Behind every HeatSpring course is an instructor committed to sharing their expertise—a seasoned professional who brings not just knowledge, but passion, real-world experience, and a commitment to helping others grow.

Perhaps no one embodies this spirit more than Brian Hayden, who not only teaches on our platform, but co-founded HeatSpring back in 2007 with that very mission in mind. As an entrepreneurship educator at the University of Michigan and a successful founder himself, Brian brings a unique perspective to the Entrepreneurial Strategy course on HeatSpring which he built alongside his own entrepreneurship mentor, Bob Caspe.

While many students have benefited from our platform and our instructors’ expertise through the years, the remote nature of online learning means many never get to know the remarkable humans behind the content—including those who helped shape our learning community from the very beginning.

That’s why we created this Instructor Spotlight series. In these profiles, you’ll meet the folks who make HeatSpring’s learning community so special while helping build the future of the clean energy transition.

Say hello to Brian Hayden!

Year Co-Founded HeatSpring: 2007

Total Current Course Enrollments: 266

Most recent course: Entrepreneurial Strategy

Number of Courses on HeatSpring: 3

Best Advice

Be nice.

My mom is one of ten kids from an Irish Catholic family in Chicago. With twelve people in a small house you’d expect chaos, but they had one family rule: Be nice. And somehow that worked.

For most of my life I thought ‘be nice” was just a shallow reminder to smile and say thank you. Now I see it as something much deeper. “Be nice” means being a good listener, a positive cheerleader, treating people the way you’d like to be treated. Being nice takes strength. The nicest people I know are the ones I admire most.

Favorite Quote

“Darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable, and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.”

– Indigo Girls

It’s easy to look around and find evidence that the world is a bad place. It’s more interesting to hold up the things that are working and be grateful for the opportunity to be alive.

First Job in the Industry / Years in the Industry

Volunteer, at the 2006 Building Energy Conference in Boston. At that time I was a graduate student wanting to be involved in clean energy. The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) puts on an amazing conference every Spring and I got a free pass to the conference in exchange for working half days.

Getting involved with NESEA was a really important step toward starting HeatSpring, which officially began in 2007. If we hadn’t started HeatSpring, I would have taken a job with South Mountain Company on Martha’s Vineyard – a NESEA member. They are an amazing employee-owned company with a leader, John Abrams, that was very influential in my life and I still look up to as a mentor. His book, “The Company We Keep” is about building a great business by being intentional about culture.

Hobbies

I teach entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan. I get paid to do it, but not very much, so it’s more like a hobby than a job. The course is called “Finding Your Venture” and I want to teach for as long as they will let me do it. Interacting with students is the best part.

Fun Fact

I started an education brand called “Redesigning the End” to improve the way we approach aging and dying. Some people never want to think about getting old or dying, but I think it’s grounding and healthy to have those discussions. “Redesigning the End” is a part of HeatSpring and has the same business model, but is separate and more nascent. In the future I’d like to spend more time growing that community.

Favorite Song

I make breakfast every weekday morning for my three school-age kids. On Friday mornings I blast our “Friday Playlist” starting at 7:15am. The playlist has five songs:

“Friday” was a joke at first, but now I legitimately love it. It’s been my #1 song on Spotify for the past couple of years because it gets played at least 52 times.

Favorite Meal

Sunday brunch. The whole spread with bagels, smoked fish, veggies, coffee. If that were just constantly on my table at home I would browse on it all day, every day and probably never get sick of it.

Anything Else Fun?

A quick story: Nintendo almost went bankrupt in 1980. They spent millions copying Space Invaders but were too slow. They were stuck with thousands of expensive arcade game cabinets nobody wanted. Out of desperation, they gave a young kid in Japan a chance to make his first game. The game was Donkey Kong and the kid was Shigeru Miyamoto. Over the next couple of years he invented Mario Brothers, Zelda, Duck Hunt, and within a decade Nintendo owned 95% of the global video game market.

Sometimes bad things lead to good things. Stay on the lookout for talented people in your life who just need a chance to be great.

Meet Brian Hayden – Instructor Spotlight