Wharton’s executive MBA program hosts a lot of events, but one of our recent panel discussions was particularly unique.  After all, it’s not every day that the School sponsors a women’s networking event  at a San Francisco Giants baseball game much less at a game against the Philadelphia Phillies.  

“The San Francisco Giants are a hot ticket in town,” explains Katherine Lilygren, who manages marketing and admissions at Wharton | San Francisco.  “This event was a great opportunity for us to raise awareness about Wharton’s EMBA program in San Francisco, particularly among professional women.  Diversity is very important in our classes so these types of events provide a wonderful venue for us to spread the word about our program to different audiences.”

Before coming to Wharton’s EMBA program, Hanson Wong, a principal consultant at Risk Management Solutions in New Jersey, had never swum in the waters of Antarctica, hiked across a desert or summited a volcano. In fact, he had never even gone camping much less rappelled down mountains or zip lined   across steep chasms. However, during his two years at Wharton, he did all of these things through the Wharton Leadership Ventures Program.

“My first venture was to Antarctica, which most people only ever see from a cruise. We not only camped there, but a few of us also decided to jump in the water twice. How many people can say they did that?” says Wong, noting that he added on a week of hiking in Patagonia after that venture.

Contrary to what might be believed about student life in an executive MBA program, Wharton MBA for Executives students cite the friendships forged with classmates as one of the highlights of their Wharton experience. So how are students able to create such strong bonds?

In case you missed it, Wharton EMBA alumnus Anthony Noto was interviewed on CNBC a few weeks ago to talk about the business of football. A 1999 Wharton graduate, Noto formerly was a media and entertainment analyst at Goldman Sachs before becoming the CFO of the NFL in 2008.

In his first television appearance since joining the NFL, Noto talked with Darren Rovell about the state of the NFL as the season was opening in Pittsburgh. When asked about the growth of the game, Noto said, “We’re continuing to see strong year over year growth in all key fan engagement methods building on the strong success of the Super Bowl in 2008, which had a record audience of 152 million viewers. We’re continuing to see that growth strongly in audience ratings as it relates to preseason games that are up over 20%. The NFL Network’s ratings on a year-to-date basis are also up in the double-digit range.”

As for revenues, Noto explained that the economic environment has clearly hurt discretionary spending, having a negative impact on ticket sales, sponsorship, and advertising. As a result, the revenue forecast is lower than expected a year ago.

When asked about the difference between working at the NFL and on Wall Street, he replied “that would be comparing apples to oranges.”

Read the full interview with Noto.