Director of Marketing, Houston
IVF Vice President-elect, NBMBAA Houston Chapter
Carl McGowan has a very interesting job. You could call him the special assistant to the stork. As the director of marketing for Houston IVF, McGowan helps market in vitro services to infertile couples that want to have children.
“Houston IVF is a job that I took in November after working for Hewlett-Packard for 9 1/2 years in product marketing. Houston IVF is an in vitro fertilization practice of three doctors, so I’ve gone from a company with 300,000 to one with 30 employees. But health care is a booming field right now … it’s socially redeeming as well. We’ve been able to help people have children who haven’t been able to do so over time. I enjoy it,” says McGowan.
“It was a promotion opportunity for me. Doctors that weren’t familiar with the business aspect of things, just wanted to grow [their practice]. They outsourced all of the business operations to me. I have a small staff that goes out and visits ob-gyns and gets them to give us referrals. I work in the office on Internet strategies, advertising, creating marketing budget and materials,” says the Dartmouth College graduate.
McGowan — the incoming vice president of the Houston chapter of the National Black MBA Association — has a plethora of items on his agenda for 2009. “As vice president, one thing I’d like to do is we … to make this your Black MBA Association. I want to do things in terms of Web strategies and outreach to make the organization more personable to the members and to make it more attractive to people who may consider being members. You don’t necessarily have to have an MBA to be a member. I’d like to see the organization grow 10 to 20 percent during my administration,” he says.
