21st Century Renaissance Man

As a youngster, Ernest W. Bromley’s first exposure to San Antonio came while passing through the city on a move from Pensacola, Fla., to Mexico City, where his mother would pursue a writing career.

Six years later, because his mom was so impressed with the city’s strong bicultural heritage, the family moved to the Alamo City. Bromley eventually enrolled at UTSA, earning two degrees, a B.A. in political science in 1978 and an M.B.A. in business administration with a focus on Hispanic consumer research in 1980.

“It was a very bilingual, bicultural town, and I was very comfortable with that,” said Bromley, whose mother was from Puerto Rico and whose father was an engineer from Alberta, Canada.

Starting in high school and throughout college, Bromley held a full-time job at a local bank to help support the family. The years of dedication and hard work paid off. Bromley is a founder, the majority owner and CEO of San Antonio-based Bromley Communications, one of the leading Hispanic ad agencies in the country.

For Bromley, getting a bachelor’s degree was the opportunity to explore a variety of disciplines to see what interested him most. It was his master’s degree that allowed him to hone in on his future career

“I believe a bachelor’s degree is to widen your aperture, your mind, as wide as it can. That’s what it did for me,” he said. “By the time you are finishing your bachelor’s degree, you need to start thinking about your master’s. That’s when you’re narrowing down your aperture.”

Bromley shared this belief in the importance of extended education during a speech at UTSA several years ago. Recently, he decided “to put my money where my mouth is,” he said. Bromley and his wife have given a $250,000 endowed Presidential Scholarship, the first of its kind, to create the Ernest and Aimee Bromley Presidential Scholarships in the Liberal Arts.

A Presidential Scholarship is one of the most prestigious academic awards available to UTSA students. The scholarships are used to recruit students who have achieved academic distinction but face economic difficulties in achieving their higher education goals.

The gift is especially timely because cuts to state and federally funded programs have made the need for scholarships greater than ever. In 2012 UTSA had a $6 million decrease in state grants.

University officials say that translates into as many as 1,000 students having to choose between working full-time through college, increasing their debt load, or putting their college dreams on hold. For many, it also limits the time they may commit to their academic pursuits.

“The grants could make a critical difference for individuals in terms of how they’d be able to pay to get through the semester, to pay for their classes as they make steady progress toward their degree,” said Daniel Gelo, dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts. “Our appreciation for the gift is great. Ernest has always appreciated the fundamental importance of a broad liberal arts training for any role in life.”

Indeed, in the 30 years he has been an employer, Bromley said he has often hired people with liberal arts degrees.

“People we hire who have bachelor’s degrees in liberal arts and master’s degrees in communications or business turn out to be great thinkers, good communicators and strategic in their thinking,” he said. “That’s valuable in any career.”

Thanks in part to his own liberal arts background, Bromley has been instrumental in developing marketing strategies and effective market segmentation approaches tailored to Hispanic consumers. Bromley’s unique marketing approach, born out of a thesis he wrote in college, segments the consumer market into levels of language and cultural comfort zones. It has attracted such heavyweights as Coors Brewing Co., General Mills, Proctor & Gamble and Burger King, as well as AstraZeneca, Nestlé and the National Basketball Association, all of whom have used Bromley Communications to develop their Hispanic marketing communications programs.

Bromley's efforts to attract more Hispanics to various markets led the American Marketing Association to name him one of the Godfathers of Hispanic Advertising in 2008.

His firm, originally known as Sosa & Associates, began in 1981, and was later renamed Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates. The company is now known as Bromley Communications LLC, and is affiliated with Publicis Groupe S.A., the fourth-largest marketing communications holding firm in the world, based in Paris, France.

Bromley has always seen the potential for UTSA to become a top-tier university, or “the Harvard of the southwest,” he said. As an alum, he’s happy to help it get there. He hopes his gift will inspire other alumni to make significant gifts to the university. “I’m not the only alumnus who has done well and has the capacity to give like this,” he said. “I did this in support of Ricardo Romo’s Tier One vision. UTSA is Tier One. It must be Tier One.”

Bromley, who had a brief stint teaching economics at UTSA in 1981, said his roots with the university run deep. He was in UTSA’s first undergraduate class in 1975 and was among the first undergrads to graduate from the young university.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bromley’s gift will go to selected talented [College of Liberal and Fine Arts] students, some of whom will be struggling to afford their education after working long hours off campus,” said Gelo.

The college will be able to make between two and six generous awards each year, said Gelo.

The grants will continue in perpetuity, as they will be funded from the interest that accrues from the endowment, Gelo noted.

He says, the gift is a good example of someone who has succeeded in the business sector while drawing upon a broad liberal arts base.

“This gift will be used to help one student at a time,” he said. “It will make a difference in students’ lives.”

–Guillermo Garcia