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Dr. Gregory Bradley - Executive Director

Phone: 228.214.3471 Email: Gregory.BradleyFREEMississippi Office: 213 Hardy Hall

Dr. Gregory Bradley serves as the Executive Director of Executive Education within the Office of the Provost, Gulf Coast and Lifelong Learning Success and as a Teaching Professor in the School of Management, College of Business & Economic Development at the University of Southern Mississippi. A scholar-practitioner with extensive experience, Dr. Bradley brings a combination of academic rigor, applied research expertise, and strategic direction to an Executive Education program that is charting a path for the university to become a regional hub for executive excellence, organizational innovation, and thought leadership.

Since joining Southern Miss, Dr. Bradley has received multiple teaching awards and has taught a range of quantitative and strategy-focused management courses, including the undergraduate capstone course in strategic management. He has also developed and delivered numerous analytics-driven courses designed to strengthen decision-making skills among business graduate students and organizational leaders.

Dr. Bradley is the founder and President of The Bradley Research Group, a national applied research and decision analytics firm established in 1996. Over his career, he has served as principal investigator or lead researcher on more than 1,800 public and private projects. His research and consulting activities span labor and consumer behavioral analytics, econometric modeling for impact and feasibility evaluation, machine-learning driven behavioral prediction, and the creation of advanced quantitative models to project the future fair market value of professional athletes.

Regionally, Dr. Bradley’s research contributions have included estimating the economic impact of the BP oil spill on the State of Mississippi, assessing the implications of proposed gaming tax changes on the state’s casino industry, analyzing the effects of COVID-19 policies on the State of Mississippi and the broader national landscape, and informing legislative discussions on shifting K-12 school start dates. His work has supported decision-makers across government, industry, and nonprofit sectors.

Dr. Bradley has presented his work at numerous domestic and international conferences and has authored publications that advance the practice of organizational and strategic decision-making through empirically grounded, data-driven approaches. He engages in ongoing collaborations with global scholars and practitioners operating at the nexus of behavioral science, organizational development, and applied economics.

In his role in Executive Education at Southern Miss, Dr. Bradley is committed to developing an industry-leading program that enhances leadership capacity, supports organizational advancement across the Gulf South, and positions the university as a center of excellence for innovation, analytics, and sustained capacity building in a time of accelerating technological disruption.

 

Houston Ernst - Associate Director

Phone: 228.214.3271 Email: Houston.ErnstFREEMississippi Office: 223 Hardy Hall

Houston Ernst serves as Associate Director of Executive Education at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), where he oversees the daily operations of the Executive Education program and assists the executive director with the development and implementation of innovative programming to enhance the capacity of leaders and organizations across Mississippi and the Gulf Coast. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in federal and state government, international development, higher education, and healthcare, Mr. Ernst brings strategic expertise to his role. At USM from 2017-2022, Mr. Ernst served in both the Office of the President and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. His career includes 10+ years in Washington, D.C., advising members of congress and managing policy and advocacy work for global nonprofits. Mr. Ernst earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Kennesaw State University (2005) and an MBA from The University of Southern Mississippi (2022).