Ready for the Big Leagues
Jillian Isenstadt wanted to get into the game.
Determined to graduate from Suffolk with real-world experience, the international business and marketing major joined Suffolk in the Hub, a student-run integrated marketing agency based at the Sawyer Business School.
There, one of her assignments has put her in the big leagues—literally.
Isenstadt led a team of six students working with the Free Jacks, New England’s professional rugby team who have won back-to-back titles with Major League Rugby, the premier North American rugby league.
In March of last year, to help promote the team ahead of their 2024 season, Suffolk in the Hub organized a media event for the Free Jacks at Suffolk’s Larry E. Smith and Michael S. Smith Court, which attracted news teams from several Boston TV stations. While the cameras rolled, players explained the basics of their sport and demonstrated a wide range of rugby drills to the delight of students in the audience.
“While Boston is a great sports town, our goal was to raise awareness about New England’s newest pro sports team,” says Isenstadt, who has previously conducted marketing research for the Brockton Rox baseball team. “We wanted to let people know what the Free Jacks are all about.”
Mission accomplished. In January, the Free Jacks officially added Isenstadt to their roster as a senior marketing and public relations intern. “I’ve learned that pitching a story to the media is so competitive,” says Isenstadt. “You may not always get coverage, but when you do, it’s well worth it.”
Giving students a chance to put their marketing, social media, graphic design, and public relations skills to work is just what Suffolk Marketing Instructor Kimberley Ring Allen had in mind when she launched Suffolk in the Hub with her students in May 2022. “They feel empowered by this program because they interact with professionals and get a head start in real-world environments,” she says.
Since that time, more than 40 students have joined the Suffolk in the Hub team, working with close to 20 small businesses and nonprofits including Twin Bee Coffee, R-YOLO, South Shore Children’s Chorus, Homeport Stays, and NeighborHealth, providing them with website development, content and social media marketing, and podcast production. On campus, they’ve created marketing campaigns for the Division of Advancement and Suffolk Votes.
Working alongside Isenstadt on the Free Jacks marketing campaign was sports management major Colin Sheehan, who was part of a Suffolk in the Hub team that helped run a Free Jacks rugby clinic for high school players, held at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Quincy, the team’s home field. The event, to support the New England Patriots Toy Drive, allowed Suffolk students to literally do it all: setting up tents, checking people in, filming drills, and posting messages and photos on social media.
Sheehan—a Sandwich, Massachusetts, native whose mother, Jennifer Doyle, MPA ’98, is a Suffolk alumna—has relished the chance to combine his love sports and business. Working with Suffolk in the Hub, he says, has taught him “how we all had to collaborate, know each other’s strengths, and be able to communicate in a professional way to deliver what we planned to do.”
Suffolk Marketing Instructor Skip Perham, who also serves as director of the Sports Management Program, says that working with the Free Jacks gives students a “competitive edge” in a highly competitive field.
“It’s so important for current students to keep grinding it out and getting as much experience on their résumés as possible.,” he says. “Working with the Free Jacks is a lot about students building their network of people in the industry who can advocate for them and their abilities to get the job done.”