I Have an Ivy League MBA

ESSAY PROMPT: What are your short-term and long-term career goals? How do your professional experiences relate to these goals? How will an MBA from Berkeley help you achieve these specific career goals?

My immediate goal after earning my MBA from Haas is to obtain a business development role at a progressive digital entertainment company. I plan to target leading-edge streaming media companies such as Pandora, Ustream and Netflix that have made significant progress advancing digital media beyond the traditional web browser model. I will focus on this particular niche to capitalize on the increasing popularity of streaming media content, gain experience and grow my professional network. Ideally my role will have a broad scope, enabling me to apply my creative and entrepreneurial experience across diverse projects including product development, operations, marketing, and sales to prepare me for my long-term entrepreneurial objective.

After four to six years with an established new media company, I will leverage my MBA network, entertainment industry relationships and my new media experience to launch a venture I have been considering for some time - a diversified artist management company. During my five years in music and new media, I have noticed huge market opportunities rapidly developing at the intersection of technology and entertainment. This observation has ignited my ambition to connect my growing network of video and music producers, recording artists, and various entertainment personalities with new digital media opportunities. Consequently, I intend to create a multifaceted media organization committed to capitalizing on opportunities created by the evolving landscape. Structured like a record label, there will be clearly defined departments in management, marketing, publicity, merchandising, licensing and new media. In the wake of the music industry’s rapid consolidation and failure to efficiently adapt to music’s digital future, I will capitalize on underutilized digital revenue streams by turning to previous relationships in new media as well as to new alliances forged to explore innovative digital and cross-media opportunities.

During the past five years I have made a number of strategic decisions that together draw an unconventional but clear path toward my long-term career objective to become a new media entrepreneur. In particular, I have structured my career around several key decisions that led me to pursue my passion for music, initiated my ambition for entrepreneurship, and introduced me to digital media.

After earning my bachelor’s degree, I enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston where I immersed myself in the musical community. As I learned about the basics of the music business, I started booking Berklee musicians at a ski resort in Vermont through the resort’s manager, a long-time friend. I then realized that I could combine my business acumen and my understanding of the music industry to create novel business opportunities—a realization that has led to a number of other entrepreneurial initiatives including artist management, digital marketing and merchandising ventures.

I decided next to explore digital media opportunities while I was interning at Warner Music Group (WMG) in New York as I witnessed first hand how major record labels were struggling to keep up with technological innovation. From there I chose to begin educating myself about media’s digital future by strategically accepting offers from different digital media companies to expand my new media experience in advertising operations, campaign management, ad network development, social media, branded entertainment, digital video, and advertising analytics.

More recently, in August 2010 I accepted an offer from a start-up music agency called S.W.A.P. Management where I had done some work as an independent contractor. Their proposal offered me company equity and the freedom to develop new company initiatives such as building a digital ad network across the S.W.A.P.’s artists’ online properties. Business school is my priority, however, and while I do intend to retain an interest in S.W.A.P. next year, I will limit my involvement to 6 to 8 hours per week so that I can fully concentrate on business school coursework and student activities.

An MBA is a vital next step on my career path as I recognize gaps in my business knowledge, which I must address in order to advance my career. My experience in artist management and digital media, while valuable, has limited my knowledge of how to successfully grow a sustainable business. Haas’ core curriculum will provide me with the business fundamentals I will apply throughout my career and beyond that, an MBA will be a great asset to my growth as a business leader. I will concentrate in entrepreneurship and to develop myself into a a highly effective entrepreneur in an especially dynamic environment. I look forward to participating both inside the classroom and out to maximize my specialized entrepreneurial education through class instruction and experiential learning opportunities.

As an ambitious entrepreneur passionate about the future of media and entertainment, I firmly believe that an MBA combined with the areas diverse community of innovators will set the best possible foundation for me to build from as an emerging business leader.