Talk about one cool, calm guy. Brian Rankin’s professional life right now is demanding. As the
Philadelphia-based vice president, chief
regulatory counsel of the cable division
at Comcast, all the legal minutia of
the pending merger with Time-Warner
Cable means hours and hours of detailed
work. And he leads a 10-person team on
the constant crusade toward its goals.
Yet on this particular workday, with
issues nipping at his heels and emails
pouring into his inbox, Rankin sounds
weekend-relaxed — his banter stress-free and easy — as he recounts his 21
months in the Culverhouse College of
Commerce Executive MBA program
in 2004. The degree heaps atop an
undergraduate degree from Illinois
State University (in his home state) and
a juris doctor from DePaul University.
He addresses the Time-Warner Cable
matter: “It involves a large amount of
work and at times can be very intense.
It’s also really a lot of fun and one of the
most interesting things I’ve ever done.”
Rankin puts an equally positive spin
on the weekends he spent in Tuscaloosa
soaking up all facets of business. Making
the trip from Nashville, Tennessee
(where he worked at the time) every
other Thursday night and wedging the
papers, reading and projects into the 14
days in between, was not easy. After all,
he had a day job with XO Communications
and a courtship underway with Soozung
Sa, his future wife.
“I was looking for two things to fulfill
the interest in business I’d had for a long
time,” he explains. “One was academic
quality and the other was value for money.
Alabama’s program hit the center of the
target on both. And it was a manageable
drive.” At the end of that drive was a
packed curriculum: marketing, finance,
accounting, operations management,
strategy and communications. “Not
in the sense of the communications
business that I work on everyday,” he
adds of the latter course, “but a class
that addressed the personal ability to
communicate, to draft documents, even
what a memo should look like. I can't
emphasize its importance enough, not
only for your company but also for your
career success.”
Rankin had already achieved success
but sought more knowledge. At 41,
he realized the value of the EMBA
experience, which also included a
weeklong academic group trip to Vienna
and Prague to meet with business
professionals and see how their
businesses fit into the culture. “I had
spent my career as an in-house counsel
and worked for a company,” he says of
his back-to-school process. “You're
really wearing a business hat along with
being a lawyer. Beyond my interest in
what the courses would cover, I knew
an MBA would help me in my career —
which turned out to be true.”
