A Culture of Care: Mentorship Sets McCormack Graduate Program Apart

When Becca Smith first learned to block, set, and spike as a competitive high school volleyball player in Nashville, Tennessee, she didn’t realize that she was laying the foundation for an exciting career in sport management. Execution on the court is like successful professional development—it relies on preparation, trust in your work ethic, and starts with accepting coaching from those who have come before you. 

As a senior at Pepperdine University, Becca was determined to pursue a career in law. While sports had always represented a passion and healthy outlet in her life, she thought her involvement in sport had ended when her playing days came to a halt from a devastating back injury in high school. During the spring of her senior year, she crossed paths with Karina Herold, MBA/MS ’08, the then deputy director of athletics and senior woman administrator at Pepperdine. After an informal discussion with Karina, Becca found herself accepting an internship with the athletics department. By the end of her final semester in college, Becca’s career path was starting to evolve, and she found herself drawn to a career in college athletics. Soon thereafter, she traded her plans to attend law school for a full-time job working in the business and events office in the Pepperdine athletics department. She had met her coach in Herold and was starting a different avenue into sports, this time on the business side. 

As a full-time employee, Becca Smith made an immediate impact. A quick learner with a great attitude, Becca found ways to go the extra mile and be an effective team player. She was starting to remind Karina of another former Pepperdine student with similar skills and drive, whom Karina had mentored just a few years earlier.  

Now the Senior Vice President of Brands and Properties at MarketCast, Danielle Byrd, MBA/MS ‘16 had been in the same shoes as Becca. She, too, had graduated from Pepperdine and worked for Karina in the athletics department for two years before following Herold’s advice to apply as a dual-degree MBA/MS student in the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management at UMass. As a program alum, Karina knew graduate-level education in sport management provided cutting-edge professional opportunities and skill development that set students apart from their peers. She was also confident that the experiential, industry-facing learning opportunities McCormack designed into its curriculum would provide Danielle the time and space to really examine her potential pathways into sport management while fine-tuning her strengths and skills. 

McCormack did just that, and more. “The rich academic and practical experiences that are intentional and a unique aspect of McCormack’s grad program helped me discover what a meaningful career in sports looked like for me," Byrd noted. Mentorship from senior-level McCormack alums, a marketing internship with the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and a three-month consulting project with Octagon helped organize Danielle’s career path and establish confidence in her abilities. She left UMass seasoned, prepared, and game ready, leveraging her work in school with Octagon into an entry-level role at the agency, a leader in sport sponsorship consulting. 

This established pathway to success was top of mind for Karina, when just a few months into Becca’s full-time job at Pepperdine, the two sat down to develop a career plan. With ten-plus years of industry experience under her belt, Herold knew that hiring and mentoring exceptional employees like Becca and Danielle meant eventually pointing them toward their next move. Karina emphasized the importance of laying the next brick to the foundation and used Danielle’s path to illustrate to Becca what the next chapter of her career journey could look like. Two years later, Becca applied to McCormack’s number one globally ranked graduate program and was admitted for Fall 2021. 

After being accepted into the program, Becca was still skeptical–did she really want to leave a job she loved to move to a state she had never been to and pursue graduate school? She remained coachable and took a leap of faith based on Karina’s advice, and just a few weeks into the program realized what differentiated UMass from other programs. “This program is unmatched because of its people. The professors, the students, the alumni: there is a level of investment, passion, and care that is extremely hard to find in a graduate program. It motivates you in a unique way.”  

During her time in Amherst, Becca learned the value of building and maintaining meaningful connections. She also learned the importance of going deeper, rather than wider, while building her network. The relationships and network Becca cultivated started to open doors for her, including the opportunity to work at the 2022 Super Bowl and 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship, alongside Herold–who is now vice president of major events at the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission. For her summer internship in between the two years in the MBA/MS dual-degree program, Smith was looking for roles in strategy or market research and discussed her career ambitions with Danielle Byrd. Byrd was able to offer Becca visibility to open internship roles at MarketCast in Los Angeles and moved to hire her quickly after the initial interviews. Knowing the caliber of student she was going to get from UMass and hearing strong recommendations from both UMass faculty and her former manager and mentor, Karina, allowed Danielle to look no further and set up a robust intern experience for Becca during the summer of 2022. 

“When Becca joined our team, we were interested in understanding her strengths, where she wanted to go, and how we could design her time with us to ensure we were helping her progress towards those career goals,” said Byrd. A few weeks into the internship, Becca quickly became an integral part of Danielle’s business development team and helped MarketCast win clients from the ground up. By the end of the summer, Becca was asked to stay on as a part-time employee through the fall semester, extending the impact of her role and deepening her relationship with Danielle. 

Things have come full circle for Becca, now a 2023 MBA/MS dual-degree graduate of the program. She came to UMass on the recommendation of an invested alumni, spent a summer interning for another alumnus from the same career tree, and upon graduation was hired by Zaileen Janmohamad, MBA/MS ’05, President & CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee, as manager of asset development for the organization tasked with hosting both a Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup in 2026. Janmohamed was another connection Becca cultivated during her first year in the program, as she looked for strong women leaders with ties to the program. When Zaileen accepted her new role at the Bay Area Host Committee and started to build her team, Becca was her first call.  

“There is immense trust, expectation, and familiarity within the UMass network. Similar to how I broke into the industry and was hired by UMass alum David Wright at MLS, I hired Becca after many phone conversations without having ever met her in person. I trusted and knew that her UMass education had prepared her well and that she had previously worked with two women I trust immensely, Karina and Danielle. We are all cut from the same cloth and have the same high expectations and tough, resilient work ethic. Our collective experiences as UMass alums are what sets us apart,” noted Zaileen.

As Becca embarks on her next chapter, she is grateful for the opportunities UMass and her mentors provided, facilitating access to rooms people in her position would not ordinarily be in, and engagement with thought leaders she would never have met otherwise. Her career arc offers a template for how McCormack’s culture of alumni mentorship and exceptional industry leadership can propel students forward. Becca is honored to be a part of the legacy of McCormack women in sport leadership roles and is excited to invest in the next generation of women following in her path.