An entrepreneur who founded one of the world’s most popular websites was mysteriously found dead in his university office just hours after sending an email claiming that school officials were trying to sabotage him.
Marshall Brian II, 63, an educator and founder of HowStuffWorks, was found dead in his office at North Carolina State University around 7 a.m. on Nov. 20, after his wife, Leigh Ann, asked for a check-up. of social assistance. According to the technician, the university’s student-run newspaper.
Authorities have not yet revealed the cause of death.
But just hours earlier, around 4:30 a.m., Brian sent an email to his school colleagues saying that two department heads at the university retaliated against him after he filed a series of ethics complaints.
“If you receive this email, you are a friend and colleague of mine,” he wrote. News & Observer reports. “Today I would like to ask you for a few minutes of your time so I can tell you a story.”
Brian went on to state that he wasn’t actually planning to retire, as Stephen Markham, CEO of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, implied in a Nov. 6 internal email.
“I have just gone through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating and unfair processes possible with the University,” wrote the beloved professor.
‘The fact is, I’m not ‘retiring’. Instead, NC State fired me on October 29th.
Marshall Brian II, 63, an educator and founder of HowStuffWorks, was found dead in his office at North Carolina State University around 7 a.m. on November 20.
He had previously written an email to his school colleagues saying that two department heads at the university retaliated against him after he filed a series of ethics complaints.
He wrote that after filing ethics complaints about Veena Misra, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and communicating his concerns directly to her, Misra retaliated against him.
Brian’s email contained accusations that Misra committed crimes such as lying, incompetence, withholding information, bad faith and unethical behavior following a disagreement in August over the reuse of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting space to accommodate a new employee, reports the Technician.
“What came back was a disgusting retaliatory nuclear bomb, something you couldn’t believe,” the professor continued.
‘(Misra) excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to him.’
He said he received an email a few weeks after filing his ethics complaints from Srinath Ekkad, the head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, saying that the department would no longer recommend students participate in its Engineering Entrepreneurs Program.
When he later responded to Ekkad, Brian claimed that Markham informed him that he would be taking disciplinary action against him for “unacceptable behavior.”
Brian went on to say that he believed the university’s ethics complaints system framework was not being used appropriately to address his concerns.
His former student, Brandon Kashani, one of the recipients of the email, noted that he had filed numerous complaints through the university’s EthicsPoint system and claimed that tensions in the department arose because Brian did not “play the political game.”
Brian stated that after filing ethics complaints against Veena Misra, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Srinath Ekkad, head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said the department would no longer recommend students participate in its Business Entrepreneurs program. Engineering. Program.
When Brian responded to Ekkad, Brian claimed that Stephen Markham, CEO of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, informed him that he would be taking disciplinary action against him for “unacceptable behavior” and then sent an internal email saying that Brian had retired.
“Marshall was trapped in an unbalanced group of people with more power than him and they didn’t like him calling them out,” Kashani told the student newspaper.
‘…He was holding people accountable. They didn’t understand that political aspect and they just wanted to get rid of it.
Kevin Barry, another alumnus of Brian’s program who now serves as a member of the Board of Advisors for NC State’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leadership program, also said his former professor was instrumental in the lives of many students throughout the years.
“Marshall was a cornerstone of entrepreneurship at NC State and a very key person who was dedicated and a true entrepreneur, and really dedicated to the students,” he said.
‘And he, from beginning to end, to the bone, had the love and desire to help students.
“So to see what’s happening to him is absolutely devastating and disgusting.”
Brian founded HowStuffWorks.com in the early 1990s and it soon became one of the top 1,000 most visited websites in the world.
Brian was born in Santa Monica, California, and as a child was strongly influenced by his father’s work designing components for NASA’s lunar lander and his later development of the Atlanta MARTA system. according to an online obituary.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then a Master’s degree in Computer Science from NC State, where he met Leigh Ann.
The two would raise four children together, David, Irena, Jonny and Ian, and Brian took a position as a computer science teacher.
He worked in that position until 1992, when he founded a software company called Interface Technologies, after finding success by creating a website with his wife in which he published easy-to-understand scientific explanations of how basic devices worked.
Early entries on HowStuffWorks.com included research on VCRs, airplanes and car engines, and it soon became one of the 1,000 most visited websites in the world, the News & Observer reports.
It grew to 10,000 visitors per day in 1998 and then to 33,000 in the early 2000s.
“People come to the site and can finally understand the technology around them,” he told the newspaper in 1999.
“And they can realize that it’s pretty simple at its core,” he said, adding that it’s “quite comforting and reassuring to know that they can understand it all.”
In the early 2000s, HowStuffWorks became a major brand with 20 employees and began publishing a free Stuff Works magazine that was sent to 10,000 schools.
Family members said Brian would do anything for them and “will live on in the hearts and minds of all who knew him.”
Brian eventually sold his company in 2002 to investment firm Convex Group, and five years later, Discovery Communications bought it for $250 million.
In the years that followed, Brian continued to work in educational media, producing a series for The National Geographic Channel called Factory Floor, which showed the behind-the-scenes manufacturing of everyday items, and appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006 to explain how television worked. .
He also authored more than a dozen books and contributed articles to the News & Observer on a variety of topics such as dividends and humidifiers.
But in 2012, Brian returned to NC State, where he helped students launch startups.
“Every time I had a problem, he would sit with me for hours and just write and write and write on his iPad,” Kashani said.
“Then he would go home and at night he would email me a million different suggestions and scenarios and things when he had time to digest it.”
Barry, who founded the startup FilterEasy when he was a student, also said that many people thought his business was a “cool idea.”
“But Marshall is one of the people who would dive in and ask you every question and every problem and help you find solutions.”
In his personal life, the obituary says, Brian “would do anything for his family, including building a duck pond with a bulldozer because his future wife said she wanted ducks, or getting in the car to drive for hours to deliver a set of keys.” to his daughter who had left them at home.
He also dreamed of one day building his own helicopter and often talked about hiking the Appalachian Trail.
“Through his work, teaching and boundless curiosity, Marshall touched countless lives, inspiring others to explore, learn and better understand the world around them,” the obituary says.
“He will be greatly missed, but he will live on in the hearts and minds of all who knew him.”
DailyMail.com has contacted North Carolina State University for comment.