The biggest perk of MSBA is that it gives you opportunities. The program starts off by positioning each member in an internship littered with professionals in the sports industry who are all willing to help. As a lifelong basketball fan, it feels surreal that I am currently working in business operations for an NBA team through my internship with BSE Global (formerly known as Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment). Before I started interning here, I was a nervous wreck. I was nervous about moving, nervous about starting my dream internship, nervous about making friends within my program, and – most importantly – nervous about taking advantage of these opportunities. Three weeks into the program and all these concerns are gone.
Starting a week late, I felt like the odd man out on the first day of my internship. The other interns were already starting to work on projects for full-time employees and I was still learning how to navigate myself around this new office. I felt like I was starting slow and most importantly, I did not feel like I was taking full advantage of this incredible opportunity. After thinking about what I had to do to catch up, I realized I just had to grind. Due to being on the partnerships team, a lot of my role consists of prospecting and creating one sheets with valuable information for my supervisors to use when trying to reach out to a potential client. While most of the other interns viewed this as a chore to do when they had nothing else, it was my main job for the first two weeks. Instead of being negative and thinking the work was pointless, I decided to grind and do as many one sheets as physically possible. That grind mentality paid off – I am not positive it was my countless one sheets that made people recognize my high effort level, but I like to believe it is why my supervisors are now coming to me for projects. Once I got my first project, I knew how to take advantage. I viewed it as an opportunity to not only try to impress each supervisor with my work, but also to connect with them on a personal level by getting to interact with them. This past week, I have been much busier than the countless one sheet days in a sense, but this work feels so rewarding that I do not even view it as being busy. I was given an incredible opportunity and I finally feel like I am taking full advantage of it.
“My biggest takeaway from the first three weeks is that it is up to us to take advantage of these opportunities, and I plan to do so fully.”
The aspect of the MSBA program that I am most grateful for and impressed with is the mentorship that they provide each member with. Each one of us gets the opportunity to be assigned three Mentors who are each incredibly successful in the sports industry and willing to help us. While I did not realize how big of an opportunity this was at first, I now recognize this is the biggest opportunity of the entire program. MSBA essentially hands you three people who are willing to take time out of their busy and chaotic days to simply help you. On Friday, the MSBA program got to tour the new Pier 17 in NYC, a project that one of my Mentors, Andrew Shahadi, has been working on for several years through his job with The Howard Hughes Corporation. While each Office Field Trip is extremely impressive in it’s own way, it was obvious this one starstruck people more than any other due to the fact that ESPN’s new studios are located at Pier 17. Seeing the set of Jalen & Jacoby and the studio for PTI, a show that most of the kids in this program have been watching for countless years, was amazing. After the tour, multiple kids in the program approached me and commented on how insanely cool my Mentor’s project was. When thinking about it, it is crazy that such an accomplished professional is taking time out of their day to not just give me advice, but also befriend me. To me, this is most unique opportunity MSBA provides.
MSBA gives you an opportunity by putting you in rooms with hundreds of people throughout the summer who are offering their advice and willing to help. My biggest takeaway from the first three weeks is that it is up to us to take advantage of these opportunities, and I plan to do so fully.
Lastly, I would just like to give a shout out to Andrew and my two other Mentors, Ricardo Munoz (Endeavor) and Michael Meisner (Excel Sports Management), all the fellow interns and my supervisors at BSE Global, the countless other students’ Mentors who I have reached out to, and the MSBA Class of 2018 who instantly made me feel at home. We are taking full advantage of these opportunities and plan to continue to do so.