Enhancing leadership and sustainability: EMBA grad Brandon Farr pursues depth and substance
Brandon Farr is the founder and CEO of Level Up Strategies, a company specializing in repair contracting for new homes, with a focus on discreet renovations that allow residents to continue living comfortably during the process. His company is a certified B Corporation — a designation he is incredibly proud to have achieved.
Despite his business success, Brandon sought to challenge himself as an entrepreneur through both personal and professional growth. He explained, "While I was succeeding in business from a monetary sense, I was looking for an opportunity to grow and be stretched, and that's where postgrad came in."
Why UFred?
Brandon initially started his Master’s program at another university but encountered obstacles that made it difficult for working professionals like himself. Reflecting on his experience, he explained, “There was an emphasis on ... academic rigor that had no meaningful value in my professional life.” Fortunately, after having coffee with someone who had just completed their MBA at UFred — and thoroughly enjoyed the experience — he felt compelled to make the switch. To him, UFred offered a “more realistic program delivering the same high-quality results."
“Having compared and contrasted, the UFred program is better.”
Another perk of UFred’s EMBA program was its flexible admissions pathway, which took into account Brandon’s extensive professional experience and provided an option to pursue a Master’s degree without needing an undergraduate degree. In his words, “I had at that point 14 years of entrepreneurial experience, I wasn’t going to go back to do a 4-year undergrad degree so that I could then apply to a 2-year Master's program.”
For Brandon, one of the highlights of UFred’s program was the capstone project. He appreciated how his professor led the program in a way that respected the students as professionals. Reflecting on the project, he said, 'it was fun to demonstrate what we had learned and work on a more expressive pathway.' He added, “we spent three months doing a deep dive with our best work to create a startup business model that is audited... so we have a much higher degree of confidence that the concept has been validated for success."
Education that spurs action
In terms of applying his education at work, Brandon asserts, “I would directly learn, apply and use that to reflect upon my own business.” He was impressed by how the leadership skills he learned had a direct benefit in his company’s work culture.
Brandon’s education also inspired him to pursue his goal of becoming a leader in sustainability. He shared, “in March we achieved our B Corp certification, and I could directly correlate that to the sustainability class ... using that curriculum and the papers as a mechanism to focus our efforts internally in the company.”
He further explains, “each of the courses offered me an opportunity to reflect, and I took that to shape my career and our company and inform my leadership going forward.”
Through this process, Brandon deepened his understanding of what a business can achieve.
Looking towards the future
As Brandon considers starting a new company or making a career change, he reflects on the versatility of his EMBA degree, which makes any of this possible. His experience in the program provided the feedback, clarity, and accountability he wanted to grow as a world-class leader.
When asked for advice, he says, “don't be afraid to step into education as you [get] older.”
He emphasizes that the degree is attainable while managing a career, as long as students are prepared to put in the work and stay on top of their readings. He adds, “I think the fact that we can access executive MBAs is a tremendous gift.”