Student Profile - Bret O’Neal

Bret O’Neal loves cars, the environment, and business. And he thinks he has a good idea about how he can combine all three into a career.

A 2004 Hillyer graduate, O’Neal is a senior majoring in marketing at the University of Hartford’s Barney School of Business.

“I’ve always been a car enthusiast,” he says, “and business is sort of ingrained in me, because both my father and my brother work in marketing. I’m very interested in a career doing marketing for environmental companies or organizations who are involved in the evolution of more environmentally-friendly cars. That would be ideal, but I’m interested in any company that’s developing renewable sources of energy: wind, solar, electric.”

O’Neal got a first-hand taste for the business world this summer working as an intern for Datran Media, an online marketing company, headquartered in New York City. He did market and competitive research and business prospecting for Datran, and the experience cemented his passion for business. But there’s never been any doubt about O’Neal’s talent in that field. He received the Barney School’s Regents Honor Award last spring as Barney’s top academic student.

O’Neal traces his interest in alternative energy sources to several classes he took on the environment while he was at Hillyer. “In one of the classes, we were drifting down the Farmington River in a boat, while in front of us, in another boat, an expert on river ecosystems was lecturing to us. That’s when I knew learning could be fun and that I wanted to make the environment part of my life’s work.”