CLASS NOTES
O U T O F T H E PA R K
OFF&RUNNING The first year Maria Sapienza, Comm ’12, spent on the job has to be the grand-slam experience of all time for a baseball fan. She had a front row seat on the Chicago Cubs run to win the 2016 World Series. BY C LA RE PETERSON, COMM ’10
“What the team’s run did to impact the lives of millions of people around the world will stick with me forever,” Sapienza says. “And my role gave me the incredible opportunity to be a small part of that experience.” A small part of what the Chicago Tribune called the end of “the most epic drought in sports history.” Sometimes timing is everything. Sapienza was working as an on-air producer at ESPN in Milwaukee while also traveling to Chicago during the baseball season to work as a guest services ambassador at Wrigley Field.
In 2016, that part-time job led to a position in the Chicago Cubs front office. “If it wasn’t for my passion for the team,” she says, “I wouldn’t have had the ambition to work so hard just to get my foot in the door.” Today she is a coordinator in the event operations department, focusing on logistics for game days and other events at Wrigley Field. “Our venue is 100 years old, so we are constantly collecting data and analyzing where we can implement changes to make the customer experience that much better the next time around,” she says.
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