Chatting with ESPN staff members at a Manhattan bar on the evening of Oct. 26, I had a chance to think back on the past several days. The Entertainment, Media & Sports (EM&S) Club had just finished its annual New York Forum, and what an experience it was! After two full days visiting so many well-known and exciting companies, our group was exhausted but exhilarated. Wish you had spent Fall Break doing more than just rewriting your resume for the hundredth time? Read on!
The Forum unofficially got started Saturday night at Zanzibar restaurant and bar near Times Square. Students in EM&S clubs from Michigan, Stern, and Columbia held a joint happy hour, giving us all the opportunity to network with students with similar career interests and compare business school experiences.
After we had a chance to enjoy New York for the weekend, the Forum began in earnest Monday morning. Our first visit was with Scott O'Neil, senior vice president of marketing and team business operations at the NBA. Though O'Neil was busy preparing for the Board of Governors meetings that week, he was gracious enough to meet with our group to answer questions about life at one of the world's premier professional sports leagues.
Next, we had lunch with several members of the University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition (UMEC), an organization for Michigan alumni in the entertainment, media and sports industries. Candace Tenbrink, UMEC president, was instrumental in organizing this lunch and inviting other alumni to join us, including business school graduates Ken Todd from Showtime and Brooke Eisenstat from CBS.
Incidentally, several years ago, after the Wall Street Journal ranked Tenbrink as one of the top analysts on Wall Street, she changed paths and is now managing partner of her own film company - there's hope for you bankers yet!
After lunch, the club split into a sports group and an entertainment/media group to visit separate companies.
The entertainment/media group went to the Time-Life building to visit with two business school grads -- Maria Wen, a marketing manager for Time Inc.'s magazines, and Alvin Bowles, a corporate development manager for Time Warner. This was a great visit to learn about both marketing and strategy across several divisions within Time Warner.
The sports group visited with Gerry Erasme, Regional Marketing Director at Nike and David Schneiderman, an associate in the Sports Advisory and Finance group at Lehman Brothers. These visits offered great insight about work in the sports industry in two very different companies.
That evening, EM&S members joined the Finance and Marketing Clubs at a reception at the Waldorf Astoria, hosted by the business school for all Ross School of Business graduates in the New York area.
We had some great company visits on Monday, but it was just a warm-up to Tuesday.
The entertainment/media group started the day having breakfast at the Michigan Development office with Mike Muse, an engineering alumnus who co-founded Muse Recordings, a record label based in Detroit. Muse gave us the real scoop on life in the entertainment industry. (Ever wonder what P-Diddy's "White Parties" in the Hamptons are like?)
Both groups met at Rockefeller Plaza, where Lauren Liang hosted us for a visit with NBC. Liang is the director of sales finance at NBC and has been a great supporter of the EM&S Club by hosting visits for several consecutive years, and this year she was joined by Patricia MacLean, another Michigan alum. We all found the visit very interesting to hear about Jeff Immelt's impact on NBC and life after the Universal acquisition.
After NBC, the two groups went back onto their separate tracks.
The entertainment/media group went to the Associated Press, where Seth Sutel, an AP media reporter who has participated in the Knight Wallace journalism fellowship at Michigan, gave us a great tour of their new office complex and Jim Kennedy, director of Strategic Planning, talked to us at length about future trends in the news media industry. Sutel and William Chang, an AP recruiter, joined us for lunch in the AP's great deli.
Meanwhile, the sports group had lunch with Ed Krinsky and Albert Ko, president and vice president, respectively, of the US Basketball League. Ko is an enthusiastic Michigan graduate and was eager to help our club from the first announcement about this year's forum. This was a great opportunity for us to meet with two key members of another professional sports league. Krinsky had many amazing stories to tell about his experiences and accomplishments.
After lunch, the entertainment/media group went to the Lincoln Center to meet with Jackie Davis, director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Madeleine Nichols, a UM alumna who is curator for the Dance Division and a lawyer at the Library. These women provided an inside look at executive leadership at a non-profit organization, as well as the inner workings of one of the most recognized performance venues in the world.
Then, the group went to Times Square to meet with Andi Poch, another Michigan alumna who is director of advertising sales at MTV. Poch has had an amazing career that spans both sports and entertainment, and she provided us with plenty of useful advice about succeeding in both industries, as well as how to get a job at one of the most popular and influential cable channels in the U.S.
As for the sports group, they spent the afternoon meeting with various sports media companies. First, they met with Josh Fienberg, a Ross MBA who is now finance manager in brand development for Sports Illustrated. Similar to Poch, Fienberg provided a lot of insight about working at SI and getting a job there. Then, they visited with Brett Krasnove, the online business manager for sports at the Associated Press. This visit helped provide a different perspective on the sports media industry. Tim Smith, UMEC's vice president of sports, was extremely helpful in making contacts with these companies so that we could arrange visits.
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