Binghamton University alumnus brings creative eye and data muscle to NBCUniversal

As a student, Jeffrey Reale, MBA ’11, was often seen with his video equipment in tow. He produced promotional videos for the School of Management, tapping his skills in cinematography, editing, special effects and composing music.

Today, he’s on the business side of the entertainment industry as an associate director of insights and strategy at NBCUniversal in New York. Reale works at the famed 30 Rockefeller Plaza for a team that examines a wealth of data — such as ratings, consumer needs and motivations, and relationships with brands — in order to guide the company toward investments that will increase revenue and audience share.

“This company touches so much: movies, TV, theme parks and video games,” Reale says. “Our team has weighed in on all of those. We’re looking at what spaces we should be in, what companies we should buy and what products to launch. Where are the opportunities in the industry? Are there things the industry is getting wrong that we could be getting right?”

The job is more than just numerical machinations; Reale feels he offers tremendous value to his company because he can leverage both sides of the brain.

“I came into this job with knowledge of the creative concerns that artists would have,” Reale says. “This helps me communicate better because I understand their point of view and what they’re trying to accomplish. You discover an exciting opportunity in the data, and you need to find a way to communicate it to business leaders who, while geniuses in their own right, maybe aren’t familiar at all with the jargon of statistics.”

Reale says the spreadsheet modeling classes he took with professors Manoj Agarwal and Saligrama Agnihothri prepared him well for his work at NBCUniversal. And with a few years of work experience added to what he learned in the classroom, he is now sharing his knowledge with others.

“I’ve learned so much from all these experiences. It has helped me build a curriculum, and I’ve been teaching in Binghamton’s Professional MBA (PMBA) program in the city,” he says.

Furthering his teaching endeavors, Reale has recently launched a YouTube channel (titled “RealE”) that features an ever-growing collection of educational Excel tutorials. Additionally, he teaches an Excel course for young professionals at Hillsong NYC, a growing church community where he can be found volunteering nearly every Sunday with a service team.

“Jeff performed extremely well in my MBA analytics class,” Agarwal says. “His Excel skills were already so good that I learned a few things. It’s great to see him succeed at NBCUniversal and bring light to the caliber of students we have in SOM. He volunteered every year to give a talk in my NYC PMBA class, and I recommended that he teach a class in the program. He was amazing and I’m not surprised.”

In his time outside the office, Reale is (surprise!) making films. He’s in postproduction on a short film he shot in 2017, which he describes as “a psychological science-fiction thriller that deals with the concept of chronocentrism [the belief that one’s own times are paramount over other periods], among other things.”

“I’m still a creative person and I always have a few projects going,” Reale says. “I think it really enhances me as a person. My artistic side is stimulated by what I do in my free time, and this actually helps me do my job better. To have a job in an industry that I’m passionate about — I feel very blessed.”