The Right Decision: Anstead, Accounting A Great Match at Hillsdale
Written by Doug Goodnough
Glenn Anstead, ’81, likes to say he made the right decision to attend Hillsdale College for all the wrong reasons.
As a standout football player on a state championship team at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, he admitted he wasn’t too focused on academics. When Hillsdale and then-Head Football Coach Jack McAvoy offered him a football scholarship, he said that offer, and an enjoyable campus visit experience, were the main factors in his college decision.
“I was really smitten by Hillsdale,” Anstead said, who heard about the College from a former high school teammate who had also attended Hillsdale on a football scholarship. “I didn’t learn squat in high school, to be perfectly honest, because I was a football player, and football players could do anything they wanted. We were immune from getting in trouble.”
More than 40 years later, despite his “wrong” thinking, he calls his decision one of the best. Although the offensive lineman developed his football skills in high school, he learned how to become a student at Hillsdale. Sometimes, those lessons were difficult.
During his freshman year in an English class taught by Dr. James King, he struggled early on with the writing demands of the course. In fact, Dr. King marked up his first couple of assignments so much that “I think he used up all his red ink on my papers.”
“Dr. King taught me how to write, and I think today I do a really good job of writing and editing documents,” Anstead said.
However, the one professor who had the most influence on Anstead’s academic—and professional—career was former accounting professor Dr. Febes Facey. Originally planning to be a teacher and coach after graduation, Anstead said that one accounting class taught by Facey changed his career trajectory forever.
“I took her accounting class, and she said, ‘You know, the average accountant in business makes over $100,000 a year,’” he said. “I thought, I’m not going to be a gym teacher anymore. I’m going to be an accountant. She was an inspiration. She was a role model.”
In fact, Anstead took his accounting major seriously enough that he decided to forego his senior season of football to focus on his academics.
“I didn’t know this at the time, but Jack McAvoy called my dad and was very worried,” he said. “He was worried I was going to give up my [football] scholarship and leave Hillsdale, and he didn’t want that to happen. The fact that he would go out of his way to do that… just speaks volumes about the type of people Hillsdale has around the campus.”
After graduating from Hillsdale, Anstead was hired at a small accounting firm in the Detroit area.
“They brought me in for the interview because I graduated from Hillsdale,” Anstead remembers.
His career quickly blossomed, and by his late twenties, he was a CPA and the chief financial officer of a large commercial print company. Earning his master’s degree in financial management from Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School in 1992, he eventually rose to partner at Raffa PC, a national accounting firm in the Washington, D.C., area, where he and his wife, Emily, raised their two children, who are now grown.
“I think my career has succeeded because of the education I got from Febes and accounting and the liberal arts education,” Anstead said. “It taught me to think objectively, think independently, and come to my own conclusions.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, he was recruited for a chief revenue officer position for a software company in Sarasota, Florida. He and his wife eventually moved to Florida and quickly discovered their newfound love of the Sunshine State.
“What a transition from being in D.C., where it was six feet apart, to Florida, where everything was open. It was great. And we are now watching the sunsets on Siesta Key and living where everyone vacations.”
A chance meeting during a casual bicycle ride led to a new job opportunity: for the past three years, Anstead has been the CFO for Sports Illustrated Tickets, which offers millions of tickets to more than 100,000 sports, concerts, and theater events worldwide.
“We have great opportunities to grow the business,” said Anstead, who also continues his Anstead Consulting business. “We’re doing a lot of acquisitions. I’m able to utilize all those things that I learned at Hillsdale from accounting.”
He and Emily enjoy the outdoors, especially the beach, as well as spending time with their three grandchildren. They are also active in their local church.
“God is good. I’ve been blessed,” Anstead said.
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in May 2025