John Corwin’s Career Path

Rui Sun

UGBA 196

Solly​​ Fulp

Interview Paper

John Corwin’s Career Path

Key Takeaways

        Nowadays, the marketing strategies play a crucial role in getting people’s attention. These strategies have thus become an important factor in sports industry as well. Besides making arrangement for sponsorship deals, marketing plans can also increase viewership and get feedbacks from fans. As a result, these feedbacks become significant for organizing any sports event. As a Statistics major, collecting relevant information and analyzing that information can be a potential career for me. Therefore, I decided to interview John Corwin.

        John Corwin is the director of marketing. He studied at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (2004 - 2008) and achieved his bachelor’s degree in journalism mass communication. To further his secondary studies, he went to Marquette University from 2013 – 2015, where he received his master’s degree in sports leadership. After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he volunteered at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee until June 2009. Then he worked as athletics marketing coordinator in Central Michigan University from July 2009 to May 2010. He started to serve as athletics marketing & corporate sales director in University of West Florida (October 2010 – June 2013). He also worked at Marquette University as marketing assistant when he was pursuing his master’s degree. After he got his master’s degree, he had been serving at Cal and his job title was improved from assistant director of fan experience to director of marketing.

        John has been a massive sports lover since growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and ever since he is fascinated by the competitiveness of sports. After the graduation of university, John started to volunteer in his hometown school for around 2 years. Even though he was not getting paid when he was doing volunteer, he still considered it as priceless experience because he had opportunities to create a strong social network with sports-related individuals and organizations during volunteering period. John claimed that the social networking is more important than GPA to some extent. He stated that in the industry, employers pay more attention on employee’s personal experience; therefore, his sports related activities and volunteer experiences helped him make a strong foundation of his career. Consequently, that is what led to his first job.

        After John getting his first full-time job, he realized that sports industry does not look as ideal as what individuals perceive. He said that not everything is like what he was looking forward before joining the industry and the difference between reality and expectation really hurts at first. People only look up to the sports celebrities and worship their fame and fortune; however, they do not perceive the people who work behind the curtain of celebrities’ success. Those people work extensively and do not get deserved payment. Even though the work takes more energy and time, John still feels appreciated because he loves his career.