employees.”
GBL conducted annual meetings over two days in Des Moines. Gillette would provide a keynote address and clients and employees would dedicate themselves in raising funds for a charitable cause each year, a centerpiece of the annual meeting. Through the years, GBL raised more than $500,000 for various charities. Gillette ran the Phoenix Marathon one year while raising funds for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society of America and finished as the No. 2 fundraiser for the organization.
Along the way, he and his wife, Renee, whom he met during graduate school, raised three daughters and became civic leaders in Ankeny and Central Iowa, working to help lead the effort to establish a second high school in Ankeny.
In 2018, GBL partnered with Acrisure, and the agreement allowed GBL to continue working with its affiliated agents. The partnership agreement enabled GBL leadership to share a portion of the sale proceeds with employees, which they did, generously.
“It made sense to give back to the people who made us successful,” said Gillette, adding that the gesture was simply an outgrowth of the firm’s cultural value, “Do the right thing.”
Not long after the sale and partnership with Acrisure, Gillette retired from GBL to spend more time at home and with his family. Wanting to give back to college students in the same way Dr. Andrea Frantz had once done for him, he began teaching part-time at Des Moines Area Community College. For the past few years, he’s been teaching at Iowa State and has discovered a passion in working with students in speech and business communications, further delving into theories and practices that serve as foundational pieces for his personal and professional lives.
He also has fun; and runs classes like a small organization, assigning one student to be Vice President of Time (to keep the class on time, because it’s not his strength), one student to be Vice President of Knowing What’s Due, and on and on. He is especially proud of the positive culture he establishes in his classrooms. “Students want to know you care about them and their success,” he commented. “And for inspiration, I only need to recall what Andrea Frantz once did for me at Buena Vista.”
He’s having a blast, occasionally raising his arms to celebrate a success in his classroom, the very environment he found himself in at Buena Vista more than three decades ago.
“I’m home more these days and enjoying working with my students,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Your job isn’t to imitate me. Your job is to be the best version of you.’”