How I Got Here: The NFL Network's Kim Williams

Kim Williams, chief operating officer at the NFL Network, is used to a fast-paced, international lifestyle. After attending high school in Italy and earning a BA in Asian Studies from Connecticut College and an MBA from Thunderbird, she parlayed her global business experience into finance and operations positions at some of the most recognized companies in the world. For her work, Williams was recently named 2012 Woman in Sports and Events Woman of the Year. As part of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “How I Got Here” series, Melanie Danko spoke with Williams about her diverse resume and current role managing the NFL Network. What follows is the story of Williams’s career progression, in her own words. (Some quotes have been edited for space and clarity.)

Name: Kim Williams
Current Position: chief operating officer, NFL Network
Education: MBA, Thunderbird, 1992

My experience at Thunderbird was very positive in terms of breadth and depth, especially working with people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. It was such a rewarding experience and it drove me to want to experience business abroad.

Work Experience:

— General Electric International, Financial Management Program (FMP), London, U.K., 1993-1994

I had this notion that I wanted to work for a smaller company when I graduated. My first job was with General Electric (GE), not exactly the definition of a small company. I was looking forward to being abroad and I assumed I would find a job at a smaller company when I got to London. I never expected that 11 years later, I would still be working at GE.

— Nuovo Pignone, GE Oil & Gas, financial analyst, integration leader, Florence, Italy, 1994-1996

— Nuovo Pignone, transaction quality leader, Florence, Italy, 1996-1997

The nice thing about GE is that it’s such a diversified, global, and far-reaching enterprise. I was responsible for much of the Pan-European activity. It exposed me to a lot of different cultures. My role was very operational. GE was looking to acquire a large oil and gas company in Italy, the largest employer in the region. My role was to join the acquisition team and then stay on as part of the integration team. This experience was the most impactful of my career. I was only 26 years old and I went down with a team of three others who spoke Italian and a [chief executive officer] and [chief financial officer] who did not.

My responsibility was to teach the GE culture, as well as the business from a financial perspective. Frankly, it was a job I had no business having at 26. It’s a testament to GE giving people a chance to shine. It was pivotal in my career. I was representing the acquisition and was able to present to Jack Welch. I picked up skills that I still use today: how to build consensus, how to be comfortable and confident even if you don’t have all the answers, asking questions, and working collaboratively.

— National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), director, finance, broadcast and network operations, 1997-1998

— NBC, NBC West Coast, vice president and quality leader, 1998-1999

— NBC, NBC West Coast, senior vice president and chief financial officer, 2001-2003

The CFO wanted me to move in a different direction when I was interviewing for a new role. Initially I wasn’t interested, but when I learned about all the changes that needed to be made, it became an extremely appealing role for me. I started working in the “factory” of NBC where I learned a lot about the business of television operations. I then moved out to west coast operations in California, implementing GE’s Six Sigma there and convincing them how it was relevant to the television industry. While I was well-versed in operations, I was on a learning curve in terms of the media industry. I was exposed to both the nuances of the television industry and managing a portfolio for a broadcasting company.

— National Football League, senior vice president and chief financial officer, New York, 2003-2006

— National Football League, NFL Network, chief operating officer, New York/Culver City, Calif., 2006-Present

I went into a job interview with the NFL, but I wasn’t looking to leave GE. I came out of the interview thinking to myself, “I’ve got to get that job!” Things worked out and I got it. Though I wouldn’t describe myself as an avid football fan, I had the functional expertise and I was back to throwing myself into the deep end with a big learning curve—this time in the sports industry. I always saw myself moving away from finance and ended up in the COO position after three years at the NFL. The NFL Network is a great experience in that it’s cutting edge and new to the industry. For example, we’re launching a new morning, weekday show beginning in July and expanding our franchise in the sports industry.

— Final Word

Nothing beats hands-on experience. The actual experience of doing and having a practical mastery, rolling up your sleeves, and making mistakes is incredibly important. Be comfortable learning, asking questions, involving others, and working collaboratively. Have a point of view and have an opinion. It takes time, effort, and work to inspire.

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What Are Charter Schools? Choices in Education

The Recommendation Letter Employers Don't Want

When seeking a reference or letter of recommendation, employers must learn to read between the invariably flattering lines to determine a candidate’s true worth. Drawing on the wisdom of Harvard’s Office of Career Services, Charles Purdy of Monster.com (MWW), and LinkedIn’s (LNKD) connection director Nicole Williams, we present the world’s worst recommendation letter.

Lopez is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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MBA Journal: The Path to Amazing

College Hall looks like something out of Harry Potter. The oldest building on Penn’s campus, it’s noteworthy to many because of its imposing design and striking green coloration. But to me, it’s special for a different reason: College Hall is where I took the last exam of my first year at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

We, the Class of 2013, poured out of various buildings after our marketing final and joined up on Walnut Street, drawn eastward like moths toward Center City Philadelphia. The walk marked both the conclusion of a grueling finals week (five exams in as many days) and the realization that we were officially halfway done with business school. Some said it with relief, some with sorrow—but all with disbelief at how quickly it went.

As I think about how to describe my experience so far, I find that I’m holding two images of Wharton in my head. On the one hand is “Little Wharton”: studying with Kathleen, making pizza with Alex, having Jamie and Ann over to watch Project Runway. On the other is “Big Wharton”: sailing yachts around the British Virgin Islands, causing mayhem in Park City, going on lavish trips to Morocco, Thailand, Israel. … I mostly witness Big Wharton from afar (or via my Facebook news feed), but it’s tough to think of myself as lame as I post my own pictures of black-tie parties or trekking in Patagonia to the bewilderment of my friends outside school. Ridiculousness, it seems, is all relative.

While it’s not a nonstop party, there is certainly always a party to be had if you’re looking for one. Often a large one. It’s neither accurate to pretend that this excess doesn’t exist, nor fair to make it seem as though everyone is living this way. There are board games to be played and movies to be watched, too. But I’d be lying if I didn’t mention the “work hard, play really hard” motto that seems to define the experience of so many students.

For some, it’s because they have money to spend, and they view these two years as a blessed reprieve from the brutal job that’s waiting for them after graduation. For others, it’s “What’s another $10,000 of debt when I’ve already racked up so much?” For most, it’s the realization that, along with the education we’re receiving, these opportunities are special, and fleeting, and that if we don’t seize them now, we never will.

And what of my transformation? This was a difficult thing to gauge while I was in school. Just as I would start to get the hang of a class or a concept, it would end, and I’d move on to a new challenge. I could never quite get comfortable, which left me wondering how much I was really learning—my knowledge seemed tenuous, fragile. I had fleeting nightmares of showing up on the first day of my internship, realizing I was completely unprepared, and slowly backing toward the elevator before sprinting to my car and speeding off.

These nightmares were short-lived. The more distance I got from school, the more able I was to see how each shred of knowledge had woven itself into an increasingly solid foundation. I learned and accomplished many things over my first year, but here are the five that most surprised me:

1) Finance. I get it now! Discounted cash flows. Dividends. Leverage. The clouds parted for me one day in Professor Kaufold’s class. I heard choir music.

2) Marketing. It’s less that I learned marketing, and more that I realized what “marketing” really means, and in so doing, I found a place where my left-brain/right-brain balance is not just tolerated—it’s required. (Brand management, by the way, is not for the faint of heart. If you disagree with me, try spending six weeks in a simulation crafted by a statistician with a flair for the savage.)

3) Saying yes. There were metaphorical summits, like getting up in front of a room of strangers and giving a rapid-fire presentation at a PechaKucha night (it’s worth a Google to find one near you). Then there were literal summits, like Mount Betinelli on Navarino Island, the most remote and pristine place I’ll likely ever set foot. I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and in so doing have given myself reserves of confidence that I’ll continue to add to and draw upon, both personally and professionally.

4) Saying no. A necessary complement to No. 3 above. Steel yourself against the fear of missing out. If it’s not in line with your goals, saying yes would merely take you away from the things you really should be doing.

5) Recruiting, etc. This is probably where I got the most concentrated dose of “professionalism.” For perspective: Before business school, my name appeared on my resume in bright turquoise letters, all lowercase. I’ve come a long way. I still giggle at the pageantry of the application/interview courtship, but if you’re gonna play the game, you might as well learn the rules.

All in all, are these things I could only have learned in school? Well … no. Which is obvious, and evidenced by the successes and accomplishments of those without an MBA. But here’s the thing—I, Lindsay, hadn’t learned them yet, and if I’d stayed on my previous path, it’s fairly certain I wasn’t going to.

People tend to refer to B-school hyperbolically: It was the best two years of my life. My highest highs and lowest lows. But let’s be honest—for some people, it’s just school. I didn’t come here to cause mayhem. I came to learn stuff and get a degree that says I learned stuff. Frankly, I don’t want these to be the best two years of my life. I’d rather they be two amazing years that help put me on a path of continued amazingness. And from what I have experienced during year one, I’d say I’m well on my way.

Between journal entries, you can keep track of Lindsay’s business school adventures at the Business Schools Facebook page. Follow the Bloomberg Businessweek B-Schools team on Twitter.

Lindsay Miller is a first-year MBA student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Before business school, Miller was an editor at Lifetime Television. In addition, an ad she created for Dove Body Wash won a national competition and aired in front of about 40 million people watching the Oscars.

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High School Sports - Why They Are Important

College Graduates' Best Job Bet: Word of Mouth

The commencement speeches are mostly over. Newly minted college graduates are looking for work, pounding their keyboards and working their mobile phones. The unemployment rate for graduates ages 21 to 24 averaged 9.4 percent for the year ended in March, while the underemployment rate—the jobless plus those working at part-time jobs when they want full-time positions—was a steep 19.1 percent, according to calculations by the Economic Policy Institute.

The experience of stumbling about for jobs is familiar to anyone who graduated during the recessions of the mid-1970s, early ’80s, and even the start of the ’90s. Yet since the 1970s, access to information has exploded. Considering the expansion of the Internet, powerful search engines, and social media, it should be much easier to match potential employees with employers.

Apparently not. “We find that in the U.S., information about work and jobs is relatively hard to come by for someone seeking employment,” says James Manyika, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute. Says Adam Cobb, assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania: “The best way to get a job now is the same as in the ’70s and the ’80s—word of mouth.”

Technology has had a somewhat perverse effect on job-hunting. The barriers to applying for work have fallen sharply: Once a resume is created, job seekers can submit hundreds of applications online with zero or minimal extra cost. The problem is that companies have responded with crude filtering devices, so many of those resumes remain unread. “Technology allows [companies] to search for keywords. And if applicants don’t use the right keyword in their resume, they won’t make the list,” says Susan Cantrell, a research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance.

A large body of research shows that half or more of all jobs come through informal channels—connections to friends, families, and colleagues, according to Limited Network Connections and the Distribution of Wages, a study by economists Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford and Ron Borzekowski of the Federal Reserve. What matters is a recommendation and personal assessment. Valuable recommendations come from what Stanford University sociologist Mark Granovetter calls “the strength of weak ties.” Acquaintances (weak ties) have networks that go beyond a job seeker’s immediate circle (strong ties). Yet the acquaintances know the applicant well enough to vouch for their character. “What all of the technological advancements have not done is to overcome the primary barrier to getting a job—which, from the employer’s standpoint, is being able to answer, ‘What type of worker will the applicant be?’?” asks Wharton’s Cobb.

Laura Tiffany graduated from the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., in December 2011. She quickly landed a job as a project director at Strategic Resource Partners, a planning, marketing, and research firm in Spring Park, Minn. At college she worked in the career center and watched people send out their resumes online and get nowhere. She met Jon McGee, vice president of planning and public affairs at the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University, who ended up connecting her to a friend, Strategic Resource’s boss. “I know that networking is more important than shooting out resumes that end up in a black hole,” she says.

The online recruiting world is trying to replicate word-of-mouth networking. Jobvite, the social media recruiting platform, surveyed companies to find out what networks they used to identify job candidates. LinkedIn, (LNKD) the professional networking site, was the most widely used at 87 percent of the companies surveyed. LinkedIn does not disparage word of mouth, especially for recent college grads. “Referral is the No. 1 source of finding an opportunity. It comes down to who do you know,” says Nicole Williams, connection director at LinkedIn.

The folks at Monster.com (MWN), the online job clearinghouse, say their Web-based tools can be used more effectively if applicants tailor their resumes to a limited number of job openings rather than send their information off to as many employers as possible. At the same time human resource departments could reduce the flood of resumes by clarifying what sort of candidates they are seeking.

Monster is also embracing social networks. BeKnown, Facebook (FB)’s professional networking app, is fully integrated with Monster, automatically creating links to Facebook connections. “Hiring has always been based on reputation and who you know,” says Charles Purdy, senior editor at Monster Worldwide. “The new professional networking tools and social networking platforms allow everyone to build up a network.” For now, though, the old ways remain the best.

The bottom line: Even in the digital age, word of mouth and person-to-person networking play a critical role in landing that first significant job.

Farrell is contributing economics editor for Bloomberg Businessweek. You can also hear him on American Public Media's nationally syndicated finance program, Marketplace Money, as well as on public radio's business program Marketplace.

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FAQ: B-School Surveys and Profiles

Answers to all your frequently asked questions about the surveys used to create Bloomberg Businessweek’s online B-school profiles

What’s this survey for?
If we complete this survey, will my school be ranked?
Several people at my school received invitations. How can I find out who the contacts are?
Several people at my school received survey invitations. Do we all need to complete the survey?
Do all the contacts complete the same survey?
My log-in credentials don’t work. What do I do?
How can I print a copy of the blank survey for data collection purposes?
How can I print my completed survey?
There’s no “save” button. How do I save my survey without submitting it?
I entered answers into the survey, but when I returned they were gone. What happened?
I answered all the questions on a page, but when I tried to advance to the next page, I got an error message. What do I do?
I have a question about how to answer one of the questions in the survey. Whom can I contact for guidance?
How can I make sure our school submitted its survey?
Does Bloomberg Businessweek employ any data standards?
Our school has already completed this survey. Why do we keep getting reminders?
I submitted my survey, but I need to make a change. What do I do?
What’s the General Survey for?
We have two different Full-Time MBA programs. How can we create profiles for both of them?
How do you determine who receives the survey invitations at each school?
What’s the best way to complete the Contact Update Survey to make sure we don’t miss future survey invitations?
Are there any special steps my school should take to make sure the survey invitations don’t get trapped in our spam filters?

What’s this survey for?

The General, Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, Executive MBA, Distance MBA, Non-degree Executive Education, and Undergraduate Business surveys are the surveys we use to create the online statistical profiles of graduate and undergraduate business programs that appear on the Bloomberg Businessweek website. The Contact Update Survey is used to update our contact information for each school that receives the profile surveys.

If we complete this survey, will my school be ranked?

No. These surveys have nothing to do with the rankings. They entitle you to an online profile and nothing more.

Several people at my school received invitations. How can I find out who the contacts are?

E-mail support at bsurveys@bloomberg.net. Survey support is available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.

Several people at my school received survey invitations. Do we all need to complete the survey?

No. Only one person at each school needs to complete each survey. Since all the invitations sent to a single school contain links to the same survey, it’s impossible for schools to complete multiple versions of the same survey (e.g. two different full-time MBA surveys).

Do all the contacts complete the same survey?

Yes. Most schools have multiple contacts for each survey. If, for example, there are three contacts at your school for the Full-Time MBA survey, all three contacts will be able to work on the same survey. If Jane opens the survey first and completes the first five pages, they will be visible to Jim when he opens it later; and when Lisa opens the survey after Jim, she’ll be able to see the work that both Jane and Jim did before making her own contribution. Once a survey has been submitted by ONE contact at a school, it is no longer available to ANY of the contacts at that school, so it’s important to make sure your survey is complete and checked for errors before it is submitted. Once submitted, a survey can’t be reopened; however, it can be edited by a school. See: “I submitted my survey, but I need to make a change. What do I do?”

My log-in credentials don’t work. What do I do?

Check to make sure CAPLOCK is off when typing the password, or copy and paste the password into the survey directly from the invitation. If you still can’t access the survey, contact survey support at bsurveys@bloomberg.net.

How can I print a copy of the blank survey for data collection purposes?

On the first page of the survey, where you enter your user name and password, is a link, in red, that says: To download a copy of the blank survey for data gathering purposes, click HERE. Clicking on HERE will take you to a printer-friendly version of the blank survey. Do not attempt to enter your answers on this printer-friendly version of the survey; all answers must be entered into the survey itself.

How can I print my completed survey?

At the end of every survey, after you answer the last question but before you submit the survey, a printer-friendly version of the completed survey (questions and answers) automatically appears. If you need a record of your completed survey for your records, you can print this version of the survey using your browser’s print function or you can download a PDF of the completed survey using the PDF link at the bottom of this page. IMPORTANT: This will be your last chance to print your survey. You will NOT be able to print your survey responses or obtain a printout or PDF after you’ve submitted your survey.

There’s no “save” button. How do I save my survey without submitting it?

Saving is automatic; data are saved when you navigate through the survey using the “back” and “next” buttons on each page, and are periodically uploaded to the Survey Gizmo servers. (Note: data will not be saved if you use your browser’s forward/back button.) There’s no need (and no way) to manually save the survey.

I entered answers into the survey, but when I returned they were gone. What happened?

Several things might have happened. You may have returned to the survey while the data you entered were being uploaded to the Survey Gizmo servers, during which time the information temporarily “disappears” from the survey itself. If you wait 15 minutes and log back in, it should be there. If not, send an e-mail to bsurveys@bloomberg.net alerting us to the problem. Another possibility is that the information you entered was inadvertently deleted by one of your colleagues who may have had the survey open at the same time. In that case you may need to reenter the data.

I answered all the questions on a page, but when I tried to advance to the next page, I got an error message. What do I do?

Most error messages highlight the problematic answer in yellow and indicate what the problem is. If it’s unclear what the problem is, reread the question; the questions frequently include instructions to avoid certain characters (dollar signs, NA, etc.). If a text box is highlighted in yellow, the problem might be that you exceeded the character count, which is included in the question. (Characters include spaces and punctuation. Text should be entered without any paragraph marks or line breaks, bullet points, etc.) E-mail addresses will not be recognized as valid if they don’t include the @ sign and a recognized suffix (.com, .edu, etc.) URLs for websites should include http://.

I have a question about how to answer one of the questions in the survey. Whom can I contact for guidance?

E-mail support at bsurveys@bloomberg.net. Survey support is available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.

How can I make sure our school submitted its survey?

Click on the URL in the invitation you received. If you or anyone else at your school has previously submitted that survey, you will be denied access, and you will receive a message indicating that the survey has already been submitted. If the survey has not yet been submitted, you will be able to access the survey. Do not contact Bloomberg Businessweek to confirm receipt of your survey until you’ve tried to confirm receipt on your own.

Does Bloomberg Businessweek employ any data standards?

Yes. Bloomberg Businessweek follows the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s MBA Program Reporting Criteria, as well as the MBA Career Services Council’s Standards for Reporting MBA Employment Statistics (March 2012) in appropriate sections of the surveys. Recent changes to the CSC standards including world geographic regions have been incorporated in the surveys.

How can I make sure our school submitted its survey?

Click on the URL in the invitation you received. If you or anyone else at your school has previously submitted that survey, you will be denied access, and you will receive a message indicating that the survey has already been submitted. If the survey has not yet been submitted, you will be able to access the survey. Do not contact Bloomberg Businessweek to confirm receipt of your survey until you’ve tried to confirm receipt on your own.

Our school has already completed this survey. Why do we keep getting reminders?

For most schools we have multiple contacts, and all of them receive invitations to complete the same surveys. When one contact completes a survey, reminders to that contact—and that contact only—are turned off. Contacts who did NOT complete the survey will continue to receive reminders, even though the school’s survey has already been submitted. If you, or someone using your invitation, completed the survey, and you continue to receive reminders, there’s an easy way to find out if the survey has been properly submitted. See: “How can I make sure our school submitted its survey?”

I submitted my survey, but I need to make a change. What do I do?

Before submitting your survey, you should make sure that all the information is accurate and as complete as possible. Check numbers, names, spelling, and grammar; make sure e-mail addresses and website URLs work. Do not leave questions blank if it’s avoidable. (Substantially incomplete surveys will be rejected.) You should not need to make any changes after submitting your survey. If, however, you discover a substantive error in your submission, or you need to add information that was previously unavailable, contact survey support at bsurveys@bloomberg.net. We will send you an editing link that, along with your user name and password, will allow you to access your previously submitted survey and make the necessary changes. IMPORTANT: When using the editing link, you MUST submit the survey after making your changes; if you don’t, your changes won’t be saved. You can submit your survey (and use the editing link to reaccess it) as many times as you need to.

What’s the General Survey for?

The General Survey is used to gather information that is used in all the graduate profiles (Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, Executive MBA, Distance MBA, and Non-degree Executive Education). It is REQUIRED for ALL graduate profiles. If you complete a program-specific survey (e.g. Full-Time MBA) without also completing the General Survey, you will NOT get a profile. If you only complete the Undergraduate Survey you do not need to complete the General Survey.

We have two different Full-Time MBA programs. How can we create profiles for both of them?

You can’t. Only one profile per program type (Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, etc.) is allowed. When you are deciding which program to profile, we strongly urge you to profile the biggest (or most popular) program—it’s the one most visitors to the Bloomberg Businessweek website will be interested in. We rank undergraduate business programs annually, full-time MBA programs in even-numbered years, and part-time MBA, executive MBA, and non-degree executive education programs in odd-numbered years. If one of your programs is in the process of being ranked, you should profile that program. Do NOT attempt to “combine” or “blend” two programs into one (by summing or averaging data). Do NOT attempt to “reclassify” a program (using the Executive MBA survey to describe your Part-Time MBA program, for example).

How do you determine who receives the survey invitations at each school?

Once a year, in May, we distribute a Contact Update Survey to all our current survey contacts asking them to update their contact information. Schools are asked to designate contacts for specific surveys (General, Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, etc.) Invitations for each of the surveys go to the contacts specified by the school in that survey.

What’s the best way to complete the Contact Update Survey to make sure we don’t miss future survey invitations?

The Contact Update Survey permits schools to designate up to three contacts for each of seven surveys: General, Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, Executive MBA, Distance MBA, Non-Degree Executive Education, and Undergraduate Business. While any contact who receives an invitation to the Contact Update Survey can make changes to the survey, the survey must be complete before it’s submitted. That means it must list contacts for ALL the surveys the school wants to receive. For that reason, we STRONGLY SUGGEST that one contact at each school collect all the updated contact information and enter it in the survey.

To make sure someone at your school receives the invitations in the event that one contact is sick or on vacation, we suggest listing at least two, but ideally three, contacts per survey. It’s O.K. to list the same contact for more than one survey, but do NOT list the same person as a contact for a single survey more than once, and do NOT list multiple contacts with the same e-mail address for a single survey. The idea is to send the invitation to as many e-mail addresses at your institution as possible to ensure delivery. Identical contacts or identical e-mail addresses for the same survey defeats that purpose.

If you’re providing contacts for any of the graduate surveys (Full-Time MBA, Part-Time MBA, Executive MBA, Distance MBA, or Non-Degree Executive Education), you must also provide contacts for the General Survey. To make sure that the General Survey is completed by one of the graduate contacts, we STRONGLY SUGGEST that the contacts supplied for the General Survey include at least one of the contacts for the graduate surveys. The General Survey is REQUIRED for any graduate profile. If, for example, your school completes the Full-Time MBA Survey but fails to complete the General Survey, your school will NOT get a Full-Time MBA Profile on the Bloomberg Businessweek website. The General Survey is not required for an Undergraduate Business profile.

Are there any special steps my school should take to make sure the survey invitations don’t get trapped in our spam filters?

Yes. To make sure you receive invitations, reminders and other important email
communications concerning these surveys, please notify your IT administrator that the emails will be coming from bsurveys@bloomberg.net and that the domain name is sgizmo.com.

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European Clothiers Cash In on U.S. College Ties

F&M: From the school (left) and the clothier

Franklin & Marshall College may not have the cachet of Yale University in the eyes of many Americans, but for trendy European teens the Pennsylvania liberal arts school easily trumps the Ivy League icon. The school’s moniker is emblazoned on sweatshirts and other garb sold by an Italian company of the same name that Europe’s youth can’t seem to get enough of. While few of those wearing the clothes know about the school, “I don’t think they care,” says Entheo Leung, a salesman at London’s Selfridges department store, which sells the clothing line in a display with decades-old pictures of F&M athletic teams. “They just know it’s a brand everyone is wearing, and they want it.”

Italian designers Giuseppe Albarelli and Andrea Pensiero started the Franklin & Marshall clothing line after finding an old sweatshirt from the school at a New York flea market in the 1990s. Without getting approval from the school, located in the old mill town of Lancaster, they began selling $43 T-shirts, $265 tracksuits, and other garments, using the school’s name to stand out among preppy clothiers such as Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) and Ralph Lauren (RL).

Companies have long used imagined school logos such as “State University” or “Ivy Rugby Club” on their clothing. Now, Franklin & Marshall and other European brands eager to lure fickle 18- to 24-year-olds are forging business ties to real U.S. colleges. “This is a move by brands to reinforce some authenticity around what they do,” says Lorna Hall, retail editor at fashion forecaster WGSN in London. “The U.S. preppy college look translates well to Southern Europe. The Italians in particular love the formality and detail of it.”

British retailer Jack Wills, which calls itself the “University Outfitters,” sponsors club polo teams at Yale and Harvard (and has formal licensing deals with the Oxford and Cambridge rugby and polo teams in England). Gant, founded in New Haven in 1949 but now Swedish-owned, has a deal with Yale to sell $115 button-down shirts bearing the school’s name. This year, Gant took the collection to the U.K., Europe, and Japan and is putting as much as 25 percent of its marketing budget behind the Yale shirts, says Chief Executive Officer Dirk-Jan Stoppelenburg. “For us it was about rediscovering who we originally are,” Stoppelenburg says.

Franklin & Marshall (the company, which didn’t respond to requests for comment) signed a licensing deal with F&M (the school) in 2003 after using its name without permission for several years. The brand’s popularity has spread north from Italy and taken hold in Britain. In 2011 the company opened a store-within-a-store at Selfridges. “It’s selling really well,” says Leung, the department store clerk. “Christmas time was crazy. The higher prices actually attract [young people], and their parents are usually buying anyway.”

The college benefits not only from the additional revenue but also from greater visibility abroad, says Cass Cliatt, who helps oversee the school’s licensing deals. “We are fortunate to work with a European company that promotes F&M around the world,” she says. In 2010, the company also donated €100,000 ($125,000) to fund a four-year scholarship for one student, and this spring executives met with the college president for the first time, Cliatt says.

Apparel licensing deals are negotiated country by country and typically cost the licensee about 10 percent of the wholesale price of each garment, says Chris Evans of Oxford Limited, which manages licensing for the University of Oxford. Cliatt declined to discuss the terms of her school’s agreement with the Italian company.

One group of frequent collegiate consumers might not be shelling out to emulate the academic look any time soon: alumni, normally one of the target markets for such apparel. “It’s fantastic for the school that this company is marketing F&M as a high-end brand,” says Adam Marcus, a grad now working at a Boston venture capital firm. “But it’s unfathomable that I would pay $265 for a sweat suit that I got for free in college as a soccer player.”

The bottom line: European brands seeking to cash in on the preppy look are using more logos of American universities on their clothing.

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MBA Journal: Looking Forward

In just a few short days the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management full-time MBA Class of 2012 will graduate. Gown-clad, they will take a brief walk across a stage, exchange a handshake for a scroll, and—with that one-minute exercise—they will have come to the close of a grueling, rewarding, and ultimately life-changing two years. “They,” not “we.” While all my former classmates close this defining chapter of our lives, I’ll be standing on the sidelines, wishing them well and preparing for my next set of classes.

I couldn’t be happier about my decision to take a full-time position at Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts after my summer internship and switch to the part-time MBA program. I have a job that excites me with a company that inspires me. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel a twinge of sadness that all my peers are moving on, leaving me in their wake. After all, these are the people I imagined having by my side at graduation: the faces I saw day in and day out, the people who shared the highs and lows of that crazy first-year roller coaster ride. And now they’re dispersing, trading Rotman’s lecture halls and libraries for cubicles and boardrooms. Many classmates are spending their last months of freedom seeking adventure around the world before taking their posts at Bain, Nike (NKE), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), to name a few; others are still pursuing the right opportunity in this challenging market. Although I can’t exactly call myself a member of the Class of 2012, I’ll always consider that group of students my comrades, and I look forward to seeing them rise to prominence in the years ahead, wherever they end up.

Despite the sad fact that these familiar faces will no longer grace Rotman’s hallways, there’s a lot to look forward to. For one thing, the upside of losing a whole cohort of students is that you gain another; there will be a new crop of fresh-faced MBAs to interact with and learn from—another opportunity to add a new layer to my ever-expanding network. Another plus? For several years now a brand new state-of-the-art facility has been under construction adjacent to the existing building, set to usher in an exciting new era for the school. The Class of 2012 was in the unfortunate position of bearing the brunt of the construction-phase inconveniences (jackhammering during class, for example—as if it weren’t hard enough to stay focused in accounting), without the eventual payoff. Luckily for me, I’ll be carrying out the remainder of my MBA career in the shiny new Rotman building, which opens its doors Sept. 5.

Although I won’t be taking part in next week’s milestone event, I did recently celebrate a little milestone of my own. May 2 marked one full year since I first walked through the doors of the Four Seasons headquarters as a nervous and excited intern. Fast-forward to the present, and we’ve come full circle: Occupying the cubicle next to mine is our freshly minted social media marketing intern, who hails from Rotman, no less. As I help our new intern get the lay of land, I’m struck by how quickly time has passed. It seems like just yesterday I was asking the same questions I’m now answering. It’s remarkable how much I’ve learned in a year; but one of the things I enjoy most about my job is that the learning is never done. This is true in most fields, of course, but it’s especially amplified in the fast-moving, ever-evolving world of social media, in which new platforms crop up by the minute and become household names nearly overnight.

I may be dusting off my book bag instead of tossing my cap next week, but for myself and for the graduating Class of 2012, the future is bright. And while I’m envious that many of them have taken their last exam, I can’t deny a part of me is content to linger longer in the scholarly realm … well, a little longer anyway. With that, I’d like to salute my former classmates, soon to join the ranks of Rotman alumni. Dear friends, colleagues, and future business superstars, I think three little words (and excessive punctuation) sum it up best: YOU DID IT!!!!!! Congratulations, best of luck, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Despite her fears of quant, this former editor in book publishing was driven to earn an MBA when she realized she had nowhere else to go in her previous career. Living in Sydney, Australia, where Erb worked for the higher education division of McGraw-Hill, she longed for home. She returned to her native Canada and began the MBA program at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management (Rotman Full-Time MBA Profile) in 2010. She said in an interview that she sees herself somewhere in marketing and hopes to use her creativity post MBA.

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(Corrects money spent on acquisitions in the bottom line.)

When it launched in 2007, Chegg quickly became known as the Netflix (NFLX) for textbooks. Rather than spending $100 or so on a physics or biology tome used for one semester, students turned to Chegg to rent books for as much as 80 percent off the cover price. The startup’s bright orange boxes became as recognizable on college campuses as Netflix’s red envelopes are in living rooms. Chegg received glowing press coverage for disrupting a stodgy industry and saving students hundreds of dollars a year. Venture capitalists fell for the idea, putting more than $140 million into the company by early 2010.

That’s when Dan Rosensweig, the former head of Activision Blizzard’s (ATVI) Guitar Hero franchise and previously a Yahoo! (YHOO) executive, took the helm. He quickly realized that Chegg, for all the positive attention, was a money pit. The company was approaching $100 million in annual revenue but hemorrhaging cash. Chegg bought any book requested by a user, regardless of its likelihood of being rented again. It also spent heavily on shipping and on a warehouse in Kentucky. After a review of the business, Rosensweig found that Chegg was six months away from going broke. “The company was truly at risk, it just didn’t know it,” says Rosensweig. To fix things, he raised an additional $75 million, hired a new finance chief, and culled the textbook catalog, keeping only titles he knew could earn back their purchase price.

Then he turned to Chegg’s other, more existential threats. The iPad made its debut shortly after Rosensweig took charge, setting in motion a rapid shift toward digital consumption—including e-books. Around the same time, a number of young technology companies began reimagining education, building online platforms for student-teacher interaction and other services that displace the textbook as the nexus of the classroom. “There’s a huge opportunity for teaching oneself and a huge opportunity for learning online,” says Pooja Sankar, chief executive officer of Piazza, which is developing a question-and-answer forum for students and professors.

Though textbook rentals remain the source of most of the company’s $200 million in sales in 2011, Rosensweig is preparing for a time when students no longer buy—or rent—printed books. He’s spent around $50 million on six acquisitions over the past two years. His aim is to turn Chegg into a digital hub providing everything a college student needs, from homework help to discounts on dorm room decorations, and “to save them time, save them money, and make them smarter.”

To create what he calls “the largest connected network of students,” Rosensweig and his 350-person team plan to begin testing an enhanced Chegg.com on June 1, giving them the summer to work out kinks before the back-to-school traffic boom in August. The site weaves together all the services Chegg has bought or developed. Students can log in using their Facebook (FB) credentials, giving Chegg.com information about a user’s connections on the social network and where they go to school. A freshman interested in economics can see reviews of all the relevant classes offered by her university and the professors who teach them, information powered by CourseRank, a 2010 acquisition. Once she knows her schedule, Chegg offers her options to rent or buy the books on her syllabus, in digital or physical form. When classes begin, Chegg acquisitions including Cramster, Notehall, and Student of Fortune let her share notes with classmates, download study guides from professors, and contribute to Q&A forums offering homework help. Chegg is also following the lead of Apple (AAPL) and building an app store where third-party developers can sell their education-related software.

Some of the new services are marketplaces, where Chegg facilitates transactions between students. A person struggling through a biology assignment can pose a question about mitosis, and another student might volunteer to answer for free or charge a few bucks, with Chegg taking an undisclosed cut of the proceeds. Other products require a monthly subscription fee, and the site will also include daily-deal-type offers. Chegg also generates money from Zinch, a site acquired in 2011. It’s a free service that helps high school students narrow their college search and find their perfect university. College recruiters pay Chegg to connect with the students that show interest in their school. In total, Rosensweig estimates that Chegg’s non-textbook sales will double as a percentage of total revenue this year from last, though he won’t disclose specific numbers.

One area Chegg isn’t counting on for immediate growth: digital textbooks. The company recruited a small team of Israeli engineers to create an e-book reader built on the new Web standard HTML5, allowing customers to download texts to any device with a browser. It’s not Chegg’s main focus, however. Rosensweig says the digital textbook market will remain small for some time, and he prefers to steer clear of Apple and Amazon.com (AMZN), which sell proprietary textbooks for their own popular tablets. Chegg also passed up an opportunity to buy Kno, a company founded by former Chegg CEO Osman Rashid, which was building an education-focused tablet, according to three people involved in the discussions but who declined to be identified because the negotiations were private. Kno abandoned its tablet as the iPad gained popularity.

Chegg’s new website is like what Facebook might have become had it remained limited to universities, says Michelle Hummel, CEO of digital marketing agency Web Media Expert. Students and educators are “looking for something other than Facebook that’s more targeted to their needs,” she says.

The bottom line: Chegg spent nearly $50 million on acquisitions to create a hub for students. It doesn’t expect e-books to be a big part of its future business.

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