Brandon Ralph McBride is a graduate of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he majored in chemistry and marketing. He says that he has been passionate about chemistry ever since he was a child, but on the advice of his academic advisor also studied marketing, which he understood would increase his chances on the job market once he got out of school.
Even so, he had difficulty finding work right out of college and lived with his parents for nearly two years after graduation. He worked as a marketing intern at one of the big downtown marketing firms in Las Vegas, while making extra money working as a solar power installation technician on weekends. For this job he drew on his college experience, when he spent one semester as a volunteer with a nonprofit that worked in rural Nevada, installing solar energy systems in small towns. These two experiences converted him from someone with a general idea that solar power was a good thing, into a passionate advocate of both solar and wind technologies as alternative, sustainable sources of electric power.
Finally in 2011, Brandon Ralph McBride landed a position with a startup company called Middle Ground Consulting, LLC. He has been with the firm ever since, and has seen it grow from a small firm housed in a shared space, to one of the fastest growing consulting firms in the State of Nevada. He is currently working closely with several Fortune 500 companies and a handful of smaller companies, advising them on areas such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biosafety, ergonomics, and emergency action plans.