USC Marshall School of Business

Todd Jacobs has been an athlete since he was 6 years old, and played varsity tennis for four years at Bucknell University while obtaining his business administration degree. After graduation, he worked at International Management Group, a sports/talent agency. “Ever since, I knew that the path I wanted to follow was sports,” he says.

When he decided to get his MBA, he focused on schools in major markets such as New York and Los Angeles. “I fell in love with Marshall and the program,” he says. The two things that “sealed the deal” were the student-run Marshall Sports Business Organization and the Sports Business Institute, headed by Professor David Carter, through which students collaborate on faculty consulting and research projects. “It was a really great asset that a lot of schools I was looking at did not have.”

By the end of his first semester in the MBA program, Mr. Jacobs and a fellow student were leading the Marshall Sports Business Organization and actively engaged through the Sports Business Institute on research for Professor Carter’s book about the convergence of the sports and entertainment industries. “We did a lot of the groundwork for the project and really got it going,” he says. “We finalized a publishing deal with Stanford University Press for the book and secured more than $300,000 in funding for the project, which is set to come out in January 2011. Professor Carter was a great mentor and tutor for us.”

One of the best things coming out of Mr. Jacob’s Marshall experience was an internship with sports shoe giant Nike. He now works as a senior strategic planning analyst for U.S. retail business with the company at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

“Getting a full-time job at Nike was a huge goal of mine,” he says. “Nike is the epitome of a company that reflects my personality and background.” He credits Marshall career services adviser Elaine Sommers with helping him “identify what I wanted to do with Nike and giving me the opportunity to actually intern at Nike last summer.”

He adds: “When you’re part of the Marshall School and the MBA program, you’re really involved in a family. People work together to really help you get to where you want to go.”