Carter Bradley W’05— St. Patrick’s Lays Foundation Through the Power of Exceptional Literacy and Entrepreneurship

Carter Bradley W'05 attended St. Albans School after graduating from Grade 6 and then attended Princeton University, where he graduated cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Carter, who now lives in the District, is the co-founder and CEO of Veris Insights, a recruiting intelligence and analytics firm dedicated to human resources; equity, diversity, and inclusion; employer brand; and supporting talent leaders in their most challenging work. With roughly 90 employees, Veris Insights supports 250-plus Fortune 1000 companies, annually surveys hundreds of thousands of candidates, and publishes 600+ pieces of various types of content for its clients.

Tell us about your journey after graduating from St. Patrick's.

I graduated from St. Patrick’s in 2005 and went to St. Albans for middle school and high school. Readers may be interested in the difference in academic programs at each school, but they  were relatively similar. They were both rigorous and caring environments. I started at Princeton in the fall of 2011. To connect with my new community, I tried out for the soccer team. I played with the soccer team for a day or so before I realized that this team was at a whole new level, and that was the end of my soccer career. Freshman year was largely focused on school and studying. In the fall of sophomore year,  my roommates and I started what began as Ivy Research Council and is now known as Veris Insights.

What inspired you to co-found Veris Insights?

Truthfully, whenever I hear stories of company foundings, they’re often glamorous and linear. Someone with a particular problem wants to solve that issue for everyone. That’s awesome for the people for whom that is the reality, but that very much wasn’t the case for us. We started off as college students who wanted to make a little bit of extra money and acquire real-life work experience. We were basically doing outsourced entry-level work for companies of any size. We called it research and consulting, but that was an elevated description of our work at that point. We primarily reformatted Excel spreadsheets, conducted online research, and formatted data displays. Through this process we accumulated clients. Towards the end of our time at Princeton, clients asked us about the recruiting space. They sought peers’ views of their company and the types of recruiting events held on campus. The need in the campus and university recruitment space was apparent from these conversations. My two co-founders and I moved in with my parents after graduation and ran the business out of my parents’ house. For the first six months, we interviewed human resources and recruitment executives at Fortune 500 companies to determine needs and interests in order to develop and launch our first product.

How did your time at St. Patrick’s prepare you for your professional career?

Veris Insights is an information company. I don’t have a background in coding. My field of study was public policy, not math or economics. My greatest contribution to this business has always been communication and marketing. Whether that’s writing sales scripts, drafting sales collateral, conducting research, or negotiating challenging situations, it all relies on clear language and effective rhetoric. What you say and how you say it is of paramount importance in most professional settings. St. Patrick’s emphasis on language, writing, and exceptional literacy was incredibly helpful. The Day School’s early emphasis on literacy, making sure that students were excellent readers and writers, laid the foundation for my ability to successfully communicate in the corporate sphere.

Do you have any favorite memories to share about former Head of School Peter A. Barrett?

One day, I was called into Mr. Barrett’s office. He’s normally such a warm, jovial guy, but not this time. He was stern and had an agenda. After I pushed back on a few points and realized I wasn’t getting anywhere. I acquiesced, listened more deeply, and began to understand the message. As soon as it was obvious that I understood the lesson I needed to learn, on a dime, Peter sensed that I understood and the tone changed immediately. The exchange shifted to how I could grow from this experience and the next steps towards resolution. I left that meeting feeling like I had a sense of purpose. I’ve always remembered that tonal shift from identifying a transgression to finding a path forward that would work for me. It was a really nice moment for me.

How did you foster an entrepreneurial spirit? 

I first tried to start a business during my senior year at St. Albans. My soccer coach at the time was an extremely good coach but needed help with organizational skills. I wanted to develop a college recruitment camp where he would leverage all his connections to bring together the best soccer players in the city to play and train. We would market the camp to parents as a way to help launch their children into college athletics. So, I put together a business plan and showed my parents. They pointed out that timing is everything, and I only had three months left until college. We came to the conclusion that the time was not right to start my first business.