Brad Hessel is a game designer from North Carolina who previously worked for SPI (Simulations Publications, Inc.). From August 1975 until January 1979, he worked at SPI as a game designer and research and development manager. From January 1979 until May 1981, he was employed at SPI as a vice president of operations. Some of his other duties for the company included managing a staff of in-house designers and developers along with several more freelance game designers, managing a direct mail customer feedback system, designing and compiling the results from monthly surveys, writing advertisements for magazines, planning and leading consumer and trade show delegations, and negotiating product licensing.
Redmond A. Simonsen once stated he and Brad Hessel both lost about $50,000 trying to keep SPI out of bankruptcy and that Hessel "deserves a lot of credit for making Herculean efforts to save SPI in its last desperate days."
In 1999, he founded the company Intelledgement to help organizations collect, organize, and distribute knowledge more effectively.