Anthony Argenziano ’26

I grew up in New Jersey and studied economics and statistics at Columbia. I had always wanted to work for a professional baseball team, and over time, it became clear that the MBA skill set aligned with the kind of sports management role I wanted.

The Silver Scholars program let me flip the typical order of operations on its head. I could get a practical, pre-professional education first, build my network, then grow into a full-time role. SOM was one of the only places offering that kind of immediate-entry MBA, and I felt incredibly fortunate to be admitted.

Being a Silver Scholar means you’re 21, 22, or 23 in class with people who have years of work experience. My learning team and I really embraced that. I contributed recent academic experience, and they taught me how things worked in the real world. From the Silver Scholar perspective, your peers’ insights—what they did before SOM, what they’re hoping to do after, what they liked and didn’t like in the workplace—can help you narrow your focus in a much smarter way.

The baseball industry is really opaque. The Career Development Office (CDO) at SOM helped by giving me structured support for a very unstructured process. It involved lots of email-driven networking and league meetings, and the CDO coaches’ instincts about networking and storytelling were exactly right.

Courses like Negotiations, Economics, and The Workforce have been directly useful in my job, especially when it comes to negotiating with player agents or thinking about team structure. In each class, you pick up skills and lessons that add up to a more well-rounded version of your professional self.

I’m very group-oriented, and SOM has taught me to think critically about the kinds of teams I join and how to build groups that help each other grow. I think a lot about the “perfect team” now—what combination of skills, personalities, and backgrounds brings out the best in people? Some of that insight has come from the coursework, but most comes from just being in this environment and seeing how SOM works. If you pour into this community, it will give back to you.