Jana Cain and I (Grace Yokoi) spent a week in New York in June meeting with companies and alumni in media/entertainment and sports, and design/tech and/or the intersection of design with any of those other industries. This blog entry will be long, but since there are such intersections of industries and companies don’t always fall into one clean bucket, we thought it would be easiest to put it all here than to divide into a few blogs somewhat arbitrarily. We’ve 
done our best to organize accordingly…scan quickly to see what interests you. 
COMPANIES
- A&E Networks
- Nickelodeon
- MTV Scratch (now known as just Scratch)
- YouTube NextLab
- Sesame Workshop
- Time Warner
- Scalar Media Partners
- The Raine Group
- Brooklyn Nets/Onexim Sports and Entertainment
- JP Morgan Chase (Sports and Entertainment Marketing Group)
- NBA
- Kickstarter
- Etsy
- AOL
- Spotify
- HUGE
- OXO
- Warby Parker
- Wert & Co (exec search for design/innovation people)
- Monitor/Doblin
Media/entertainment
A&E NETWORKS: Sean Cohan, MBA ’01, EVP International
- Sean’s been there for 8 years now in an international BD role, which he calls “part lieutenant to my boss, part strategist, part dealmaker”. He manges everything outside of the US– branded channels, program sales, digital sales. A&E Networks has people in New York and London, where the channels are owned 50/50 with local players.
- Most of the senior people at A&E Networks come from sales or programming; there are very few with corporate athlete backgrounds similar to his (consulting, banking, corporate strategy/ops). That background is more ambiguous and harder to sell.
- Creative versus business jobs with an MBA: it’s much easier to move from creative to business than vice versa…but when you get to a certain level in media you start to have both in your role, as he does now. It’s much harder to have both functions at the outset. If you want to get into creative, go do it now– find other MBAs who are in it. You have to show a real commitment, eg, “I read scripts over the summer”. It’s much easier to move from the creative side to the business side than vice versa. At the senior level, most executives tend to have experience from both sides.
NICKELODEON: Sherice Guillory Torres, MBA ’00, SVP DVD, DTO, and Video Games
Sherice has been at Nickleodeon since interning there as a GSB student. A former consultant, Sherice has built her media expertise in the consumer products space.
- Within the organization, MBAs are valued on the P&L management side, however there is no premium for the degree (e.g. candidates must be willing to start from the beginning).
- Breaking into the content/creative side of the business requires work product – the company does not want to test candidates once they’re already hired. On the upside, moving around within the organization is easier once the employee has built up their brand equity.
- For candidates looking to make a career switch, consumer products is a great entry point into a media organization. Successful backgrounds tend to come from CPG, advertising/ad sales, and investment banking (specifically as applied to strategic planinng).
- Hiring tends to be just-in-time, though they do have a formal [unpaid] internship program.
MTV SCRATCH (now known as just Scratch)
- Half consulting, half advertising, this group within Viacom provides Gen Y/Millenial strategy services to the entire portfolio of networks as well as external clients.
- Most of the opportunities are in consulting and on the creative side. MBAs are a best fit for consulting.
- The group is currently experiencing rapid growth. Recruiting happens along the normal Viacom recruiting chanels (e.g. website). They are always open to freelance/ad hoc employees. Work your network – it is generally beneficial to be referred by someone on the inside.
- Successful candidates tend to have a background in creative/entertainment. It’s not a requirement, but it helps.
YOUTUBE NEXTLAB: Jane Hu, MBA ’07, Head of Programming Strategy
- The digital skillset and philosophy is different from the traditional. Jane graduated just as the digital skillset was being sought after; now she feels a traditional media background (content) would be useful in the digital world.
- Jane is head of Global Creator Programs– how to globally roll out programs in a scaleable way. She got the job mainly through her pre- and post-MBA contacts.
- The job search in this space is so much about pounding the pavement that you really can’t follow the MBA timeline. Beware of “MBA polish”– it can be construed as arrogance in this industry.
- Hiring at Nextlabs is very start-up like (we hire when we have a need), though everything is posted to their job board. They hire a lot of temps.
SESAME WORKSHOP
Based in Manhattan with a studio in Astoria Queens, Sesame Workshop has a diverse offering of professional opportunities across several different functions. There are teams on both the creative and business sides, as well as supporting roles for lobbying groups working towards education reform measures.
- Just added a Strategic Planning & Development group that will have a team of two working remotely in the Bay Area.
- Numerous opportunities in International Development to assist with worldwide branding and programming. Sesame Workshop teams work with local production teams on the ground in international locations to facilitate the execution of country specific content. Currently investigating opening a satellite in Shanghai, and will need candidates with appropriate language skills to join that team.
- The organization is seeking to partner with education programs, and is therefore particularly interested in MBA candidates pursuing joint/dual studies in Education.
- Licensing is a huge revenue opportunity. No consumer products are produced or manufactured by Sesame Workshop. Global and domestic licensing groups are a great fit for MBAs.
- Planning to expand into digital as Sesame Learning (“Sesame 2.0″).
- Salary is competitive – hybrid of 75th percentile of nonprofit wages and 50th percentile of private sector wages.
- Also has a philanthropic division which receives funding from numerous sources (such as retail partnerships). Group utilizes internal specialists to help determine focus areas.
- Recruiting is done via the company career page as well as LinkedIn, Idealist.org, and referrals. A candidate’s best route in is via an affiliation (e.g. relationship with a supporting organization), ties to the nonprofit world (such as PBS) , or ties to a competitor (like Nickelodeon). They also have a robust freelance/temp program. Headcount is at the mercy of the budget, therefore they will keep good freelancers/temps on board until headcount opens up to hire them permanently.
TIME WARNER: Sanam Lari, MBA ’03, Executive Director of Strategy & Business Development, Style & Entertainment Group at Time Inc.
In her role, Sanam oversees all of the style and entertainment websites owned by Time Warner. Her team is very small – just 3 people, with 2 directors in the group. The mission of the group is to drive traffic (accomplished by partnering with other sites), drive revenue, and implement new tools/technology; they also have limited involvement with M&A. Sanam provided great insight into navigating the recruiting process with a large media company:
- There is an inherent challenge with large companies – they move slowly. Career pathing can be hard due to the limited number of roles. Therefore, be patient.
- Popular media roles for MBAs are in Strategic Planning, Business Development and General Management. Few MBAs start in Business Development, though; most come from Strategic Planning analyst roles. Few MBAs are happy in the more product-oriented roles.
- It is important for students to network with alumni. This includes offering to work for free.
- Recruiting tends to be off-cycle.
- Successful backgrounds tend to have some consulting (e.g. a brief consulting stint vs. having been a career consultant) and some digital experience in a business role. It is helpful to have some product background, but it is not helpful you only have a product background.
- Students will need to look at the appropriate balance for themselves – job/role growth vs personal growth. The reality is that the best growth opportunity may be at a smaller organization.
- It is also very important to build your reputation within your network, which can lead to added flexibility within current or future roles.
THE RAINE GROUP
We met with the recruiting team for The Raine Group to learn more about their 2012-2013 recruiting strategy and how the GSB will fit into that.
- Growing bank/VC/PE firm focused on media and entertainment.
- Will be participating in OCR this year for summer internship roles.
- Interested students must have a demonstrated passion for the space. The hiring team will be looking at work experience, overall enthusiasm, and some kind of finacne or media on their resume.
- The ideal candidate is someone with banking experience that does not want to be a banker and is looking for hybrid type role in media/entertainment.
Sports
SCALAR MEDIA PARTNERS: Tom Spock, MBA ’97, Partner
Tom has an extensive background in media and sports. He began his post-GSB career in a rotational program at NBC focused mostly on financial strategic planning. He was able to leverage his media experience to work at the NFL, serving as the organization’s first CFO. Tom founded Scalar Media after 10 years with the NFL, with 2 partners who have media and sports backgrounds. Some key takeaways from our meeting:
- The sports industry is becoming more professionalized. More and more sports organizations are recognizing the value of MBAs.
- “Business” in the sports world equates to the buying and selling or rights, where Media companies serve as the buyers and teams and leagues (and other “content” producers) serve as the sellers.
- Students interested in pursuing a career in sports business must be able to show demonstrated experience or interest. This is most commonly accomplished through internships (typically unpaid) or independent study projects incorporated into coursework. Students must be able to leverage their summer experience well.
- New media is a hot area of business development.
BROOKLYN NETS/ONEXIM SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT: Irina Pavlova, MBA ’97, President
Irina is the president of Onexim Sports and Entertainment, which is the majority owner of the Brooklyn Nets. In her role, she serves as the liaison between the team and Onexim. Her background is in Finance, but she was recruited to open the Russia office for Google shortly after graduating from the GSB. Some key insights from our meeting:
- Your network is your most valuable asset. Irina came to Onexim via a childhood friend.
- Not having industry experience isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You’re more inclined to be objectivity which can be helpful for challenging the status quo.
- Even though she sees herself as a sports management person, she acknowledges that at the end of the day, it’s just business (e.g. common sense).
JP MORGAN CHASE: Steve Pamon, MBA ’96, Head of Sports and Entertainment Marketing
Steve began his career at McKinsey in telecom. He leveraged that experience into a role with AOL Time Warner in New Business Development. He was able to parlay that into a role with the NFL (who recruited him for his experience in growing tv revenue). At the NFL, Steve focused on ticket, media and sponsorship sales. His latest role with JP Morgan Chase, where he oversees sponsorships, sourcing of new deals, and serving as a liaison between teams and the bank’s wholesale services. Steve shared some great advice he has for current students as they figure out their career paths (regardless of industry):
- MBA is most valuable because of the network. Opportunities will tend to materialize because of your friends/network.
- Don’t be afraid to look laterally. Look toward where you see your career in 5 years.
- Don’t make your search all about money. Your compensation will be in skills, not money. Being able to leverage your experience can open many doors.
- Keep your progress in perspective. In other words, don’t get bogged down in comparing yourself to your peers. Few people have “made it”. Everyone is focused on the next thing.
NBA: Amy Brooks, MBA ’02, Senior Vice President – Team Marketing & Business Operations (TeamBO); Ben Gumpert, MBA ’07, Senior Director – TeamBO
The TeamBO group at the NBA serves as an internal consultants to the NBA teams. As such, it’s a great group for former consultants. Other MBA-friendly groups are the Strategy & Analytics team that does quite a bit of quantitative reporting (e.g. ticket pricing analysis across all of the franchises) and the Marketing Partnerships group which focuses on all of the marketing partnership globally. Amy and Ben gave us some insight into their recruiting process:
- Passion is a must, but it won’t set you apart. They look for project-based experience (e.g. case writing for Professor Foster) as well as your analytical horsepower. Consumer experience is a plus.
- There is not a formal recruiting process. Open roles get posted to their website.
- They rely heavily on their interns as a pipeline for full-time hiring, and therefore do not dedicate much effort to full-time recruiting (it’s very just-in-time). The internship recruiting period is March – April.
Design/tech/other
KICKSTARTER
- We met with a product manager there that’s an expert in the payments space.
- Kickstarter is divided into “Community” (customer service, user experience, supporting backers and creators) and “Product” (engineering, design, and product managers).
- Culture and community is really important to them; they want to make sure that Kickstarter remains for anyone at any size.
- Advice if you’re interested: use the product; have an understanding an appreciation for creativity (the mission is to help the creative process); be down to earth about the topic matter. Courses related to understanding consumer behavior and psychology of users are probably the most relevant. Think about how things are designed and how users use things and why, and how to make the product better.
- Interviews are usually 4-6 people and are back-to-back; decisions on hiring are consensus-driven.
ETSY
- See blog from April as well!
- We met with a product manager who’s thinking about international expansion.
- The Etsy founder/CEO got fired about 10 months ago and the former CTO succeeded him; the focus is very much on engineering, eg, how fast is the site
- Growth has been very organic, not strategic. The future hope is to be a platform to support small businesses, not limited to hand-made things. Eg, currently are doing local events for small businesses (hiring lawyers, PR firms to “teach people to fish”).
- Etsy is a certified B Corporation. Their roots are not in traditional business– it’s not a high-profit model and that’s not what they aspire to.
- The people who work there are buyers, sellers and know and are a part of the community. MBAs typically make the mistake of thinking they need to know all the answers, but the most important thing in the interview is to show how you think through problems (not whether you get the answer right…there are no right answers).
- Product managers get hired for their judgment. They need to be technical; they will write code.
- Growth has been rapid and across the board. They will hire internationally as well.
AOL
- We met with a recruiter and intern Rachel Fleitell, ’13 at AOL’s offices– which surprisingly had a very start-uppy vibe to it.
- The culture is MBA-friendly and self-directed– no micro-managing. They make an effort to put interns on projects that they want to do, and also hope to convert interns to full-time hires.
- The organization is working on rebranding itself internally as more innovative and on the pulse of new media.
- Dedicated venture team focused on new investments and partnerships.
- MBA focus is heavily skewed towards strategy and business develop projects.
SPOTIFY (by phone)
- We spoke with the VP of Business Development in New York (US headquarters because that’s where the labels are). He focuses on scaling the organization– everything that is not organic growth (apps store, affiliate partners). Spotify is now 1000 employees worldwide.
- They are not at a scale where they can have a structured MBA program, but they did have 2 MBA summer interns this year (Columbia, Kellogg). Both were ex-consultants and were focused on analytics. There were 800 applications for these 2 internship spots. One applicant created a Youtube video and mock marketing campaign; the other created a company expansion plan. This is the kind of bar they’re setting!
- Efforts at Spotify in the Bay Area are entirely focused on product. BD in the Bay Area is focused on the Facebook relationship.
HUGE
- HUGE is a digital agency that specializes in “transforming brands and business for the digital economy”. It has 350-400 employees in Brooklyn, and small offices in San Francisco and Portland as well. They are full-service; they have a studio where they can produce their own content, print, create billboards, etc.
- We met with the person who runs “HUGE School”, which is a 10-week training program over the summer that’s meant specifically for career-changers. The intention is to give offers at the end of the program, so they are highly selective. Next year they plan to target MBAs.
- MBAs are most likely the best fit with their Client Services groups, which serve as liaisons between the designers and clients, and have a lot of accountability for the success of the project.
- Cultural fit is important– they want people who want to work in the digital space and demonstrate interest. The culture feels casual, but everyone works hard. You need to have comfort with little structure, and with a fast-paced environment where things change quickly.
OXO
- Main headquarters are in El Paso, Tx. New York office is focused on product development (~75 employees). The actual industrial design is outsourced, but internally they handle brand communication/public relations and graphic design. The product development has seen the most [hiring] growth due to continued line/product expansion.
- They have a very nontraditional recruiting process, but are shifting to something more formal. Each team tends to hire on their own as they see fit.
- They are looking to build an internal industrial design team.
- There are MBAs in the organization of various backgrounds in various functions.
- They do have a centralized database of candidates they will refer to when a team has a hiring need.
- The recruiting they do do tends to happen in late Feb – May. Jobs tend to get posted to LinkedIn, but most recruiting happens by word of mouth. Grace and Jana are at liberty to forward interested candidates to the recruiter.
- It is crucial that candidates are exceptionally passionate about the OXO product/brand. Consumer products experience helps.
THRIVE CAPITAL: Jared Weinstein, MBA ’11, Partner
- Thrive Capital focuses on (mostly) media and consumer internet companies in NY, CA, and Brazil (with the exception of Dwolla, which is based in Iowa). They are stage-agnostic. Since Instagram, they have gotten many inbound requests and referrals from their entrepreneurs, and in NY are probably the second call companies make after Union Square Ventures.
- Jared manages the team and covers CA. They’ve assembled quite a young but intelligent and driven team (mostly HBS alumni), and will likely complement that with some seasoned advisors.
WARBY PARKER
- We met with Neil (co-founder/co-CEO) and intern Mario Madrigal ’13 in their offices/showroom. It was about 70 employees at the time of our meeting, about half of whom are customer experience folks.
- They are a certified B Corporation and consider themselves at the intersection of fashion, tech, and social enterprise.
- They had 4 MBA interns this summer: 2 from HBS, 1 GSB, 1 UCLA; Neil wanted them to work on what they wanted to work on: customer experience, supply chain, finance, and marketing. They put a premium on consultants/that skillset.
- Customer experience is a feeder to the rest of the company; they are thinking of it like the analyst program at investment banks.
- They are now at the point where they can’t take athletes for full-time jobs– they need real past experience.
WERT & CO (by phone)
- Judy Wert started her executive search firm in 1995 with the theme of “converging disciplines”. She realized the influence that design has on business, and wanted to be part of the convergence. The firm specializes in recruiting/supporting organizational development in design and innovation, which spans many industries (tech, media, digital media, luxury/retail, social innovation).
- She laid out the landscape of design/innovation careers for us– basically it’s everywhere: large corporations (eg, Nike, Target), agencies, design firms (eg, IDEO), tech firms (eg, Twitter), “business acceleration” (something I wasn’t familiar with, but eg, Whatif, Red Scout), consulting (eg, Monitor/Doblin), tech startups (eg, Kickstarter), social innovation (eg, healthcare services). Some of the titles she’s worked on that reflect what companies are looking for: Business Anthropologist, Design Strategist, Business Designer, Innovation Strategist, Head of Customer Journey, Director of Innovation.
- The MBA skillset is hugely applicable to these types of roles, and MBAs are appreciated in this space. Of course you need to have a commensurate appreciation for the process of design and innovation.
MONITOR/DOBLIN (by phone)
- Monitor acquired Doblin, a global innovation firm, in 2007. Doblin is now part of Monitor’s innovations practice, which is about 60 people.
- Monitor/Doblin helps their clients develop innovations strategies in three ways: they help develop goals and think about allocation of resources; they help develop innovations (eg, new offerings, business models, and sources of value); and they support capacity-building– how an organization shoudl be configured in order to embrace innovation.
- Their approach is heavily design-driven and each team represents 3-4 capabilities: design, social science/user-orientation, business, and sometimes technology. The business capability comes from Monitor; Doblin does not hire MBAs directly into their practice.
- Clients are mainly Fortune 500 companies, but they also have worked with some large non-profits, governments, and foundations.