Following a freshman year at Boise State University living on campus, I had found some roommates with whom to live off campus in an apartment. After a month or two it wasn't going well so I mentioned this to a cousin who was playing football, back in the Division IAA days when the field was still green. He was living in a house off campus with a few other football players and said one of them was moving out and I was welcome to move in, which I did. The three bedroom, two bath house at 213 Ivwyild Street became known as the Ivywild Mansion.
I lived there less than a year, but made some of the best friends of my life in an environment that was part Animal House, part Laugh In, part Beverly Hillbillies, and a number of other parts I can't even describe. I won't drop names or reveal identities (to protect the guilty and innocent alike), but those months were some of the best of my life. And I always liked that made-up word: Ivywild.
A number of years later I started a small part time business called Ivywild Design Company and registered the domain, but after a year or so I decided I wasn't doing the business justice and shut it down.
After a long career in higher education, I retired in December 2025, but wanted to remain engaged (my mind occupied) and was encouraged to launch a consultancy. When it came time to give the enterprise a name, Ivwyild came to mind based on a number of factors: my prior business name, the fact that I had relocated to Boise and spent some formative time as an undergraduate on Ivywild Street, and in small part as a statement of sorts about the Ivy League. At Ivywild, we see higher education and its future as the antithesis of the traditions represented by the Ivy League. We are Ivy Wild.
And that is how the name originated.
For more information or formal inquiries contact us at
info@ivywildconsulting.com