Initially interested in kinesiology with an eye toward becoming a physical therapist, Brooke Jones felt that she wouldn’t be “truly satisfied” with that career path. “I’ve been an athlete my entire life,” she says, “and there were times when I was the only girl on my team. Being a woman in sports is something I was super passionate about.”
BDIC gave her the opportunity to infuse that passion into an academic major. Jones envisioned a path that would lead her into the world of sports management and designed a major that combined courses in business, social network analysis, graphic design, and multimedia recording among many others.
Instead of being a sports manager focused on, as she says, “money, money, money,” Jones hopes to cultivate a management style that is “invested in who the athlete is as a person and what they stand for.” Mindful of injecting social change into the business of sports, she’s especially interested in representing women athletes and helping them to “promote themselves as people and reach their goals outside of sports.”
Learn more about how Brooke and other students customized their UMass Amherst experience by designing their own majors through BDIC.