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Jessica Gelman is the CEO of Kraft Analytics Group (KAGR) and co-founder and co-chair of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. She is a minority partner in the Utah Royals of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), and serves as an alternate governor on the league’s board. Jessica, who played Division I basketball at Harvard, previously led business operations, marketing and strategy for Kraft Sports & Entertainment.  

As a woman with roles in both sports and in tech, what challenges did you face to having your voice heard and your vision taken seriously? How did you overcome those challenges?

Of course, I’ve faced challenges. Working in the sports industry for 21 years, a significant differentiator for having my voice heard is through data and analytics. In addition to sharing my perspective, the ideas are rooted in data and insights from the customer.

As an example, early in my career, I was part of a group of executives looking to improve the game-day experience for fans. I shared that, based on customer feedback, one of the biggest challenges was the gate entry process. The person responsible for that area came at me aggressively, asking “What do you know? You’re not out there not running it.” While I appreciated and accepted that, my response was that this customer feedback was steeped in data. The data overwhelmingly reinforced which challenges were the most significant pain point and allowed us to focus on what to address. 

Obviously, I feel very fortunate to work with innovators like Robert and Jonathan Kraft who embrace analytics and did it long before others in the industry.  This ensured my voice (and the data) was heard which ultimately, created opportunity and significant growth of the Patriots fanbase.

What are some ways that data and analytics can be used to benefit women sports, both on the playing field and in the business office?

There are three primary ways: sponsor valuation, player data, and data to support women in leadership roles to drive better equity for women’s sports.

On the business side, the focus is how we define the value of women’s sports sponsorship. Historically, value was based on eyeballs – viewership and attendance. Obviously, those are important, but women’s sports highlight a different and higher level of engagement – a level of fandom that has more depth. The impact of sponsoring a sports team or organization is evolving due to the one-on-one trackability of how people are responding and reacting.

The metrics for sponsorship are evolving in real-time which should support and help elevate women’s sports.  Importantly, women’s sports have had limited coverage. As more games are broadcast via more direct-to-consumer mediums and more direct fan interaction with athletes through social media, we see a need to evolve and reset how sponsorships are measured.

The second area is player data. It was seven or eight years ago when Sue Bird first came to the MIT Sloan Analytics Conference. That first year, she was trying to understand the evolution of analytics, but didn’t have her own data to learn and make adjustments. When coming back the next year, Sue wrote a piece in the Player’s Tribune that highlighted the lack of player data for female athletes.

We are just starting to see movement and performance tracking, not just for women’s sports but many Olympic sport. At the Sloan conference, we’ve seen a significant increase in the availability and use of player data in sports outside the major male professional sports (e.g. football, basketball and hockey). As more new leagues are created, there needs to be a focus on helping coaches and general managers get the best out of their athletes, to help them grow and improve.  

Finally, there’s unconscious bias in decision making about where to invest and spend. Historically, men have held these leadership positions and there has been an unconscious bias of investing and thinking differently to engage the female fan.  With more women in leadership roles, especially when women’s teams are part of larger conglomerates, female leaders can ensure the women’s teams get equal footing – the same quality of facilities, the same quality of sales teams, the same attention and focus.

Recently you invested in Utah Soccer LLC, which includes the Utah Royals, set to rejoin the NWSL in 2024. What attracted you to that investment and why is it important to you?

A few reasons: women’s sports are undervalued, investing helps ensure more people see women play sports, and Utah is the fastest growing state in the US.

On women’s sports being undervalued – as a one-time professional athlete who has worked in the sports industry for 21 years, I have seen the growth of men’s sports.  Women’s sports are in its infancy and there’s a tremendous upward trajectory potential. Women’s sports are where the NBA and NFL were in the 1970s.

Personally, bringing my experience to women’s sports, hopefully, will ensure more people, especially, boys and girls, see women playing sports. Obviously, it’s important for girls to be playing sports given the lessons and skills learned from playing.  These have been so critical to my long-term success in business. I want those same opportunities for girls today and it’s important they have role models, that they see people like themselves playing and succeeding.

As importantly, for boys, they see the inclusivity and learn to be OK with a woman leading. They learn respect. My boys are 7 and 10 and they love women’s sports. They watch with me; it’s part of their day-to-day life. They also watch football and men’s basketball. But my one son’s birthday is coming up and we’re going to a Connecticut Sun’s game because that’s what he wants to do. And, the quality of play is outstanding too. 

Lastly, our investing group (Daryl Morey, Corbin Petro, Amy Reinhard, and Jim Steger) thinks the opportunity in Utah is very strong. It’s the fastest growing state from a population perspective and the previous incarnation of the Royals had success and great fan support. Plus, partnering with David Blitzer (part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils) and Ryan Smith (owner of the Utah Jazz the lead investor in the Royals) who are doing all the right things in terms of insuring equity for our women’s team within the broader Utah sports landscape is vital. Helping to create more opportunity in that community is really fun and important. 

What is one way that businesses – both sports and otherwise – can help build a more inclusive culture?

Building an inclusive culture needs to be incredibly intentional. At KAGR, we do a couple of different things. First, we have strong female leadership– 75% of the executive team is women. Then, we focus on creating and ensuring people feel welcome and have the right benefits in place.

Second, we invest into the community and create opportunities for our team.  As an example, we have a great program called KODING with KAGR (KODING standing for Kollaboration of Data in the Next Generation). We reach out local colleges in Boston with a focus on women in sports, women in tech, women in analytics groups to come to our offices for an evening. We share learning on the industry and the opportunities in different areas across KAGR. Students get to learn what a day in the life is like, how to apply the theoretical concepts they are learning in data science or business strategy classes to sports and entertainment organizations.

Sadly, we still have students who come and shared that they are the only woman in their data science class.  That’s hard to hear. But, they see so many women working in the field, they share that it gives them hope. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so important in this space to reach down and pull people up.

Lastly, through the Sloan Conference, we are really committed to diversity and inclusion in several ways. The students are so focused on this too which really is so key.  This past year 38% of our speakers were women and nearly 50% were diverse in some way. People attending the conference need to see people who look like them. We have a mentorship program where 75 people are selected for a free ticket to the conference and are paired with a mentor (many of whom are former Sloan Conference student leads). I am so very proud of our collective focus in this space to help ensure that there’s more diversity coming into the industry.

Lastly, we focus on access to knowledge shared at the conference as all of the content from conference is available online for free. The conference is a non-profit and was founded on educational concepts. At our roots, we’re trying to convene people to talk and further evolve analytics in sports.  

You were a standout basketball player at Harvard from 1993-97. What are some of the lessons you learned from playing basketball at Harvard that apply in business?

I was a point guard in college and my role was understanding the strengths and weaknesses of my teammates and putting them in a position to be successful. That is critical to what I do as CEO. Awareness and understanding when people are struggling and providing them with the tools to be successful or where they are succeeding and helping them lean into those strengths. That point guard mentality has always been part of my ethos.

Of course, in playing sports, the lessons are numerous: learning how to win which means work ethic and how to prepare via practice. Learning how to be on a team. How be a leader. How to overcome adversity. When you lose how do you respond to that? You’re going to lose, going to fail, so what do you learn from that?

As an example, my freshman year at Harvard (1993-94 season), we were very bad. We went 7-19. Then, the next year, we went from worst to almost first, losing the last game in an embarrassing fashion.

How did we respond? How did we overcome that?  Ultimately, for that time, we became the best team in the Ivy League and were nationally ranked. We were the first Harvard women’s team in the NCAA tournament (junior year, 1995-96) and the first men’s or women’s basketball team to go undefeated in the Ivy League (14-0 in 1996-97).

That’s a lesson that I rely on every single day.

Lastly, playing sports taught me time management, especially at Harvard with academics and basketball. Today, I have a lot of competing needs and priorities that extend beyond KAGR, Sloan and the Royals with the most important to my family, my wife and our kids. My time as an athlete helped me learn how to manage all of these competing needs and interests.  I am forever grateful for the skills developed through sport.

You searched for new era cap – Page 20 of 31 – The Martin Group

Christine Brennan is an award-winning national sports columnist for USA Today, a commentator for CNN, ABC News, PBS NewsHour and NPR, a best-selling author and a nationally-known speaker. Named one of the country’s top 10 sports columnists multiple times by the Associated Press Sports Editors, she is a past president and current board chair of the Association for Women in Sports Media.

Women’s sports have a pretty good track record of capturing attention for big moments – from the 1999 Women’s World Cup to the latest NCAA basketball tournament. So why do women’s sports still seem on the outside of daily sports conversations?

On the national stage, we have these moments, and there are many more than there used to be which is good news. But then it becomes more regionalized, or just kind of fades away until the next big, big moment. I think women’s sports are in a better place now than they’ve ever been. Today is the greatest day for women’s sports in the United States — until tomorrow. There’s no doubt about that.

On one level, we’re impatient. Those of us who believe so strongly in Title IX and the power of women’s sports, and the success of women’s sports, we want it to happen faster. On the other hand, we have such a crowded sports calendar at a time when everyone’s attention is diverted to whatever they care about.

We all forget sometimes that men’s sports have also had problems. The NBA was in trouble in the late 1970s and the NBA Finals were even shown on tape delay. Then came Magic and Bird. But we don’t focus on that, because that’s a while ago. The other thing to look at is when men’s sports started compared to when women’s sports began. The NBA started in 1946. The WNBA started after the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. So, the head start men’s basketball had over women’s is extraordinary. The first NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was in 1939. The first NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament was in 1982. A little bit of a head start, right? We can look at it this way: it’s a 100-meter dash, and the men are close to the finish line and the women have basically just gotten out of the blocks. Can you imagine where we’ll be with women’s sports if this growth continues at the same pace?

Female athletes seem to be driving much of the conversation around cultural change. Why do you think that is?

Women athletes, for the most part, have stayed in college and gotten their degrees before having a professional opportunity — if they have a professional opportunity. I think that they tend to be more educated, more civic-minded and more aware. They’ve also gone through more in terms of the issues – sexism, discrimination, being lightly regarded, being scoffed at  — than male athletes have, although that’s getting better by the day.

In the WNBA you had the players on the Atlanta Dream actively working against their owner, Kelly Loeffler, who was running for the Senate. We saw pictures of Atlanta players wearing shirts supporting her opponent, Raphael Warnock. When have we ever seen that before? You have players on the team owned by a woman running for the Senate who are actively campaigning for her rival. That’s remarkable.

I think that shows how these athletes get it. They have not made the money the men have made. They have other interests in their lives, in part because they have to, because they’ll never be billionaires playing their sport. They’re more in tune to the world, I think, because their life hasn’t been coddled, they haven’t had the same sense of entitlement of many male athletes, so they are more aware and I think that makes them better citizens. I’m not saying male athletes are not good citizens. There are some amazing male athletes doing great work, but I think female athletes tend to be more aware as citizens and more outspoken.

Think about Megan Rapinoe at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. When has a U.S. athlete been wearing the red, white and blue, competing on foreign soil and leading the U.S. to victory while having to fend off the President of the United States on social media? Who would have ever thought I would ever say that sentence?

As a sports columnist, did you ever feel like it was an uphill battle to be heard or taken seriously?

I was very, very fortunate. I was launched out of Northwestern University with my undergrad and master’s degrees in journalism into the career of my dreams. I had three summer internships and one fall internship during my undergrad years, so I was ready for this and so confident and so comfortable, and never doubted that I belonged.

I came out of college in 1981, a time when some newspapers still had not hired a woman in their sports department. I was the first woman sportswriter to be hired full time by the Miami Herald. Let’s be honest: if I had been a white male, I would not have gotten that job, because they wanted and needed to hire a woman. Now, the previous summer, I had interned with the Herald, so they knew me. I didn’t feel like it was a gift at all. They saw my work and wanted me back. But if I had been a white male, I would not have gotten that job, and it’s very important to say that.

To me, it’s all about what you do with what you’re given. I took that opportunity and ran with it. How fortunate I was to have such a huge platform right off the bat. I covered the Miami Hurricanes in 1983 when they won their first national championship, and I was the only reporter — the only outsider, frankly — who was there every day from August 1983 to January 2, 1984, when they beat Nebraska and won the national title. Within a few months, I covered my first Olympics in Los Angeles and after that I went to the Washington Post. 

I’m so fortunate in that I’ve always been heard. I’ve always been treated equally. I’ve always been given great opportunities, and I’ve never felt that I didn’t have the support of my editors. One of the reasons I became president of AWSM (Association for Women in Sports Media) was because I wanted to fight for those women who haven’t had the opportunity that I had. So many women don’t get those opportunities, or are treated unfairly, or are minimized by a sports editor. I’m fighting for them. I’ve worked hard, but you also have to be lucky. I’ve been so fortunate, so lucky, and I absolutely want to give back every way I can.

What advice would you give to women who are looking to get into the sports media field?

It’s a really hard time and jobs are scarce. Many news organizations are cutting people, cutting jobs, downsizing, and sometimes the news organizations themselves are going away. But what I tell students all the time is that good people will make it, so work hard. Just keep plugging away.

Read everything. Have subscriptions to newspapers, read books, read fiction, nonfiction, whatever you want. And prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime, which is what journalism is. It’s just the greatest thing ever. It’s harder and harder for these younger people to break in, but that doesn’t mean they won’t break in.

One piece of advice I give to all the students I mentor is to use the internet to help find a job. What I would have given to have the internet when I was looking for jobs! Students can search the websites of news organizations, they can send emails — cold, out of the blue emails, which I absolutely encourage.

Before I got my job offer from the Miami Herald, I pulled an all-nighter typing letters on an electric typewriter to 50 different newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Chicago Tribune. I photocopied some of my best stories, had my resume typeset and then put them all together with the individual letters in big envelopes and mailed them out. When I tell students that, and I do tell that story often, they’re shocked. And I tell them how fortunate they are to have the internet, but also, you really have to want to work that hard. No one is going to hand you anything.

My advice is to tell students as they’re reading and/or watching stories from around the country, to email that newspaper or TV reporter whose work they really like and start a conversation. Pretty soon, you might be visiting that city so you ask that reporter if they have time for lunch or coffee. Most people say yes to that and now you have a mentor, or at least a connection to that news organization. You have someone on your side. Now, say someone at that newspaper or TV station goes on maternity leave a year or so later, and that reporter you got in touch with remembers you as an impressive student and puts your name forward. You’ve now turned a cold email into a job.

You’re probably saying to yourself, Christine Brennan has lost her mind. Well, I gave that exact career advice to a woman who was getting her master’s in journalism from Northwestern: to just send out cold emails. And guess what? That student didn’t get one job offer. She got two. I use this example all the time. People have to be willing to work for this.

What might be flying under the radar in women’s sports that we should be paying attention to?

Keep an eye on flag football. The NFL is all behind flag football and it’s starting to become a high school sport for girls. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it moving into colleges. If the NFL is supporting something, and it sure is supporting flag football, especially for girls and women, watch out. The NFL can flex its muscles and really push high schools and colleges. I’m all for it, as long as it doesn’t hurt other girls’ sports and as long as athletic directors don’t take away other girls’ sports.

There’s certainly a chance it’s going to become an Olympic sport someday. How does the International Olympic Committee not take a meeting with Roger Goodell on this? I think that’s fascinating. And the NFL realizes the power of women’s sports. They also of course have decided that they want women to be playing a form of football because they want to keep girls and women as fans of the NFL for life. And with the issues of CTE and concussions in the forefront, they’re looking at a safer way for people to play football and still love watching the NFL on Sundays.

Two other things I’m looking at in the next 50 years of Title IX are women coaching women, and women’s sports doing a much better job of reaching girls in underserved urban and rural areas. First, we absolutely must have women coaching women. It’s just unbelievable to me that so many universities have men coaching women in their marquee programs like women’s basketball, softball and soccer. It’s nothing against men. It’s about creating female role models for girls and women. When these male coaches leave or resign, schools have to hire women to replace them. There are so many young women out there now who are in the coaching ranks who need the opportunity. And we want to show our daughters and our nieces and our granddaughters that women can do anything in sports, including coach. If they see only male coaches on the sidelines or on TV, that’s a bad message in terms of the growth for women in coaching.

The second piece is making sure that we reach underserved urban and rural areas with the opportunities granted by Title IX. We’ve nailed the suburbs. We are reaching suburban girls and will continue to succeed where people have money to put their girls in travel and club teams and get college opportunities. It’s an absolutely amazing success. Where we’re missing out is some urban and rural areas. How is the U.S. women’s soccer team that’s about to play in the 2023 World Cup not 50-50 Black and white? It is better than it has ever been, but still not 50-50. We know why. In general, soccer has been a mostly suburban white girls’ sport. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to do a much better job of reaching girls of color. That’s the next challenge for Title IX.

As we know, Title IX is not just about sports. It’s about teaching the other half of our population about winning and losing at a young age, about teamwork, about sportsmanship, about physical fitness. Now that girls and women are learning those life lessons as boys and men did for generations, we are seeing the incredible growth of women leaders in our country. Moving into the 2030s, 40s, 50s and beyond, we of course will have women presidents and more than 50 women senators and more than 50 percent women in Congress, as well as more women CEOs and college presidents and the like, and the common denominator for all those women will be that they played sports because of Title IX.