By Todd Sperry, MBA'04

Bauer Nike Hockey and Arnold Worldwide companies have two things in common - the MCFE Program and Todd Sperry M’04. Todd recently spoke with Global Program Services about his experiences as a team member with both of these companies in MBA MCFE projects, as well as his experience in the Project Management course. According to Todd, the Management Consulting Field Experience Program (MCFE) and Project Management Program were “the most beneficial programs I did at Babson” and had a direct connection to his landing a job at Arnold Worldwide after graduating in December. “They provided me an excellent platform for gaining experience and helped me test drive an industry and a company that I eventually accepted a job with.” Todd recently began working for Arnold Worldwide in Boston managing the Timberland account.

Todd feels the MCFE program offers a unique forum and opportunity to apply classroom learning, to interact with top level management, and to be exposed to many different areas and people within a company. Having come to Babson with a background in the sports industry from his work at The North Face, Todd selected his MCFE, to gain exposure to Nike. “At The North Face, we often considered Nike to be a leader, and the Bauer Nike MCFE offered exposure to Nike’s considerable marketing and product development processes.” The spring ‘04 Bauer Nike MCFE also gave Todd direct access to senior management including the CEO, Christopher Zimmerman M'83, and VP of Sales, Ed Kinnaly ’87, who worked directly with the team on the MCFE project. The three student team presented recommendations of strategies and tactics to better enable Bauer Nike to capture the team market. Their project involved presenting recommendations for strategies and tactics to increase the team business in the United States market by analyzing the considerations and motivations involved in purchase at each decision-making level including players, coaches, retailers, sales representatives, and the company.

Todd’s interest in Arnold Worldwide began during his first semester at Babson, when a speaker from the company addressed his Marketing Communications class on methodologies. When Todd saw a MCFE offering with Arnold Worldwide in his Fall ’04 semester, he was keen on exploring a new career in this field. Todd, one of a team of five, consulted with Arnold Worldwide for their Royal Caribbean account investigating the evolutions of marketing practices. The team provided specific and actionable recommendations, looking at technological advances as they relate to advertising and brand comparables. Some of the challenges involved with the projects, Todd recalls, included “identifying a scope that is deliverable within the time frame of a semester, as well as developing consulting skills while managing the expectations of the client.” Todd found that “frequent communication with the client and the discipline to have the group meet regularly” helped the teams to successfully manage these tasks.

Before graduating, Todd applied for the Project Management Program where graduate students serve as a project manager for an undergraduate MCFE team and participate in a Project Management graduate course. Leading the Eastern Jr. Hockey League project and working with the other project managers, Todd learned about group dynamics, leadership and coaching. Todd says, “The Project Management Program came highly recommended to me by previous MBA students. I wanted the experience of receiving feedback from peers in the area of management, to practice delegation and being a team leader by identifying and developing each student’s skills.” Since his work experience was more related to client management, he felt that “The more practice, the better” in team environments. This experience also provided a unique opportunity to interact with the undergraduate population. “I learned a lot from the undergraduate students, both about them and myself”, says Todd, who’s looking forward to helping his undergraduate team members with job hunting and serving as a professional reference as needed in their own career development. Todd also notes that the program provides all participants a great opportunity to both give and receive feedback about performance, with its 360 approach to communication and evaluation.

In the final analysis, there is added value Todd sees in both of these programs which exceeded his expectations, as he explains, “it helped me build my resume and it helped me in my job interview process, giving me a broader platform to bring relevant and recent business experiences into the discussion. Questions presented to me about my MCFE experiences, especially those relevant to the prospective job during interviews, allowed me to take my Babson education experience beyond class work and allowed me to respond with real, concrete examples.”