If children are singing and dancing along with Alvin and the Chipmunks on Christmas day this year, Christina Glorioso will be happy. So will her bosses.

Her company makes the video game involving the animated characters. That's Majesco's specialty – games for children and women that involve movement on the part of viewers. The games play on the Nintendo Wii, Kinect for Xbox 360 and other motion-control gaming systems. The company's Zumba Fitness game was the No. 1 fitness title of 2011, she says, selling over 3 million copies worldwide.

Glorioso came to Majesco in 2011 after eight years with Viacom where she was most recently vice president of marketing at MTV Games. The unit owned the Rock Band and Dance Central franchises.

In her current role at Majesco she oversees all aspects of marketing, including brand strategy, research, packaging, creative, PR, web, social and traditional media. She says she returned to her alma mater for graduate study in business because she wanted to work in sports. That might seem a curious choice because Notre Dame has no master's in sports administration. But the MBA program's flexibility allowed her to customize her coursework, she says.

Through a fellow Domer she eventually met the president of NBC Sports and later interned with the organization. Her first post-MBA job was with the sports and entertainment marketing company SFX Sports, where for three years she got to work with the host cities of the Super Bowl, planning local fan events, corporate hospitality and sponsorships. Glorioso says the collaborative, team-oriented atmosphere of the MBA program is very welcoming and supportive of women. "It's phenomenal."

That support continues after graduation through alumni networking. Glorioso says the entertainment and sports industries are difficult to break into, so she does what she can to help her fellow "Domers." While she was at MTV Networks she created an internship program that continues to place three Notre Dame students a year with the company. She says she keeps in touch with about 10 former Notre Dame students who have entered the field after speaking with her.

She says she's also been to several events organized by ND Women Connect, a support group for Notre Dame's women alumni.

"They're usually filled with extraordinary women—extraordinary in business, extraordinary in the humanities, great at overcoming obstacles. And they are really supportive of each other," she says.

Carol Anderson remembers dropping by the dean's office during her first week in Notre Dame's MBA program in 1998. She wanted to introduce herself and say hello to the newly appointed leader of the college, Carolyn Woo.

The dean invited her to sit down and asked about the new student's expectations and what she wanted from the program. Woo shared all the options the student could consider to customize the MBA experience to her interests.

"At that point I realized how much more [the program] could offer me," Anderson says. "That is something that was very meaningful and has stayed with me all the years since."

Anderson, who was born in Belize, was especially interested in international business and over the course of her MBA experience studied in Chile and interned in South Africa.

Following graduation she worked in management consulting, earned another master's (accountancy) from the University of Southern California (Dean Woo wrote her a recommendation), and continued her career in finance for Best Buy in Minneapolis. She later returned to her home city of Los Angeles as a finance manager for Starbucks. During 2010 she was traveling the world and delving into new opportunities that might require a move abroad.

Carol remains an active member of the Black Alumni of Notre Dame community, serving on its board of directors.

She says that along with a quality education and strong international component, she valued the environment of the MBA program.

"It's such a peaceful, spiritually focused, ethically inclined program. That was key for me. I'm a practicing Episcopalian who was raised in the Roman Catholic school system. I really appreciated that people [faculty, staff, administrators] approached me from a frank, honest, open place.

"That kind of access, support, and attention could only come from Notre Dame and a moderately sized program where faculty are still directly involved with each student."

She says Notre Dame is not for everybody, but for those who desire a community that provides a quality education, strong ethical component, extensive network and resources, and manageable cost of living, they need look no further.

Marianne Heavey says she learned the power of the Notre Dame alumni network even before she set foot on campus to begin her one-year MBA program.

Just before starting the program, she says, she was sent a survey asking what she wanted to do after graduation. She filled it out and quickly received back names of five Notre Dame alumni contacts at companies for which she wanted to work.

"I sent out letters on, I think, a Saturday, and Tuesday received three emails," she says. "These people had gotten my letters and when they went home from work Monday night had written back. It was through one of those contacts that I got my job at Kraft."

Although the survey-contacts system Heavey describes has changed, many Notre Dame alumni still consider it their responsibility to help students and their fellow alums.

"Other [schools] have similar networks but nothing that comes close."

At Kraft she provides key financial metrics that help sales teams decide whether to go to market with new products for Kraft's many brands, including Nabisco, Cadbury, Planters and Oscar Mayer. Kraft is the largest food manufacturer in North America and second in the world behind Nestle.