News
February 5, 2026
Industry Insights: Alexander Brown on “Return on Mission” in Tradeline
Return on Mission: Rethinking Space and Purpose in Higher Education
Tradeline spoke with Attain Partners Managing Director Alexander Brown about the “Return on Mission” framework and how it helps institutions align space planning, design, and investment decisions with research, student success, and community engagement priorities.
“You can take any metric—cost per credit hour, utilization rate, research output—and tie it back to your programming decisions,” [Brown] said. “Under this model, we’re not assessing, after the fact, whether a building is working. We’re designing toward a measurable goal.”
About Alexander Brown
Alexander Brown is a Managing Director at Attain Partners. He serves as Enterprise Advisory Capability Lead, overseeing a dynamic business unit that integrates the firm’s tech-agnostic strategy, ERP transformation, and app modernization services. In this role, Alexander leads a multidisciplinary team delivering strategic management consulting, enterprise transformation, application modernization, and custom technology solutions to higher education, nonprofit, state and local government, and commercial clients.
