Anne Donoghue spent 14 years in the music industry as a publicist and product manager with Time Warner. Among the "products" she managed were such icons as Enya, Fleetwood Mac, and Barenaked Ladies.
When Time Warner merged with AOL, shifted its public relations operations to Burbank, and shut down the New York office almost entirely, she barely had time to notice. The layoffs came six months after the 9/11 attacks, which she and her husband had witnessed from their West Village apartment. One of the victims was her sister's husband.
For several years, Donoghue tried to bring normalcy to her sister's five children while also dealing with her mother's serious health problems. She worked on a series of freelance projects, but it wasn't easy to reinvent herself. Then she saw a New York Times article about Back in Business.
Without an MBA, and primarily experienced in marketing and communications, she was initially overwhelmed. But Tuck's Online Bridge Program tutorials in finance and accounting helped, as did the clarity of the teaching. By the end of Back in Business's module four, she could apply formulas she'd learned, read an annual report "without freaking out," and utilize her new skills for a team project assignment to analyze the relative risks and merits of the Disney/Pixar merger.
"I learned to think a different way," she says. "I gained tremendous confidence by taking—and sticking with—the program, especially as a nonfinance person." She also gained another professional family—her classmates. Through them and other Back in Business contacts, she explored public relations opportunities and is now director of publicity for the American Kennel Club. "I didn't want flex time," she says. "I was ready to plunge in."
