Evan Brunell

Evan Brunell (born August 16 1985, Worcester, Massachusetts) is an American businessperson. He is the creator and President of Most Valuable Network, starting it at age 18 and having seen it grown into a limited liability company and a large voice of independent media.



MVN
"Using his computer at his parents’ home in Sturbridge and renting server space, Brunell started the Most Valuable Network, December 31, 2003] during his senior year at Tantasqua Regional High School.

The Web site was a conglomeration of baseball team blogs all networked to each other with Evan Brunell and Frank Palmeiri coordinating the network. In March 2004, Dave Cohen and Evan Brunell founded Most Valuable Network, LLC in Massachusetts with the address mostvaluablenetwork.com. It went on to purchase 360 The Pitch, a podcast network since folded into MVN as MVN Radio.

In 2006, Dave Cohen left the company to pursue more vigorously a career at IBM. The webmaster of 360ThePitch.com, Brandon Rosage, was brought on in a full-time capacity and MVN switched URLs to mvn.com. It is at this time that Evan Brunell’s father was brought in as Executive Vice President.

Brunell also was the sole author of Fire Brand of the American League for two years before bringing on several partners. Fire Brand is an "analytical (and sometimes not so analytical" look at the Boston Red Sox. It is among the most successful Red Sox blogs on the Internet.

Bijan Bayne has said about Brunell that "Evan is a savvy, efficient manager of a complex and state-of-the-art Internet and radio network of sports columnists, a business which he conceived. He is attentive, informed and visionary, and clearly on the road to becoming a large player on the national sports scene at a young age."

Deafness
Brunell is profoundly deaf. His deafness was discovered at the age of one and was then outfitted with hearing aids. He wore hearing aids until 16 years of age when he underwent cochlear implant surgery. The internal piece failed and he underwent surgery again in 2007, this one successful.

He considers himself orally deaf, knowing little sign and relies on his implant and lip-reading for communication. He is able to speak.

Education
Brunell attended Clarke School for the Deaf from kindergarten through what is considered sixth grade (Clarke had a different grade hierarchy). He was then mainstreamed into public school and attended Tantasqua Regional High School.

At Tantasqua, he played junior varsity and varsity baseball and was injured in his final game for varsity baseball his senior year, suffering a stress fracture in his back, which he deals with to this day.

Brunell entered Northeastern University in the fall of 2004 and joined the co-op program.

Employment

Brunell started out working for Pioneer Oil Co., Inc., an oil company in Worcester, Massachusetts owned by his father.

Brunell then started Most Valuable Network in December, 2003.

From October 2005 to June 2006, Brunell worked on co-op at The Red Sox Foundation as assistant to Executive Vice President Meg Vaillancourt in Boston, Massachusetts.

From January 2007 to June 2007, he worked at Northeastern University Marketing and Communications as an E-Comm assistant in Boston, Massachusetts.

From January 2008 to present, he works for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts, acting as their online liaison.
 
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