Camila Gonzalez is the television host for Major League Soccer coverage in Canada with TSN and served as one of the network's broadcasters for this summer's World Cup. Her path into sports media started far from a broadcast booth, on Tumblr as a preteen, then through kids' radio, journalism school, and a viral video that was never supposed to happen. Born in Cali, Colombia, and raised in Brampton, just outside of Toronto, she has built her career around telling stories that connect culture and sport, with a focus on growing soccer's audience in Canada and creating visibility for the Latin community in Canadian media.

A Head Start on Storytelling

Camila's family left Colombia for Canada when she was three, part of a decision her parents made to find a better future for their family. She found her footing in storytelling young, building close to 100,000 followers on Tumblr by age 13 and landing brand deals before social media was treated as an industry. At 14 she was working a kids' radio show, translating international news into Spanish for a program called Mundo Niños. "I knew journalism was what I wanted to do," she says. By the time she reached journalism school at Ryerson, she had already logged years of on-air experience most classmates hadn't touched.

The Interview That Opened the Door

Her break into sports came almost by accident. While working music and entertainment segments for a Latin radio station, she landed an interview with Bad Bunny that the station didn't think was worth sending a crew for. She brought her own camera, posted it to YouTube, and it drew four million views, catching the attention of the CEO of TLN and Univision Canada. That connection led to her first TV opportunity while she was still in school, right as the network acquired rights to Italian league soccer. "They wanted to find a way to grow soccer in Canada through kind of my lens," she says, and she was handed the halftime show to build a series that highlighted the stories of the teams, athletes and cities in a creative way.

Becoming a One-Woman Crew

Camila built her career on doing more than one job at a time. Early on, she was told she could cover a story but wouldn't get a camera operator or producer, so she learned to film, edit, and color grade her own segments. Ahead of the World Cup, she picked up Italian to prepare to follow Italy's national team, only to pivot when they failed to qualify. "You really have to be a producer first and then you can actually do your job," she says. She also resisted building a personal brand on social media for years before recognizing it as a requirement, not a bonus, in an industry where, as she puts it, "just being good at your craft is not good enough anymore."

Betting on a Ceiling She'd Already Hit

By 2021, Camila had spent years covering Italian soccer and Latin entertainment in Canada but felt she'd hit a ceiling. She left her full-time role with nothing lined up. "I'm going to quit my job not having anything planned and just go with God and see what happens," she says. The timing worked out. Industry contacts led to an opportunity hosting Major League Soccer coverage for TSN, her first move into live television after years of documentary and unscripted work. Within two years, she was on air as one of the network's World Cup broadcasters.

Knowing When to Throw Out the Script

Camila treats preparation as necessary but not sufficient. At the World Cup, she could study one team in depth and still get pulled into a flash interview with a country she'd barely researched. "It is physically impossible for someone to memorize absolutely everything," she says, so she leans on curiosity and improvisation instead. She points to Game and Glory, a nine-part series she produced across 14 countries exploring fan culture ahead of the World Cup, as proof that the best material comes from staying open rather than sticking to a plan. "The best stories happen when you meet someone in person, and all of a sudden you're at a random Argentinian bar in the middle of Seoul."

Sending the Elevator Back Down

Camila's motivation traces back to representation. Growing up, she says it was hard to find a Latina or Latino in mainstream Canadian media for her family to point to. That absence shaped her goal of using her platform to create a path for others, including producing Heart of Goal, a 2022 documentary following immigrant stories within the Canadian men's national team, centered on the family history of a player with Colombian roots. "I want to carve that path so that there are young girls and young boys in our community that can see themselves in Canadian media," she says. After seeing the growth and success of the Hispanic community in the U.S., she wants to see a similar result in Canada, with more opportunities, visibility and resources.

The Advice She'd Give Her Younger Self

Asked what she'd tell a younger version of herself, Camila points to imposter syndrome. "Everyone's kind of faking it," she says. "If you're in a room or you're sat at a table, it is because you belong." She also has advice for young women navigating a male-dominated industry: extend trust carefully. "Not everyone is going to have your best interest in mind," she says. Her broader takeaway is that confidence gets built by doing the things that scare you, not by waiting to feel ready.

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Bud Dupree is a linebacker for the Los Angeles Chargers, heading into his twelfth NFL season after being drafted in the first round by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2015. Born in Macon, Georgia, and raised in Wilkinson County, he played six seasons in Pittsburgh before stops with the Tennessee Titans and his hometown Atlanta Falcons, then joined the Chargers three years ago. Off the field, he's the founder behind Next Play Showcase, a live transfer portal combine built in partnership with Sports Academy that gives unsigned college players a stage in front of scouts, coaches, and brands. The work traces back to a torn ACL that reshaped his priorities, and to a drive to prove that athletes can build far beyond the field.

Small Town, Big Blueprint

Bud grew up in Wilkinson County with limited resources and few examples of what was possible beyond it. That changed when he watched a fellow student athlete, Rel Hillman a superior athlete who gave him hope of becoming one of the best athletes, he would also be the first Division I athlete from his high school that he saw. "It made me realize that being where we're from, with low resources, we can actually make it out and get to that next level," he says. That moment, in ninth grade, is what he points to as lighting the fuse. From there he started paying closer attention to players from a distance, Michael Vick, Cam Newton, Julius Peppers, antonio gates and Von Miller, watching how they carried themselves rather than knowing them personally.

The Injury That Changed the Plan

A torn ACL derailed the trajectory Bud had projected for himself, and he treated the setback as a signal rather than a detour. "This is the perfect time for me to be able to dive into what I really want to do after football, and start focusing on it while I'm still playing," he says. Instead of waiting for retirement to think about life after the game, he used his existing network and platform to start building immediately, while still competing at a high level. It's the inflection point that put him on the path to entrepreneurship rather than just biding time until his career ended.

Solving the Portal's Blind Spot

That mindset produced Next Play Showcase, a partnership with Sports Academy built to address a specific gap: over 2,000 players stuck in the transfer portal with no clear way to stand out. The showcase gives them a live streamed setting to run drills in front of scouts while they collect verified data. Giving scouts a chance to see their investment as well as players a chance to improve their stock. With a good number of scouts and players committed just days after launch the buzz is real. Rather than relying on tape or reputation from their previous school. It also protects programs and players making and receiving high dollar NIL offers. The showcase also connects top-tier players who won't need an introduction with brand and financial guidance opportunities, aiming to become, in his words, the closest thing to an NFL combine that transfer portal and NIL athletes have.

What the League Actually Rewards

Bud is direct about the gap between NIL hype and NFL reality. "People aren't necessarily caring about how highly touted you were," he says. "It's more so making an immediate impact and being available to that organization." He sees players confuse being a highly recruited NIL name with being ready to produce on Sundays, and points to work ethic and week-to-week progress as the actual differentiators once players reach the league.

Find Your Person, Find Your Direction

Asked what he'd tell his younger self, Bud lands on mentorship: find someone who's already been where you want to go, and let them help map the way rather than figuring it out alone. It's advice he applies now with his own kids. To others chasing a similar path, his message is about specificity and follow-through: identify one direction, surround yourself with people already living it, write goals down, and treat every small win as evidence you're building toward something bigger. "The more wins you get, the more people will look at you as a winner," he says.

Legacy On and Off the Field

Bud's why splits evenly between two things still in motion: finishing his playing career on his own terms, and building something durable once it ends. Outside of football and the platform, he's an outdoorsman who spends his free time hunting and fishing with his kids, a side he says rarely makes it onto social media. Both pursuits, on the field and off it, are part of the same throughline: using the access he's earned to open doors for the next player before their career, or their portal window, closes.

Brooke Fletcher is an On-Field Reporter for the Chicago White Sox and a Sideline Reporter for the Big Ten Network, with additional work on Apple TV's Friday Night Baseball. Her path started in pageants and theater, wound through a student-run TV station at Auburn, a spontaneous move to New York City, and a stint hosting digital content in Detroit before she found her footing as a national sideline host with The Rally. Today, her work centers on one idea: getting close enough to players to find the story only she noticed.

A Stage Before a Sideline

Brooke grew up in Peachtree City and Fayetteville, Georgia, the daughter of a father who played 15 years of Major League Baseball. Theater, competitive cheerleading, and pageants filled her early years, and a judge at Miss Teen USA, where Brooke was competing as Miss Georgia Teen USA, was the one who first planted the idea that she could host for a living. “I actually wanted to go into entertainment,” she says, recalling an MTV audition in New York while she was still in high school. Sports wasn’t the plan yet. It was a stage she hadn’t stepped onto.

Finding Sports at Auburn

At Auburn, Brooke worked with the student-run Eagle Eye TV, learning the basics of producing and directing. Her freshman year, Auburn won the national championship with Cam Newton at quarterback; her senior year, the team returned to the title game. “I really was like, oh, I kind of want to do sports,” she says. That shift, more than any single class or internship, set her career in motion.

Choosing Charlotte Over the Middle of Nowhere

After graduation, a former Eagle Eye TV colleague tipped her off to an associate director opening at ESPNU and SEC Network. The alternative was a small-market job in Washington state for $30,000 a year. She chose Charlotte instead, betting she could work her way from behind the camera to in front of it. For three and a half years, she did exactly that, finishing her AD shifts and then staying late to build out early digital segments, including a recurring bit on College Football Daily, while also competing as Miss Georgia USA and driving back and forth to Atlanta most weeks.

Betting on New York, Then Detroit

Eventually, Brooke quit her job and moved to New York on a friend’s suggestion, with no job lined up. She and a roommate shared a 500 square foot studio, and she took acting classes and commercial auditions while working as a hostess at a pizza place in Jersey City to cover rent. She kept sending her reel out until Fox Sports Detroit hired her as a digital host, with the promise that hard work could lead to sideline reporting for the Pistons, Red Wings, and Tigers. It did. She won a few Emmys along the way and eventually earned that sideline role, before COVID reshaped the industry around her.

The Rally, and What It Taught Her

Brooke calls her years at The Rally in Chicago some of the best of her career. Hosting a national show alongside Joshua Perry, Russell Dorsey, and Shams Charania meant she had to be knowledgeable, and opinionated, about every sport, every day. “I feel like I grew the most during my time at The Rally,” she says. The show ended after three years as the regional sports network model collapsed, but the friendships, and the daily group chat, never did.

The Reporter as Middleman

Now with the White Sox and Big Ten Network, Brooke sees her job as translation: “You’re basically the middleman between the players and the fan base... your job is to humanize these players.” She doesn’t need to be on camera to consider a day successful. Being knowledgeable and observant matters more, like noticing a lime green quote stitched into Munetaka Murakami’s belt and asking about it, which turned into a great story and a perfect example of how simply paying attention can uncover something worth sharing. That instinct also carried her into an unplanned moment: two hours before a broadcast, the team’s analyst called in sick, and Brooke became the first woman to serve as TV analyst in the White Sox booth.

Know Your Worth

If she could tell a younger Brooke anything, it would be this: “Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself... it's okay to stand up for yourself because I think at the end of the day people will respect that because it shows that you respect yourself.” She’s applying that same instinct to what’s next, including a podcast called Sidelined with fellow reporter Dani Klupenger, creating a safe space to talk about sports without leaving behind everything else you love.

Her why hasn’t changed since she was a kid at the ballpark with her dad. “I genuinely love sharing people's stories,” she says. “It's cheesy, but it does feel like home.”

Tylene Braswell is the Vice President of Talent & Operations at NETWORK, where she leads talent strategy and operational execution across the agency's athlete representation, brand partnership, and business development platform. Her path started in LSU Football Operations and Recruiting and has since moved through startups, nonprofits, and executive leadership, including scaling the recruiting platform SEQL ahead of its acquisition by Fast Break AI, serving as Co-CEO of iAmBeU, and building Athletes to Athletes as Chief Growth Officer. She is also the founder of Oshun Swim, a luxury swimwear brand and cultural event platform. Across every stop, her focus has stayed the same: helping people build something that lasts beyond the deal in front of them.

Falling For What Happens Before Saturday

Tylene grew up in California, later moved to Atlanta, and eventually made her way to Louisiana for college, where she got her first exposure to college athletics inside LSU Football Operations and Recruiting. While most people around her were fixated on gameday, she found herself drawn to everything that made gameday possible. That distinction shaped the rest of her career. Instead of chasing a single track, she started saying yes to opportunities that let her build, across recruiting, operations, partnerships, and eventually executive leadership.

Building Where Nothing Exists Yet

A common thread runs through Tylene's resume: taking on the parts of an organization that do not exist yet and building them from scratch. She helped scale SEQL, a student athlete recruiting platform, through to its acquisition by Fast Break AI. As Co-CEO of iAmBeU, she secured multi-million dollar partnerships and funding and built the systems needed for the company to keep growing. "I enjoy creating structure where there isn't any yet," she says. "Whether that's building departments, operational systems, partnership strategies, or revenue pipelines, I love taking an idea and helping turn it into something real."

People Before Deals

At Athletes to Athletes, where Tylene serves as Chief Growth Officer, the mission centers on helping student-athletes navigate life beyond sports through education, identity development, and career preparation. That experience reinforced a belief she carries into every role since. "Athletes are people first," she says. It is the same principle she now applies at NETWORK, where she is focused on building sustainable businesses around athletes rather than one-off deals. "Historically, representation has been very transactional," she says. "I'm much more interested in building sustainable businesses around athletes; thinking beyond NIL, building brands that last, and positioning them for opportunities after football."

Separation of Success

Having worked across sports, startups, and brand strategy, Tylene has a clear read on what makes someone succeed long-term. Coachability tops the list. "No matter how accomplished they are, they never think they've arrived," she says. Consistency is next. "Everyone loves talking about discipline, but the people who actually separate themselves are willing to do the boring things over and over again." She also points to genuine care for people and adaptability, the ability to adjust as sports and business shift without losing sight of the bigger vision.

Boundaries Over Burnout

If she could go back, Tylene would tell her younger self that not every opportunity is her assignment. "For a long time, I believed that if I worked hard enough, proved myself enough, and helped enough people, everything would naturally fall into place," she says. She has since learned that hard work alone is not the whole equation. "I'd tell myself to stop worrying about being the most qualified person in the room and instead focus on becoming the most authentic version of myself." She also holds onto a simpler truth now: delays are not denials.

Measuring Success by Impact

Tylene's why comes back to people. She wants those she works with, whether an athlete, a founder, or a brand, to leave every interaction more confident and closer to who they are meant to become. Her faith underpins that mission. "I believe God has entrusted each of us with gifts, and my responsibility is to steward mine by serving others well," she says. For Tylene, success is not measured by revenue or titles alone. "It's measured by impact. If I can help someone build a career, create generational opportunities for their family, or discover purpose beyond what they do, then I know I'm doing exactly what I was created to do."

Joel Berry II is a college basketball commentator for the ACC Network and a financial advisor at Oppenheimer and Company. Before that, he spent three years playing professional basketball, including time in the G League, after a decorated career at the University of North Carolina under Roy Williams, where he played in back-to-back national championship games in 2016 and 2017 — coming up short in 2016, which was fuel to the fire for winning it in 2017." Raised in Apopka, Florida, in a family built around community service, Joel's path from McDonald's All American to Carolina standout to media and finance was never scripted. His work today is grounded in the same principles that shaped him growing up: impact matters more than recognition.

A Foundation of Community

Joel grew up just outside Orlando in Apopka, Florida. His parents ran a community foundation in Orlando, The Mountain Foundation, built to give local kids something constructive to do outside of school — and it still does today. His older sisters played on one of the teams in foundation's basketball league, and that's where Joel got his first taste of the game, even though his mother worried he was too small to play with older kids. What started as tagging along turned into an identity. By eight or nine, he was playing on a top AAU team, traveling to face the best competition in other states. "That's when my parents realized that basketball could end up being something that I could do," he says.

The Path to Carolina

Joel's recruitment shifted fast once college coaches came calling. He remembers his first contact period vividly: Bill Self from Kansas, Roy Williams from Carolina, and Billy Donovan from Florida all reached out. He took exactly one official visit, to Chapel Hill. "The community brought me in. Walking into the Smith Center and seeing the jerseys in the rafters, I knew I wanted to be a part of that fraternity. To be a part of that history,” he says. He committed during his junior year of high school and never looked back, going on to win three state championships at Lake Highland Preparatory School under coach Jeff Turner, a former Orlando Magic player.

Preparing for the Ordinary, Not Just the Big Moments

At Carolina, Joel played four years under Roy Williams, whose attention to detail shaped how Joel thinks about preparation. "The ones that are great are already preparing when they're in obscurity where there's no one who's watching," Joel says. Williams used to open practice with a quote of the day that freshmen were required to know cold. One stuck with Joel long before he understood what it meant: "You can't control the wind, but you can direct the sail." The lesson was about treating ordinary days with the same intensity as the big ones, because you can't control outcomes, only how you show up.

From the Court to the Media Booth

Joel played professionally for three years, before a torn meniscus put him on bed rest for eight months. That period forced a reckoning with identity that he says was harder than anything he faced on the court. "Identity is something that we all battle with," he says. Leaning on his wife and his faith, he made the decision to walk away from playing and move into commentating for the ACC Network. At the same time, he pursued licensing as a financial advisor, first at Truist and now at Oppenheimer & Co., driven by a gap he felt personally. "I come from a very minimal background when it comes to money," he says. “It was on me to help the next generation, from working individuals to athletes.”

The Weight of Being Seen: Lessons in Impact

Joel traces much of his outlook to a piece of advice his parents gave him after every high school game: whatever mood he walked out of the locker room in, someone waiting outside might be having the best moment of their life, and he owed them his full presence. That mindset has followed him into broadcasting and business. He recalls a stranger who once emailed him years after meeting him briefly, revealing that her son, a fan of Joel's who had died of cancer, had considered him a favorite player. "You never know how that impacts someone else's trajectory in their life," he says.

Legacy Over Everything

Asked what drives him, Joel doesn't point to accolades. "I want a legacy that goes beyond just what I did on the court," he says. He measures success by the stories people tell him years later, not about his stats, but about how a moment with him made them feel. That framework now extends into his work in finance, where he sees himself preparing others the way no one prepared him.

The Strength of Being Malleable

If Joel could tell his younger self one thing, it would be to stay malleable. His career didn't follow the script anyone would have written for a McDonald's All American headed to Carolina. "We at times try to take the bull by its horn and force life," he says, "rather than being able to understand, let me ask why this is happening, and try to be present with it." His broader advice to athletes facing a similar transition is blunt: build your network before you need it. "On the other side of that transition is beautiful," he says, "because now you understand who you truly are."

Bri Hamilton is an Account Manager in Brand Consulting at CAA Sports, where she works on partnership and talent strategy for AFLAC, and has supported previous clients such as Kaiser Permanente, Wilson Basketball and Playa Society. A born-and-raised Los Angeleno, she spent a decade coaching youth sports, and then a grassroots pickup basketball program in the Bay Area before pivoting into the consulting business. A cold outreach message on LinkedIn landed Bri inside one of the most powerful agencies in the world. In nearly five years with CAA, she has helped close multiple partnership and talent deals, elevated pay equity for women athletes, and made a meaningful impact on culture and society through her work.

From SoCal Courts to a Career Reinvention

Bri grew up in South San Gabriel and played basketball, softball, and competed in track and field while obtaining her bachelors degree in Television, Film and Media studies at Cal State Los Angeles. A car accident her junior year brought an early end to her competitive career, yet allowed her to pivot into coaching girls basketball and track and field. She spent the next decade working in marketing, promotions, and compliance for high school and college athletic departments and ran So Cal Queendom, an all-girls travel track and field club she co-founded. The work was fulfilling, but the financial realities highlighted a larger opportunity. “I needed to better understand the business side so I could create more opportunities for girls from underserved communities,” she says. That realization led her to pursue a master’s degree in kinesiology and sport management from Saint Mary’s College of California before moving to Oakland to expand IndoorHoops’ San Francisco market. When COVID brought that chapter to a close, Bri set her sights on the next phase of her career in sports business.

The decade of coaching and community building was not a detour; it was the foundation. Bri’s understanding of athletes, access, and the true power of sport continues to shape how she approaches brand strategy, partnerships, and creating meaningful connections between brands and communities.

One LinkedIn Message, One Door

After COVID had hit the US, Bri returned to Southern California and approached starting over the same way she had built communities: by establishing connections. Through cold calls, LinkedIn outreach, and conversations with anyone working in sports, she discovered the Sports Entertainment Equity Network (SEEN). In an attempt to submit her resume for SEEN’s upcoming virtual job fair, a system glitch led Bri to submit a troubleshooting email, which reached SEEN’s co-founder, Melcolm Ruffin. A few weeks later, Melcolm sent Bri a LinkedIn message and suggested she consider applying for a role with CAA Brand Consulting. With zero agency experience, Bri applied anyway. “I had nothing to lose,” she says.

Bri’s basketball expertise, storytelling background, experience managing Cal State LA athletics’ social media, and partnership-building work with IndoorHoops were not traditional agency credentials, but they gave her the unique perspective that made her the right fit for the role.

The AFLAC Call That Changed a WNBA Weekend

One of Bri’s defining moments at CAA began just days before the 2024 WNBA All-Star Weekend, when she learned of concerns around having enough participants for the Three-Point Contest and Skills Challenge. At the time, the winning prize was set at $2,575 per contest, a figure that stood in stark contrast to the significantly larger payouts offered for comparable NBA competitions. Bri quickly convened Aflac, OneTeam Partners, the WNBPA, and Trailblazing Sports to explore potential solutions. During the conversation, the group discussed how additional prize money could help drive participation and elevate the profile of the events. Aflac CMO Garth Knutson then asked one question: “How much do the NBA players make?” When he heard the answer, $55,000 and $50,000, his response was immediate: “We’re going to match it.”

What followed was 72 hours of turning an idea into action. Aflac’s supplemental prize checks were presented in Phoenix to Allisha Gray of the Atlanta Dream, who became the first player in WNBA and NBA history to win both competitions the same year. “Allisha took home 62% of her salary that year, thanks to Aflac. Not only did the brand double down on its commitment to supporting women’s sports, but it also did what Aflac does best: Provide supplemental support at a critical time. This is what authentic partnership looks like.”

Since that weekend in Phoenix, Gray has made a cameo appearance in Aflac's "Duck Dunk" commercial alongside the Aflac Duck, Dawn Staley, and Andraya Carter. Aflac has also continued its partnership with the WNBPA, awarding supplemental prize checks to 2025 WNBA All-Star Game winners Sabrina Ionescu and Natasha Cloud. In 2026, the company expanded its supplemental prize pool to $170,000, recognizing the top three finishers in the 3-Point Challenge, champion Azzi Fudd, Bridget Carleton, and Rhyne Howard, and the top three finishers of Shooting Stars competition, champion Shakira Austin, Flau’jae Johnson, and Jessica Shepard.

Curiosity, Optimism, and the Case for Humor

When thinking of the people Bri respects most in this industry, three traits come to mind. First, curiosity: “It’s often said that people fear what they do not know, but curiosity is what leads us to new perspectives. An always-learning mindset inspires better questions, and better questions often lead to even better ideas.” Second, optimism: “People who are where their feet are and have unwavering confidence that things will always work out are some of my favorite people to be around”. And third, humor. “Humor isn’t just a personality trait; it’s a form of intelligence. It takes awareness, timing, and the ability to understand people. In partnerships, being able to read a room, create a genuine connection, and help people feel comfortable builds trust, and trust is what allows meaningful collaboration to happen.”

Figure Out Who You Are

Advice Bri likes to share is the importance of taking time to know who it is that you are. “Once you know, you can set the boundaries needed to protect and maintain respect for yourself. Only then can you truly show up as your best self each day.”

Careers in sports can move fast. The people who last, she has found, are the ones who know what they stand for before someone else defines it for them.

The Why Behind It All

Bri's motivation runs three levels deep. The first being her family. Bri’s parents invested in her and her sister's education, and generated excitement around the idea of trying out new things. "My parents taught me that opportunities are a gift and that diligence is key. Everything I accomplish is, in many ways, a thank you to them for the practice.” she says. The second is the respect for sports itself. “Sports is one of the world's greatest connectors. I respect its power to bring people together across cultures, backgrounds, languages, and beliefs. My ultimate goal is to leave sports in a better place than I found it.” The third is equity. Bri wants to see women paid what they are worth, not as an initiative or a campaign, but as the standard. “I want it to be common. My hope is that one day the next generation will be shocked that a gap had ever existed.”

Dara McDevitt is the Global Product Line Manager for Equipment and Accessories at Patagonia, overseeing everything outside of apparel: backpacks, hats, gloves, belts, and the gear built for people who spend their lives outside. Her path there ran through emergency medical response, a broken foot, a backpack factory in Bozeman, a pandemic health department, and a Master's in Sports Product Management (SPM) at the University of Oregon. None of it was planned. All of it built the product leader she is today.

Albuquerque Winters, Yellowstone Summers

Dara grew up in Albuquerque, spending summers in Yellowstone National Park while her parents worked there. Tennis was her sport growing up, serious enough that it structured her early life. But college shifted her direction. She skipped playing tennis competitively and headed to the University of British Columbia, then finished at the University of Montana, chasing proximity to the outdoors instead. "That ended up being this pivot I did," she says, "where I'd been really into tennis and then started to look toward spending more time outdoors."

From Ambulances to Backpacks

Dara's summers in college were spent working for the National Park Service, first as an ambulance driver, later in bear management and search and rescue. After graduating with a degree in resource conservation, she planned to keep working outdoor field jobs. Then she broke her foot. The field position she had lined up fell through, and she needed something else. One of the first offers that came was at Mystery Ranch Backpacks, a technical backpack brand in Bozeman, Montana, hiring her as a production sewer. She had never sewn before. "That was my first job in the sports world," she says. "It really rerouted the rest of my work journey."

Stacking Skills Nobody Plans For

From Mystery Ranch, Dara moved to Goertzen Adventure Equipment, a small leather and canvas goods brand in Missoula, as its second employee. Small teams meant exposure to everything, not just production. At the same time, she was teaching Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness First Responder and Emergency Medical Technician courses on the side, for guides, trail crews, and search and rescue teams.

The two tracks built skills she didn't fully connect until later: hands-on product knowledge and the ability to teach and communicate clearly under pressure. "It was very developmental for my public speaking," she says, "and I was realizing I liked working directly with people."

Betting on Oregon: The Sports Product Management Leap

After years of splitting time between manufacturing and teaching, Dara wanted to learn on the job somewhere new, but nothing worth the move or the pay cut surfaced. That's when she found the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management (SPM) master’s program. Before committing, she talked to three past graduates to understand what the program actually delivered, not just what it promised. "It felt like a gamble," she says, "but I'd done my homework enough that I thought it would be good." She enrolled in 2018, joining a small cohort that included classmates from Taiwan and Switzerland. The program reframed how she thought about her career, pushing her past mountain towns and into a global view of the industry.

It also gave her a five-person team she still credits directly: one teammate later joined her team at Oboz Footwear. "We got to benefit so much from working together," she says. "I could not have done it by myself." The program's mentorship structure also did more than the cohort alone. Talking through her resume, backpacks, EMS work, wilderness medicine, with mentors in the program helped her see the connections she couldn't on her own. "They helped me connect how it was all connected to each other," she says, a thread she'd later hand back to her own advice for people starting out.

COVID, Oboz, and the Long Way to Patagonia

Dara graduated in March 2020, days before the world shut down. With outdoor product roles frozen, she pivoted into six months at the Missoula City County Health Department, managing COVID response teams across hospitals, schools, and homeless services. "It's the job I bring up in every interview," she says, "because of how directly it impacted people's lives."

When the outdoor industry rebounded, she landed her first Product Line Manager role at Oboz Footwear, then moved to Wild Rye, a women's mountain bike and snow apparel brand, where she helped build its first long-range product roadmap and launched its debut snow outerwear line. From there came Patagonia, a full-circle return to the backpack category where her career began.

Groundedness Over Everything

Asked what trait separates the best people she's worked with, Dara doesn't hesitate: groundedness. "The highest compliment I could give a manager I had was that he was reasonable," she says. "Being able to see the big picture and the details at the same time, that's what lets you make decisions with the information you actually have." It's a principle she now applies as a leader herself.

Trust in the Random Opportunities

Looking back, Dara's advice to her younger self is simple: stop second guessing the winding path. "I felt like there was no method to the madness," she says of her early career. "But retroactively, I've felt the benefits of every random job I've done." Her guiding question now is the same one she'd give anyone navigating an unclear path: are you genuinely interested in how you're spending your time, and who you're spending it with. "That's been the guiding principle for every decision I've made."

Ray Daryabigi is the Vice President of Guest Experience and Security for the San Diego Padres, where his work helped Petco Park earn USA Today's number one MLB ballpark ranking in 2026. Almost two decades in sports and entertainment, he has built guest experience departments across three leagues, the Dodgers and Angels in MLB, the Kings and Bucks in the NBA, and the Rams in the NFL, including standing up brand new venues like Golden 1 Center and SoFi Stadium. Off the field, he chairs the Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego Sports Council, sits on the board of Heart of Los Angeles, and mentors through the USC Sports Business Association.

Starting Over From the Ground Floor

Ray excelled in baseball through high school and into junior college, until a pitching injury derailed his athletic path. He pivoted into health and fitness, spending nearly a decade managing gyms across Southern California. The pull toward sports never faded, though, and it eventually brought him back to the industry through an entry-level job with the LA Dodgers.

Living paycheck to paycheck in a demanding new role, Ray leaned into proactive leadership rather than waiting for seniority to earn him influence. His energy got noticed, and by the end of his first season he was promoted to Manager. It reinforced a lesson that shaped the rest of his career: leadership is about attitude and action, not title.

Earning Trust in a New Role

The move to the LA Angels meant proving himself from scratch, without assuming what worked at the Dodgers would translate. Rather than push his own agenda immediately, Ray spent a month on a listening tour with his new team, building real relationships before setting direction. That patience paid off once his squad understood his vision, and it set up his next move to the Sacramento Kings.

Building Golden 1, Then Starting Again

In Sacramento, Ray closed the historic Sleep Train Arena and opened Golden 1 Center, sharpening his project management and event coordination skills well outside his comfort zone. The arena won the 2017 Sports Business Journal Facility of the Year award. From there, he joined the LA Rams to help open SoFi Stadium, doing so without fans due to the pandemic. He was later laid off during that stretch and used the time to earn an Executive Master of Leadership degree from USC, a program that taught him reflection, mindfulness, and how to lead through disruptive change.

Family First

Those leadership lessons were tested almost immediately when Ray was offered a Vice President role with the Milwaukee Bucks. He and his family moved to the Midwest, bought a home, and committed to building a new life there while expecting their fourth child. But the realities of life in Wisconsin proved difficult for the family. Knowing his purpose centered on family, Ray raised the issue directly with Bucks senior leadership, who supported him through the transition. It's the kind of decision that reflects his broader approach to leadership: adaptability and empathy applied to his own life, not just his teams.

What the Comfort Zone Costs You

Looking back across four organizations and three leagues, Ray's path keeps returning to the same throughline. Growth came from leaving what was secure and stepping into what was demanding, from a gym manager job into an entry-level baseball role, and from established markets into new venue openings. Leadership, in his view, is proactive regardless of position. And through it all, continuous learning, whether picking up a new organization's systems or going back to school after a layoff, kept him moving forward rather than stalling out.

Harold Hichez is the Director of Player Engagement for the Philadelphia 76ers. He built his path through basketball operations rather than the court itself, working as a team manager in high school, a practice player at Vanderbilt, and eventually a player relations intern with the Milwaukee Bucks, a role that turned into a six year run and multiple promotions to Director of Player Enrichment and Programming. Today his work centers on player engagement, culture, and team operations, with a long term goal of running an NBA team.

From the Sidelines to the Front Office

Harold played basketball throughout his childhood and high school years, but he realized he needed to rely on other skills to make it to the NBA. Toward the end of high school, he became manager of the boys' team.

At Vanderbilt, Harold studied economics and French while also becoming a practice player for the women's basketball team, which he calls the best experience of his college tenure. He learned from several high level basketball professionals there, including coaches who had played in the NBA and WNBA, and says the experience taught him the value of patience and remaining receptive to opportunities.

The Assist That Got Him In

After graduating, Harold was still figuring out his next step. He had experience working with inner city kids in New York City and a deep interest in basketball, and he wanted to get back into the sport. With help from his friend Daniel Marks, now Chief Program Strategist at Howard University Men's Basketball, Harold secured a player relations internship with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2015. Over the next six years, his dedication and hard work led to multiple promotions, eventually earning him the Director of Player Enrichment and Programming title.

Three Skills That Matter Most

Harold points to three core skills for succeeding as a player representative. First, the ability to make quick decisions that align with the team's short and long term cultural vision. Second, effective communication with anyone in the room, whether that's other front office staff, the CEO, ownership, or a new intern. Third, flexibility and adaptability, since no two days are the same. "You have to be able to adjust to any situation that may arise, especially when it comes to players and their families," he says.

Working Courtside With Superstars

Harold aims to run an NBA team one day, and has positioned himself at the crossroads of player engagement, culture, and the day to day heartbeat of the NBA, building knowledge across basketball operations, scouting, and team operations along the way. Working with high profile athletes brings its own challenges, including conveying tasks and requests that may not align with a player's brand or schedule. Harold says success comes from understanding what makes each player great and helping them improve on and off the court, even after their time with the team, and it's gratifying when players acknowledge that the team took good care of them.

What He'd Tell the Next Generation

Harold encourages anyone pursuing a sports career to focus on a few core attributes: regularly stepping outside your comfort zone, being different rather than a copy of others, always asking why and challenging the norm, truly learning to listen without formulating a response, never settling into contentment, and embracing failure as part of the process. "All successful people have failed many times before succeeding," he says, "so use failure as a stepping stone to success."

Jeff Melanson is a Footwear Merchandiser II, Lifestyle at Brooks Running, where he helps lead the brand's push into fashion and culture, building product that stretches Brooks beyond its performance running roots. He came to footwear through an unlikely route: a farm in Pennsylvania, a pre-med track, and a stint as a strength coach before a single book sent him back to school for the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management (SPM) master’s program. From there he moved through Under Armour, Crocs, and now Brooks, where he's part of a small team reshaping the brand's identity from the ground up.

Farm Roots, Catalog Dreams

Jeff grew up on his grandfather's farm in Pennsylvania, about as far from the fashion industry as it gets. But by age eight or nine he was flipping through soccer equipment catalogs in the living room, memorizing cleat colorways while his parents wondered where the obsession came from. By high school, a favorite art class project was a clay replica of a Nike CTR 360 cleat. He didn't know it yet, but the pattern was already set. "Wherever there were places for me to express creativity, it often somehow related back to footwear," he says.

Putting His Dad Out of Business

As the youngest of three, with a father who was a doctor and two older siblings who weren't, Jeff figured medicine was his to inherit. He spent two years pre-med before a stretch of shadowing sports medicine doctors changed his mind. He didn't want to treat symptoms after the fact. "My goal was to put my dad out of business as a doctor," he says, so he pivoted into strength and conditioning instead, working his way into a role with EXOS in Phoenix, training everyone from Super Bowl champions and Olympic track athletes to corporate employees at Google and Adobe.

The Ceiling at Exos

Four years in, Jeff loved the work, but the path forward had a fixed shape: get promoted out of client-facing work into a desk job, or stay in the same role indefinitely. Neither option let him build something new. He started looking outward, at what he could create for people rather than what he could do to their bodies directly. A job coach handed him a copy of Shoe Dog. He read it in three days and couldn't sleep. "This is what I need to do," he remembers thinking. He didn't know the footwear industry yet, but he knew Nike had jobs that looked like the one he wanted, and that several people in those roles had come through the same graduate program.

The Fast Track to the Industry

That program was the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management (SPM) master’s program, and Jeff is direct about what it meant for his career: “without it, breaking into the industry would have taken another five or six years.” He had no retail experience and no network. In 18 months, Oregon SPM gave him the foundation to work as a product line manager, but also enough range to move into development, marketing, or even start his own brand. "It's a very competitive world, and everyone here knows each other," he says. "Getting started is so hard." Oregon SPM was the springboard that let him walk in as a real candidate instead of an outsider trying to force his way in.

Briefing The Rock

Jeff's first real project came as an intern and contractor at Under Armour: Project Rock 7. He went deep on who Dwayne Johnson was and who he wanted to become, building a brief around the duality of weightlifting icon and fashion guy. He handed it off to a designer without knowing if his vision would translate. It did. "That was what hit the nail on the head," he says of seeing the final product. It confirmed what he already suspected about himself: he wasn't the designer, he was the person who made sure the designer had what they needed to succeed. That instinct carried him through a stretch at Crocs' lifestyle team, where a fast product cycle exposed him to nearly every category outside the brand's core clogs and sandals, before he landed at Brooks.

Rewriting the Dad Shoe

Brooks has long been, in Jeff's words, "your dad's running shoe," reliable and podiatrist-approved but rarely something a fashion-forward friend would recommend. His team's job is to keep the quality and technology that built that trust while appealing to the tastemakers of the world. That work took him to Paris Fashion Week to meet with top sneaker boutiques and collaborators, and it means pulling Brooks' running technologies into lifestyle product, showing up in spaces the brand has never occupied before. "We get to bring product to life in a different way than a lot of other lifestyle brands because we are using our expertise to integrate our performance technologies, like foams, into our lifestyle products," he says, crediting leadership with a simple mandate: Focus on the consumer. Then, make the right product, find the right partners, figure out the rest as you go.

Chase the Curiosity

Asked what he'd tell a younger version of himself, Jeff doesn't hesitate: “relentlessly chase your curiosity.” He sees a generation conditioned to conform by scrolling social media instead of following what genuinely interests them. "Chasing those things down can lead you to so many more interesting, fascinating places than you would have ever guessed," he says. Even when there's no obvious payoff, he argues the pursuit is never wasted.

For Jeff, the mission is straightforward: build better product, not more of it. "If it ever gets to the point where I'm just making more stuff for more people, loses all its meaning," he says. It's the throughline from the farm to Paris, chasing the thing that's genuinely interesting, then building the best version of it.

Dave Gardi is the Executive Vice President of Football Operations for the Tennessee Titans, where he oversees Football Administration, Football Strategy and Analytics, Football Research, Football Information Systems, Video, Equipment, Team Operations, and Security. With over 20 years of NFL experience, Dave previously served as Senior Vice President of Football Initiatives for the Washington Commanders and spent more than two decades at the NFL, where he held a leadership role in football operations, officiating, and game operations. He was instrumental in major events like the NFL Draft, Super Bowl and in negotiating collective bargaining agreements and managing labor disputes.

A Career Built on Football and Law

Growing up on Long Island, Dave was immersed in football from an early age. His father, Joe, was a coach for the New York Jets in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, making football a family affair. Dave’s own playing career led him to Brown University, where he played quarterback. "I always had a desire to work in sports, especially being around my dad," he says. Though he considered coaching, his father guided him toward law school at Hofstra, where he balanced earning his law degree with assisting his father’s football program. That exposure to high-level coaching and future NFL coaches like Dan Quinn and Raheem Morris shaped his understanding of the game. Dave’s legal background became the foundation for his career in football business. After securing an internship with the NFL Management Council, he impressed enough to remain through law school. "It was really my dream job," he recalls. His mentors advised him to gain experience in a traditional law firm, and for seven years, he honed his skills in complex litigation at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, while maintaining a connection to the NFL through arbitration cases.

In 2003, he rejoined the league as labor relations counsel. Over the next decade, he negotiated collective bargaining agreements and handled high-stakes labor disputes, including the 2011 player lockout and the 2012 game officials’ lockout. "It was an incredible learning experience," he says. In 2014, Dave transitioned to football operations, working with the competition committee, officiating, and integrity policies, influencing how the league evolved both on and off the field. He also played a key role in the NFL Draft and traveled to over 40 games annually, overseeing game operations and compliance, as well as serving in a critical role with the officiating department as the editor of the NFL rulebook. In 2024, Dave joined the Washington Commanders as Senior Vice President of Football Initiatives, a new challenge that included working directly on the team side, focused on coaching staff on game management, serving on the headset during games, and strategizing key scenarios. At the Commanders, Dave bridged football operations, strategy, and game-day execution.

Overcoming Obstacles and Finding Your Path

Early in his career, Dave faced the challenge of proving his value. "I thought putting my head down and doing my work would lead to promotions," he admits. Over time, he learned the importance of actively showcasing contributions. His advice to young professionals? Keep a running list of accomplishments. "Every time you make an impact, jot it down, when it’s time for a promotion or interview, you’ll have a clear record of your value." Dave also emphasizes the importance of constant self-evaluation: "Are you still adding value? Are you on the right path?" He encourages professionals to reassess their careers annually and adapt to challenges, whether office politics or industry changes. The pressure of making real-time decisions in the NFL, from coordinating with broadcast networks to handling game-day crises, has shaped his leadership. "You have to maintain composure, communicate clearly, and rally a team around you."

Throughout his career, Dave has found fulfillment in the opportunity to continuously learn, improve, and contribute at the highest level of the game. "I’ve tried to get better every day, and through that process, I hope I’ve made every organization I’ve been a part of better." He takes pride in helping teams prepare, execute, and succeed in key moments. Throughout his time in the NFL, Dave's work shaping league policies, such as rule changes focused on entertainment and player safety, has been highly rewarding. "Being part of the team that helped evolve the game was incredible," he says. His involvement in collective bargaining negotiations also left a lasting impact, shaping the game he loves.

Work Hard, Stay Curious, and Be Yourself

For those looking to break into sports, Dave’s advice is simple: outwork everyone and never stop learning. "Work harder than anybody and have an insatiable desire to learn," he says. Listening to others and staying curious is key to success in the industry. While this may sound straightforward, it’s what sets the truly successful apart. Dave also emphasizes authenticity. "The best fits for us were people who, when they interviewed, were themselves," he explains. Those who thrive naturally integrate into the team, showing up as their true selves and embracing the culture.

The Gardi Name: A Legacy of Football

For Dave, football is more than a profession, it’s a legacy. "My dad's legacy and carrying on the Gardi name in football are a big deal, and I take great pride in that," he says. His greatest fulfillment comes from elevating those around him. "I cherish when I see people succeed around me," he says. "That’s very fulfilling." Dave’s leadership philosophy is rooted in empowerment. Whether at the NFL or with the Commanders and Titans, he focuses on bringing out the best in others. "I put a lot of effort into making the people around me better," he says. For him, helping others rise while strengthening the team as a whole is the most rewarding part of his job.

Allison Popovec is the Sports Analytics and Insights Lead for NikeSKIMS, the newly launched collaboration brand between Nike and Kim Kardashian's Skims. She leads consumer insights and analytics for the venture, connecting sentiment, shopping behavior, and marketplace data into the strategic narrative that shapes product direction and brand expansion. Her path to that seat was anything but direct. She started in exercise science at Youngstown State, pivoted into the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management (SPM) master’s program, and entered Nike working in the Nike Sports Research Lab before working her way through both Kids and Basketball insights into her current role. The throughline is not a title progression. It is a specific skill: the ability to pull from granular data and tell a story that moves a room.

Grit Before a Game Plan

Allison grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, a place she describes without hesitation as "the grittiest city." She spent time at Ohio State working alongside wrestling and football athletes learning to be an athletic trainer before finishing her degree in exercise science and sports kinesiology at Youngstown State. That work gave her proximity to the athletes she wanted to be around, but the insight she kept coming back to had nothing to do with ankle tape jobs. It was what the athletes said about what they were wearing. "What excited me most was how their apparel and footwear was actually impacting their performance."

That realization sent her online looking for a program that didn't exist in the traditional sense. The University of Oregon's Sports Product Management master’s program was the only result that fit. It was built for people from different disciplines, not just business or marketing backgrounds. She moved to Oregon alone, convinced herself it was the right call, and never looked back.

The Room Oregon SPM Opened

University of Oregon’s Sport Product Management (SPM) master’s program is one of the few in the country built around the idea that the best product minds don't all come from the same background. The program brings together people from exercise science, finance, design, and engineering, puts them on interdisciplinary teams, and exposes them to the executives who actually run major brands. Vice presidents, CFOs, and creative directors from Nike, Under Armour, Lululemon, and Coach came through as more than guest speakers. They invested in the cohort. Allison worked alongside designers, finance specialists, and consumer insights experts, building the cross-functional fluency that Nike's product and insights work demands. "The program beyond education is truly the best network I could have ever asked for."

For people looking to break into the sports product and brand space without a traditional business background, Oregon's SPM program has become one of the clearest paths in. It doesn't ask you to fit a mold. It builds one around what you already bring.

The Room That Keeps Opening

The connections Allison built during those 18 months at SPM have followed her through every stage of her career. An instructor and mentor from the program, Lindsay Holts, has stayed with her since graduation, helping her navigate job offers, negotiate salary, and map the long-term career she wants. "I call her for everything."

Today, Allison sits in Nike meetings across from people who taught her or came up through the same cohort. That isn't a coincidence. It is what happens when a program is designed to put its people inside the rooms that matter, and keeps putting them there long after graduation.

Science First, Business Second

Allison graduated during COVID, which meant Nike wasn't hiring broadly. Her exercise science background got her into the Nike Sports Research Lab as an apparel thermoregulation scientist, where she ran athletes through environmental chambers, measured sweating efficiency, and evaluated whether specific garments made them more or less physically efficient. It was rigorous, exacting work with real performance implications. But what kept pulling her attention wasn't the data output. It was what athletes said during testing, the commentary about fit, feel, and confidence that she kept watching translate directly into product changes. "It was their insight that I felt like actually made the changes."

After a year and a half in the lab, she started applying for roles closer to the business. Kids insights came first, then basketball insights, then a promotion into the NikeSKIMS lead role. Each move was less about a title and more about staying close to the consumer signal she had been chasing since she was taping ankles in Ohio.

Filling a Gap at Nike

The project Allison points to as her clearest career inflection involved a segment most brands had quietly walked away from: the teen and tween girl, the consumer sitting between the 10-year-old in kids apparel and the adult woman already shopping Lululemon or Alo. The space existed in theory. In practice, the market had largely collapsed. "Those places must exist, but honestly they truly don't right now."

Allison traveled across Nike's markets in North America, EMEA, and APLA, studying how this consumer shops, what products she gravitates toward, and what makes her feel confident without feeling like she's wearing something built for someone else. Those insights fed directly into a new product line Nike developed for tween girls. When a pop-up launched at London's Westfield Mall, the line created immediate buzz. "Seeing that from brief to box has been one of the highlights of my career." The process she built to get there, research to product to shelf, is exactly what positioned her to take on a new consumer category entirely with NikeSKIMS.

The Skill Behind the Skill

Ask Allison what separates people who advance at Nike from those who plateau, and the answer isn't a credential or a function. It is the ability to take a body of data and make leadership feel something about it. "You can know the numbers, you can know the data, you can know your consumer so well. But being able to give the team a great perception and direction through storytelling is what has made my career go further." It is also what builds institutional trust faster than any title can. Getting into the right rooms at Nike requires competence. Staying in them requires the ability to move people.

She tells her mentees the same thing every time: think about the end-to-end story you're trying to tell before you touch the data. The numbers are evidence. The story is the argument. Most people lead with the evidence and never make the argument.

A Glass Ceiling

The advice Allison gives most often is the one she needed most herself. Coming out of exercise science, she felt boxed in by what her degree said on paper. She sees that same feeling in the students she mentors now, the finance major who wants to work in marketing, the physiology grad who thinks consumer insights is out of reach. "People feel really trapped and think they can't pivot."

Her career is the direct counter to that. She went from running basic physical tests on everyday athletes to leading consumer insights on one of Nike's highest-profile new ventures. She recognized which skills transferred and built from there. "It's not about the job title -- It's about matching your skills to the right job."

Ashley DeWalt is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Collectiv, the sports industry’s first community-powered venture capital fund. He’s a Venture Advisor at Mercury Fund and was formerly the Managing Director at DivInc, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting diverse founders in sportstech, healthtech, fintech, and other sectors. With two decades in the game, his path is anything but traditional – but it’s one that continues to shape the future of venture investing in sports technology startups, and emerging pro sports franchises and leagues.

Hustle, Vision, and Super Bowl MVPs

Ashley grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, just outside Houston. A former athlete with dreams of making the league, he pivoted once he realized the NBA wasn’t in the cards. But he knew he had to stay close to the game. “I didn’t know what that looked like at the time,” he says, “but I wanted to be connected to sports forever.” While studying finance at the University of Houston, Ashley launched a brand strategy and marketing consultancy that built websites for pro athletes – what we’d now call early digital fan engagement platforms. “This was the days of dial-up internet,” he laughs. “We were building sites for players like Ray Lewis, where fans could buy merch, ringtones, Xbox skins, and his custom workout app.”

His first break came from a college classmate who went on to become an NFL draft pick. That connection opened the door to Select Sports Group, a Houston-based agency that would later be acquired by CAA. He was 21, pitching brand-building strategies while still in college. “I just needed them to trust me,” he recalls. “And I was going to outwork everyone.” That drive led to client relationships with some of the biggest names in the NFL – Ray Lewis, LaDainian Tomlinson, Hines Ward, and Santonio Holmes among them, as well as former WBC Heavyweight Champion, Deontay Wilder. “At one point, I was in my early twenties working with three Super Bowl MVPs,” he says. “It was surreal.”

The Power of the Pivot

Ashley’s early years were defined by hustle – built on trust, integrity, and an ability to connect. But after 10 years helping athletes build personal brands, he felt the itch to evolve. “I wanted a new challenge,” he says. “It’s one thing to build an individual brand, it’s another thing to build a sports property.” That opportunity came in 2012 when Kevin Sumlin invited him to College Station, TX to help with their recruiting efforts at Texas A&M. Ashley developed a behind-the-scenes digital campaign called Aggie FB Life – a lifestyle brand that gave recruits an inside look at life as an Aggie. “It provided an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes of the program,” he says. “It was 24/7 storytelling, way before content was the king.”

The campaign helped Texas A&M land the top recruiting class in school history. The success spread and Ashley would go on to consult with football programs at Maryland, Minnesota, TCU, and the Houston men’s basketball program. At Minnesota, he pioneered virtual reality recruiting experiences. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were setting trends,” he reflects. “We were always trying to do what hadn’t been done yet.”

Finding His Calling in Founders

The next chapter took shape in the startup world. Introduced to sportstech through the accelerator ecosystem, Ashley became a lead mentor at Stadia Ventures, helping startups refine their strategy and build connections. “I’d lived the grind. I could relate,” he says. “I wasn’t just giving advice – I was rolling up my sleeves to accelerate their GTM strategy, business development, and more.”

It was there he discovered his new passion: working with entrepreneurs. “I realized I could do this forever,” he says. “It was still sports, still innovation, but it gave me energy in a new way.” Eventually, he became Managing Director at DivInc, a nonprofit accelerator focused on diverse founders. Their first sportstech cohort saw six of eight startups go on to raise venture funding. “It showed me what was possible when you provide people access to knowledge, capital, and networks,” he says. “And I realized the problem I wanted to solve.”

Creating Access Through The Collectiv

Ashley had spent years in rooms with superstar athletes and executives. He noticed a troubling pattern. Most of the people helping to build startups and brands weren’t getting equity. “I saw it over and over,” he says. “People driving innovation but not participating in the upside.” That became the spark for The Collectiv – a venture fund built to democratize access to premier investment opportunities in the sports industry. The fund isn’t just for Top Tier Pros or Hall of Famers – it’s built for the people working across the sports ecosystem: C-Suites, VP/SVPs, heads of innovation & strategy, product managers, growth marketers, and more. “I’ve been on the other side of not knowing what I didn’t know,” he says. “I never want others to miss opportunities because of that.”

Leadership Lessons from the Best

Across his 20-year career, Ashley has learned from legends like Ray Lewis, LaDainian Tomlinson, and coaching greats like Kelvin Sampson. He’s taken pieces from each. “Ray showed me how to lead with an exceptional work ethic, dedication, and passion. Coach Sampson demanded excellence every day in your craft. LT was quiet, but he led with actions more than words,” he says. Now, as a leader, Ashley prizes emotional intelligence, accountability, and work ethic over pedigree. “I don’t care what school you went to,” he says. “What’s your why? Are you coachable? Do you have that dog in you?”

If he could go back, Ashley would give his younger self a simple message: Be comfortable being uncomfortable. “All of my biggest growth came from the pivots,” he says. “Those moments where you step into the unknown? That’s where the breakthroughs happen.”

Julie Ertz spent more than a decade as one of the most decorated players in U.S. women's soccer history, winning two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal before stepping away from the game in 2023. Now she is building something new. Alongside former NWSL star Kealia Watt, Julie co-hosts Style of Play, a media platform covering women's soccer from the inside out, featuring athletes, personalities, and unfiltered conversation about what elite looks like today. It is part podcast, part cultural commentary, and entirely built on the credibility two of the sport's most respected names have spent careers earning. The transition has not been seamless. That is exactly the point.

Rookie Again, On Purpose

Julie knows what it feels like to be the best in the world at something. Media is not that; not yet. "There is definitely a feeling of being a rookie again," she says. "This new chapter has been challenging in the best of ways and just like a game, it takes a lot of practice." What is notable is how deliberately she has leaned into that discomfort rather than managed around it. The same competitive instinct that pushed her through World Cup knockout rounds is now aimed at a microphone and an audience she is still learning to read. The stakes are different; the posture is identical.

The Skills That Transferred

Not everything from a playing career crosses over cleanly into media work, but two things did for Julie almost immediately. The first is the ability to connect with people. "I have always loved to connect with people and that is obviously the case with media." The second is process orientation, the willingness to grind toward improvement even when results aren't visible yet. "I truly loved the process of striving to be the best I could be, which led to a lot of growth, and it is the same thing in the media world." Both are transferable because they are habits, not positions. Habits move.

Building With Kealia

Style of Play works because of what Julie and Kealia share: genuine investment in the project and the sport, two spouses who play "other football," and a willingness to be unfiltered on subjects most sports media avoids. But the partnership has also reminded Julie of something she had not fully anticipated. "Working with K has reminded me how much I love being a part of a team." She also points to something more specific, something about conviction. "I have learned the power of your voice and instincts because when you are truly passionate about something, it's hard for others not to believe with you." That is not just a note about Style of Play. It is a competitive advantage in any media market.

Preparation for Conversations, Not Competitions

Julie still prepares. The format has changed; the discipline has not. Where she once broke down film, she now researches guests and thinks through the questions she is genuinely curious about. But she has also had to adapt. "In conversations there is a lot of surprise and even with preparation, in order for that conversation to flow, you have to be able to react." That adjustment, from a controlled high-performance environment to the live unpredictability of interview work, is a real transition. She is figuring it out the same way she figured out defensive midfield at the highest level: by doing it, repeatedly, until it becomes instinct.

Seeing the Game Through a Different Lens

The opportunity that excites Julie most about Style of Play is not the platform itself; it is what the platform will show her. "I have a feeling I will fall in love with this sport in a completely different way. By seeing the game through a different lens, I think I will grow to love this side of the sport." With the 2027 Women's World Cup on the horizon and the global women's game growing faster than it ever has, the timing is deliberate. Julie and Kealia want to surface the sacrifices, the balance, and the full humanity behind elite women athletes in ways traditional sports coverage rarely does. That is the gap Style of Play is built to fill.

Start Before You're Ready

For athletes navigating the identity shift that follows retirement, Julie keeps it honest: "I have told myself to embrace the growth. It is okay to miss the player, and the mindset that comes along with being a player, and honor that season of your life." And for anyone intimidated by beginning something new, she does not reach for inspiration. She reaches for accuracy. "Everyone makes mistakes and it's those moments that actually teach you more than the victories." Say yes to things before you feel ready. The next passion tends to be found on the other side of the uncertainty, not before it.

Brianna Salvatore Dueck is the Founder and CEO of Uplift Sports and Entertainment, a management and brand strategy agency representing professional volleyball players, basketball athletes, and sports influencers. A former Division I player at UC Davis and professional basketball player in Switzerland, Brianna built her career across the United Nations (UNESCO), Nielsen Sports, the impact-focused agency 17 Sport, and a VC fellowship before launching Uplift in 2024. Her work sits at the intersection of brand strategy, partnership development, and athlete empowerment, driven by a simple conviction: athletes and entertainers have the power to change the world, and they deserve a team behind them built to match that potential.

Basketball as a Foundation, Not Just a Sport

Brianna grew up in Orange County, California, and lost her mother at age two and a half. That loss could have defined her differently. Instead, it set the stage for what sports would become. "Basketball was this beautiful way for me to connect and build confidence in myself and really just find my people in a safe place." She went on to play at UC Davis, competed in the NCAA Tournament, and developed the habits that still shape how she operates: discipline, coachability, playing multiple roles on a team.

The through line from those years to her work today is not just athletic. It is relational. Sports gave her a language that crosses borders, and she has used it everywhere from China to Togo to Lausanne. That belief, that sport is a universal connector, became the foundation of her career.

The Pro Contract She Almost Didn't Pursue

After three knee surgeries, Brianna had largely written off a professional playing career. Then came a graduate internship in Switzerland, a prayer, and the next morning a try-out opportunity she had not expected. She took the train from her village to Lausanne, showed up, and left with a pro contract with a first division club.

What matters most about that moment is what it opened. Lausanne is home to the International Olympic Committee, multiple European sports federations, and a train ride from the United Nations in Geneva. "I found myself reimagining: what is life after basketball, and is there something I can be just as stoked on?" She spent that year doing informational interviews with diplomats, ambassadors, and sports executives, using her athlete credibility to get calls she might not have otherwise received. The professional pivot that followed was not accidental. It was built during that year of intentional proximity.

Stacking Relevance Before Building the Business

Brianna did not jump straight into entrepreneurship. She earned her master's at Sciences Po Paris, landed at UNESCO working on sports diplomacy and a G7 gender equality initiative, then returned to the US and moved through two high-caliber industry roles before launching Uplift.

At Nielsen Sports, she worked with the Lakers, Raiders, and brands like DoorDash on their NBA and WNBA partnerships, focused on sponsorship ROI and fan data strategy. At 17 Sport, she led the consulting and advisory practice, working with Adidas on their gender equality program in EMEA, the IOC's commercial team, and the NFL on programs including Salute to Service. She also built brand strategies for six professional athletes. "By leading with purpose, you can drive better returns for brand and society," she says of 17 Sport's thesis. She internalized that model and eventually built her own around it.

What Founding Uplift Actually Required

Launching Uplift was not a clean LinkedIn announcement. "It's really really hard to be a founder, and I think we can glorify it on Instagram." What made it viable was the specific combination she brought to it: she had lived the athlete experience, understood brand strategy from the agency side, and had negotiated and built partnerships with the biggest organizations in global sport.

Today, Uplift handles everything off the court. That includes brand and social strategy, influencer and brand collaborations, endorsement deals, equity partnerships with seed and Series A companies, and impact programs. The mission is not just client service. "We realize that athletes and entertainers have the power to change the world, and we want to be the team behind the team."

Building Beyond the Agency

In the last year and a half, Brianna has layered in board and ownership work that extends her impact beyond client management. She joined the NHL Foundation's advisory board, lending expertise on gender equality and adaptive sports. She joined the HOOPBUS board, a nonprofit that has partnered with the NBA and WNBA to spread impact through basketball, working across the US, Philippines, Mexico, Canada and Europe.. And she became a co-owner of LOVB San Francisco, the League One Volleyball franchise in the Bay Area, with a cap table that includes Abby Wambach and Steve Kerr alongside a group of prominent women executives and pro athletes.

"For the first time in a really long time, I feel really invested in a deep way, and it lights me up." That feeling, of being genuinely part of something with stakes and meaning, is one she is consciously trying to create for the athletes she works with every day.

Play Your Game

When asked what she would tell her younger self, Brianna's answer is not about networking or hustle. It is about identity. "Play your game. Don't be distracted by what other people are doing. Own who you are and the path you're on."

For those entering the sports industry, her excitement about volleyball is deliberate context. The number one sport played by girls in the US, one of the fastest-growing sports on both the men's and women's side, and an Olympic cycle arriving in Los Angeles in 2028. The timing, she says, is not a coincidence. It is where she has positioned herself and her clients. The work, like the advice, is specific on purpose.

Kylee O'Connor-Harrel is the Associate Product Manager for Performance Running at New Balance, where she leads product creation for a portfolio of running footwear from brief to box. A multi-sport athlete who ran hurdles and competed in the heptathlon at the University of Oregon, she later earned her master's degree through Oregon's Sports Product Management master’s program before working her way up through technical field rep and key account merchandising roles at New Balance. Today, she manages products across multiple seasons simultaneously, works directly with designers and developers at the New Balance headquarters, and leads athlete capsule collaborations with elite competitors. She also plays cornerback in the Women's National Football Conference. Everything she does traces back to a single conviction: the right product, on the right athlete, at the right moment, changes what they believe is possible.

Six Sports, One Direction

Kylee grew up in Eugene, Oregon, which meant growing up inside Track Town, USA. But she did not specialize early. She competed in six sports in high school, including soccer, swimming, basketball, cross country, golf, and eventually track. That breadth was not accidental. It gave her a feel for how different athletes move, compete, and prepare, an instinct that now shapes how she thinks about product.

She ran hurdles and competed in the heptathlon at Oregon. The heptathlon, with its seven events and rotating shoe requirements, planted a seed. "As an athlete, I got to see firsthand the impact that footwear made on my performance at a high level, functionally and mentally. Lacing up the right pair of shoes knowing it would do its job made me that much more poised to win the line."

The Decision That Changed Everything

After Oregon, Kylee worked at the Pac-12 Network and then at a tech PR agency in San Francisco. She was making good money, but she was not engaged. "I wanted to be excited to go to work every day. I wanted to feel like I was making a positive impact." A conversation with her dad cut through the noise. "He said, just do what gets you out of bed in the morning. Not in an apathetic way. He meant it sincerely." That was the push. She started researching the University of Oregon's Sports Product Management master’s program, and when COVID hit and the world paused, she made the investment in herself.

Oregon SPM: Where Athletes Learn to Build

The Oregon Sports Product Management program is designed for exactly the kind of pivot Kylee was making. It delivers an end-to-end education in how product goes from brief to shelf, grounded in hands-on work that replicates what actually happens inside footwear and apparel companies.

For Kylee, two things stood out. The first was the product team experience, where student teams identify a white space, build a concept, and communicate directly with factories through the development process. "It was an incredible hands-on experience to see how that communication works, the language barrier, the timing, and working around different calendars. It replicates how it's done in the real world." The second was learning to work with people who think differently. Her PR background had surrounded her with Type A personalities. The SPM program dropped her into a team with designers, developers, and product thinkers who approached problems from completely different angles. "Understanding how I could adjust my communication to bring out the best in everyone, that's something I use every single day now." The program did not just teach her the industry. It taught her how to lead inside it.

Foot in the Door, Then Keep Moving

Kylee graduated from Oregon SPM and immediately started as a trackster at New Balance, a technical field rep role covering the Pacific Northwest, working in stores, and running marketing events. "I was in the marketplace talking to consumers every day. I learned what they were actually asking for."

She was deliberate about what came next. She asked her manager for a mentor inside New Balance headquarters. That mentor eventually hired her for her current product manager role. "It just shows how important building those relationships are," she says. "Finding people that can help you get to where you want to go." After the trackster role, she moved into key account merchandising, building assortments for major sporting goods retailers.

Building Product Across Five Seasons at Once

No two days look the same in Kylee's role, and that is the point. At any given time, she is managing products across five different seasons, each at a different stage of development. One season is in market and she is attending launches and tracking performance. Another is in final color work. A third is in prototype review. A fourth is being briefed for the first time. A fifth is already on a planning horizon for 2028.

"You're putting on different hats constantly," she says. "One second you're in product creation mode with designers and developers, the next you're on a marketing call, the next you're working with merchandising on distribution and pricing." She also leads athlete capsule collaborations, custom shoes developed with elite competitors that later become commercial products. Just before this conversation, she was on a call confirming a spike colorway with a distance runner competing at LA Trackfest. He told her the shoe felt more like him. "He said it has his quirkiness. He said, ‘I can't wait to put these on and race in them.’" That moment is exactly why she made the pivot.

Representation on the Field and in the Building

Kylee plays cornerback for a women's tackle football team in the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC), and she is one of the top players in the league. None of that existed for her as a kid in Eugene. "I couldn't see someone who looked like me on the football field. That confines you. It makes you think something might not be possible."

She carries that into her work at New Balance. When the company launched its American football category, she integrated herself into the cross-functional team even though it was outside her direct role. Her goal was simple: make sure women were in the conversation, in marketing, in fit testing, in every decision that shaped how the product would reach the public.

She also co-leads She Got Now, an associate resource group for women at New Balance, and moderates panels spotlighting female leaders in running. Her why has been consistent since childhood. "Every day I get up and try to push the narrative that women are capable and should be in the spotlight, whether as athletes or leaders. I feel grateful to be in a position to continue to elevate women, culturally and in the world overall."

Samantha Davis is the Senior Director of Club Business Affairs at the National Hockey League (NHL). With nearly 20 years of experience in sports sales and business operations, Samantha has worked for organizations including the Chicago Wolves, New Jersey Devils, New York Jets, BSE Global, and San Jose Barracuda. In her current role, she supports NHL clubs through strategic business operations and league-wide initiatives across ticketing, partnerships, premium sales, marketing, and fan engagement. She also works cross-functionally with the league’s legal and business teams to help clubs navigate partnership marketing, brand management, league policies, and operational best practices while driving revenue growth across the league.

A Dynamic Career in Sales 

Samantha Davis grew up in New Jersey, where she played both ice hockey and field hockey through high school and college, laying the foundation for her sports career. Her entry into the industry began with a group sales internship at the Florida Panthers, which ignited her passion for sales. After graduating, Samantha returned to New Jersey to start her career with the Devils, moving quickly from inside sales to season ticket sales, and then focusing on group sales. She later played a key role in establishing the New York Jets' group sales department, before joining the Charlotte Knights, where she helped drive the team to lead minor league baseball in attendance.

Her journey continued at BSE Global, where she managed ticket sales for events like boxing and MMA, gaining valuable experience in dynamic ticket pricing and marketing. She then led ticket sales and operations at the Oklahoma City Dodgers, facing the challenge of a canceled season due to the pandemic. Undeterred, she eventually joined the South Carolina Stingrays as Director of Ticket Sales. Despite the unique challenges of that season, she focused on innovative solutions for fan engagement and seating arrangements. Before joining the Chicago Wolves, Samantha helped open TechCU Arena for the San Jose Barracuda. She recruited and built an entire staff while leading the pricing strategy and overseeing both ticket and sponsorship sales for the arena before construction was even complete. Before joining the NHL, Samantha served as VP of Sales for the Chicago Wolves, where she led all sales efforts for the organization, helping break the franchise record for group sales revenue while the Wolves earned Ticket Department of the Year honors for the first time in AHL history.

Connecting with Fans, Fueling Revenue, and Finding Grit in Every Hire

For Samantha, the draw to sales came from her natural ability to connect with people and her competitive spirit. "I always knew I liked talking to people," she said, "but it wasn’t until I realized I just needed to have human conversations, rather than following a script, that I found my stride." Her passion for sports and her upbringing around attending sporting events with her family helped fuel her drive. Samantha embraced the challenge of selling, knowing that revenue is the lifeblood of any organization. She appreciates the personal fulfillment that comes from creating memorable experiences for fans, whether it’s through family outings or corporate events. "Making someone’s day by helping them attend a game, that’s what I love and it never gets old.”

When hiring for her team, Samantha emphasizes the importance of intangibles. She looks for people who demonstrate resilience and a consistently positive attitude; both essential traits in sports sales. "You're going to make a hundred phone calls and get a hundred 'nos,' but you need to come in the next day with the same energy as when you started," she explained. Rather than focusing solely on experience, she seeks candidates who have shown grit and determination in past situations, whether through personal challenges or competitive environments. For her, coachability is the most critical factor. "If you can quickly learn from your mistakes and apply that knowledge, it shows you can grow and that excites me."

Embrace Standing Out, Be Uncomfortable, & Ask Why

One of the significant challenges Samantha encountered was working in a male-dominated industry early in her career. "I had to leave a place that wasn’t right for me," she shared, noting the importance of finding the right environment. "It’s okay to walk away when you realize something isn’t working." For Samantha, success in such environments came from letting her work speak for itself. "I decided to just do the work and prove myself with actions," she said, encouraging others to embrace standing out and being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Another challenge has been relocating to new cities throughout her career, moving to places where she didn’t know anyone. Despite the difficulty of starting over, she always embraced these transitions, seeing them as opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Samantha’s advice to her younger self would be to ask more questions; especially the "why" behind decisions. Early in her career, she focused on execution without always understanding the reasoning behind certain choices, from pricing to sales strategies. "I wish I had asked why more often," she admitted, realizing that understanding the bigger picture can help in both personal growth and leadership. Another lesson she would impart on her younger self is the acceptance that the perfect job doesn’t exist. "There are always tough days, but that doesn’t mean you’re not in the right place.”

Charlie Mule is the Director of Football Communications for the Washington Commanders, where he helps manage the day-to-day operations of the team’s communications department as well as assists in creating football media strategy and message alignment for the players and the coaching staff. He also oversees the department’s internship program and gameday staff as well as publication strategy. Charlie broke in as a college student by pitching stories to MLB team visiting players' hometown papers to earn press credentials at Citi Field, Camden Yards, and Yankee Stadium. From there, he interned with the New York Giants, worked at the YES Network, completed two seasons with the New York Mets, and gained league-level exposure through the NFL league office before landing full-time in Washington in 2019. Through his career, Charlie has seen communications from many different lenses, staying steady through change and learning from each experience.

Pizza Counters and the First Lesson in Relationships

Charlie grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, where his family ran pizza restaurants. He spent time behind the counter as a kid, watching his parents build repeat customers and loyal employees out of nothing but consistency and genuine attention. "That was probably my first introduction to what relationships are in a business setting," he says.

He was not a football kid. He played hockey and baseball, followed the Giants loosely, and arrived at Seton Hall with no clear direction. He drifted toward journalism because he liked sports and could write. That narrow doorway turned out to be his career.

From Access to Insight

Before Charlie understood what a PR director did, he figured out how to get in the room with them. A college colleague suggested he pitch stories about visiting players to their hometown papers, since small-market outlets would not have reporters traveling to New York or Baltimore to cover their guys. Charlie ran with it, sending six pitches at a time, landing credentials at Citi Field, Camden Yards, and Yankee Stadium.

At those games, he watched PR professionals set up interviews, distribute game notes, and manage the flow between reporters and players. "That's immediately when I realized I'm interested in the team side of this," he says. "What did these people do?" He went back to campus, declared a communications major, and landed an internship with the New York Giants the following semester, which solidified his interest in sports communications. Charlie’s persistence to find a way into the professional sports environment jump started his career and gave him the institutional knowledge to continue to learn and grow in the space.

The People You Work With

One of the most formative professional insights Charlie carries came not from a mentor above him but from peers he worked alongside. At his first Giants internship, he shared a Super Bowl trip as an NFL PR rep to Houston with a group of fellow interns. They split an Airbnb for a week and stayed close. Three of those four people are now working for NFL teams. One of them is his boss at the Commanders today.

"I always tell people you want to keep in touch with the people you work for, but also the people you work with," Charlie says. "You never know where those people are going to be." He has lived that out. The call that brought him to Washington came from that exact network, a former intern peer who had climbed the Commanders org chart and knew there was an opening. The lesson is structural, not anecdotal: peer relationships compound over time in ways that vertical mentorship alone does not.

Baptism by Fire

Charlie arrived in Washington as a full-time employee in July 2019. Two months later, the team was 0-and-5, the head coach had been fired and the senior vice president of communications had left for another job. Three people in their mid-twenties were suddenly responsible for managing the communications operation of an NFL franchise in full crisis.

"Baptism by fire in a sense of, hey, welcome to the NFL," he says. Rather than retreat into safe execution, Charlie leaned into the instability. He and his colleagues held the department together through a coaching transition, a losing season, and a full regime overhaul. In retrospect, he sees it as the best possible accelerant. "It was really beneficial to have that experience. We have to finish out the season." Organizations rarely give you controlled environments to grow in. The adversity is the curriculum.

Consistency Is Key

Today, Charlie's work centers on day-to-day department operations as well as strategic football communications: staying consistent each day and making sure things are handled timely and properly. Charlie assists in shaping messaging with organizational priorities and ensuring the team speaks with one voice through winning streaks and losing skids alike. That work does not start when things go wrong. It is built through the normal repetition and consistency of daily access, locker room presence, trust earned with players and media alike over time.

"As you grow, you get more responsibility," he says. "It really is empowering to see my perspective change on certain elements of the industry as I continue to grow." The transition from executing interviews to understanding and helping shape the strategic frame behind them has been a rewarding shift in his career. He is clear that the locker room work never goes away. "You never lose that. I still love the opportunity to be down there around our media members and players." The growth to experience things at the strategic level is built on the foundation of showing up at the ground level, consistently, for years.

The Process Is the Win

If there is a single throughline in how Charlie thinks about the work, it is this: the process is not a means to an outcome. The process is the point. He has learned this by reading and studying successful organizations and what they have in common. He has also seen it firsthand, watching players and coaches stay true to their process regardless of the result from the day or week before. The people who consistently performed at a high level, in his observation, are the ones whose standard did not shift with the results.

“It's really about your process over your outcome," he says. "Your reaction to whatever the result is can dictate what the next day looks like. Getting back to the baseline and staying true to your work is most important.” That mindset extends to how he runs the internship program he now leads. He takes pride in tracking interns who have moved from Washington to jobs at other NFL teams, not as a metric of department output, but as evidence that showing people a standard of work, elevating them inside it, and trusting them with real responsibility produces outcomes that matter beyond the organization.

His advice to younger professionals is not complicated: find joy in what you do, treat the people around you as relationships rather than contacts, and understand that the consistency of your effort is the only variable you actually control. "If you get up every day, put your best foot forward, stick to your process, communicate with your colleagues, and handle all of your business, good things will follow." He has tested that belief through coaching changes, ownership transitions, name changes, and enough long August training camp days to know it holds.

Pat Connaughton is a two-sport professional athlete and NBA Champion currently with the Charlotte Hornets. During an accomplished basketball and baseball career at the University of Notre Dame, where he helped lead the men’s basketball team to its only ACC Championship in program history, he was selected in the 4th round (121st overall) of the 2014 MLB Draft by the Baltimore Orioles. One year later, upon graduation from the University, he heard his name called once again - this time in the 2015 NBA Draft, ultimately choosing to pursue basketball at the professional level.

He is also the Co-Founder of Three Leaf Partners, the real estate development firm he launched with Matt Burow, focused on creating lasting impact through projects that bring together athletes, business leaders, and community partners. Through this work, he is building a company centered on impact that supports communities and delivers long-term value.

In 2016, Pat founded the Pat Connaughton Foundation, built on the pillars of Courts, and Character, with a mission to expand access to athletics for the next generation of student-athletes. The foundation reflects his commitment to paying forward the opportunities he was given and continues to grow its impact through court donations and refurbishments, clinics, scholarships, and community-based programming. To date, the PCF has refurbished or donated 35 courts with five more planned/underway,, totaling more than $3.6 million in donations. It has also hosted 31 clinics and will have granted eight scholarships by the end of 2026.

He approaches his NBA career not as a finish line, but as a platform, using it to support and expand the work he has been intentionally building since college.

The Job Sites Came Before the Courts

Pat did not discover business after basketball; he discovered it on construction sites as a kid, working alongside his father and developing something many athletes spend years trying to build later: a tangible understanding of how places are built and communities are shaped. “Basketball is what I love to do,” he says, “but it’s not going to last forever. So how am I using it as a vehicle to build something for my life after basketball?”

That mindset did not emerge after a long NBA career. It was formed early, sharpened at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and further shaped by watching ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, “Broke.” The film crystallized what he did not want his story to become. From that point on, every opportunity basketball created became a chance to learn, not just to show up.

Two Sports, One Focus

Before he was a full-time NBA player, Pat was balancing two elite athletic paths at once. Baseball gave him another professional opportunity, but more importantly, it reinforced the direction he already felt pulled toward: building something bigger than sports.

“The signing bonus from the MLB really poured gas on that fire,” he says, referring to his business ambitions, not his athletic ones.

The ability to manage two high-level sport commitments simultaneously also gave him something most business professionals spend years developing: compressed time management. As he often emphasizes, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day; the difference lies in how they are used. That discipline translates directly into how he operates today, coordinating business activity across Zoom calls on planes, meetings on the road, and windows of time that other players might treat as downtime.

Three Leaf Partners: Community as the Product

Three Leaf Partners was not built on a theme. It was built on a thesis: to bring together athletes, business executives, and community partners around real estate projects that create impact beyond the structure itself. Pat co-founded the firm with Matt Burow, and while the team leads day-to-day execution, he drives the overall strategy.

The mission is rooted in creating a lasting impact on the communities and people they serve through real estate, with a belief that the outcomes should extend far beyond the physical structures themselves. That framing traces back to where he grew up, the people who built within his community, and a commitment he made early on that if he ever made it, he would give back to the people and places that shaped him. Real estate, it turns out, is the instrument that allows that promise to be put into practice.

To date, Three Leaf Partners has led 23 projects across four states, representing more than $621 million in total project value.

The Championship as a Blueprint for Impact

When Pat talks about the kind of impact he wants to have long term, he does not point to a development deal or a financial milestone. He points to the 2021 NBA Championship with the Milwaukee Bucks. Seventeen players with different backgrounds, motivations, and experiences came together around a single goal, delivering something the city would remember.

“Every individual is different, but came together around a common goal,” he says. He calls it “impact winning,” the idea that the most meaningful outcomes extend beyond the individuals who create them and into the communities they serve. That mental model shapes how he thinks about Three Leaf Partners, his foundation, and the legacy tied to his father’s name.

Access Is the Asset, Time Is the Budget

Pat’s advice to athletes is specific and structurally honest. The access that comes with playing professionally is temporary and underused. "Take advantage of the access you have to business professionals," he says. "They will want to meet with you." Most athletes burn that window. He has spent his career converting it.

For young professionals not coming from sports, the message shifts slightly but stays rooted in the same principle. Time management is not a soft skill, it is the prerequisite. "Schedule your time to directly align with achieving your goals." And underneath both messages is something quieter but just as important: how you treat people in every room determines which rooms you get invited back into.

Leaving Something Worth the Name

Pat’s foundation was built on a personal debt. He learned to play basketball at Fidelity House in Arlington, Massachusetts, and he has never forgotten what that access and the people there meant for who he became. In many ways, the foundation’s work has now come full circle. With support from a donation from the PCF, Fidelity House recently completed a large-scale renovation, helping deliver a brand-new gym for the next generation of kids to learn, compete, and grow.

Youth sports participation is declining, burdened by negative experiences with programs that don’t have kids’ best interests at heart. The foundation exists to push back against that, designed to give the next generation the same foundation he had.

His motivation now has a second layer. “How I represent my father and his last name and how I now want to set an example for my son.” Business, philanthropy, and legacy are not separate tracks for Pat. They are the same track, running in the same direction.

Josh Marriner is the Director of Player Engagement for the Arizona Cardinals, where he designs and delivers programs focused on the personal and professional development of NFL players, on and off the field. He played college football at UConn and Old Dominion, earned a master's degree in public administration, worked two jobs while finishing his degree, and entered the NFL through a Player Engagement assistant role with the Miami Dolphins in 2019. What ties it all together is a consistent orientation toward service, and a willingness to show up fully, wherever he was. Josh has spent the last five seasons with the Cardinals, where he continues to build programs that help players thrive on and off the field.