As soon as I had handed in my last final exam, I made my way into New York City for a very dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence. For my Princetern­ship, I shad­owed Bryce Gama, an eco­nom­ics major and mem­ber of the class of 2001 who is now a Senior Direc­tor of Busi­ness Strat­egy at ESPN. As soon as I passed through the large dou­ble doors of the ABC build­ing I was con­fronted on every turn of the hall­way with a logo—either of a net­work, TV show, or other media prod­uct that I was famil­iar with. It was this famil­iar­ity with the prod­uct that was espe­cially excit­ing for me as I pre­pared myself for the day’s meetings.

Meetings—this is prob­a­bly the word I would use that most aptly describes Bryce’s work as I fol­lowed him. It is through these numer­ous meet­ings that Bryce, as part of a team, nego­ti­ates agree­ments and advises the sales force on deci­sions regard­ing dig­i­tal assets, cable, and satel­lite space. While there is less of a direct focus on ath­let­ics that one would assume comes with a job at ESPN, the job was still very excit­ing in that the deci­sions his team makes have an impor­tant effect on media con­sumers, a group in which I con­sider myself an avid member.

In the first meet­ing I attended, Bryce and his team were dis­cussing the sta­tus of a new prod­uct. While the specifics of the meet­ing must remain con­fi­den­tial, Bryce and his col­leagues in Affil­i­ate Sales and Mar­ket­ing did not hes­i­tate to involve me in all parts of the dis­cus­sion. The next meet­ing, which focused on infor­ma­tion that was con­sid­er­ably less sen­si­tive, con­sisted of Bryce and fel­low team mem­bers ana­lyz­ing how changes to the exten­sion of the company’s deal with Com­cast trig­gered changes to other accounts. What I noticed in the meet­ing was how every­one in the office had a clear pas­sion for their work that made for an office cul­ture that was friendly, invit­ing, and over­all highly enjoyable.

Bryce Gama and Elise

Next, I accom­pa­nied Bryce and two other col­leagues to lunch. We com­pared our expe­ri­ences at Prince­ton as I picked his brain about his path to his cur­rent work. Both he and his col­leagues shared invalu­able advice about pur­su­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in sales and mar­ket­ing and in par­tic­u­lar stressed the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a pas­sion for what you do. I came to see how this pas­sion trans­lates directly into a pos­i­tive work envi­ron­ment. What struck me as espe­cially refresh­ing in this par­tic­u­lar expe­ri­ence was that Bryce and his col­leagues merged hard work with laugh­ter, and although their team was rel­a­tively young in years, they took on respon­si­bil­i­ties and made extremely impor­tant strate­gic deci­sions involv­ing ESPN’s media assets. Again, I can­not speak directly about much of the pro­posed strat­egy I wit­nessed within the office, but I can stress that I was able to learn a lot about the specifics involved in mak­ing net­work bids and solid­i­fy­ing net­work deals.

Over­all, the Princetern­ship was a highly enjoy­able expe­ri­ence. It pro­vided an invalu­able glimpse into a line of work involv­ing mar­ket­ing strat­egy and media assets that I would have had no access to oth­er­wise. I espe­cially wel­comed the numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions I had with dif­fer­ent col­leagues within the office about how to uti­lize my lib­eral arts degree and dif­fer­ent ways in which I might explore my own poten­tial career path. Now, each and every time I turn on Sports­Cen­ter or check the ESPN app on my phone I’ll think back to my Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence and con­sider the busi­ness strat­egy involved in mak­ing it pos­si­ble for me to access infor­ma­tion on my beloved Boston sports teams from anywhere.