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Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in the area of social and behavioral sciences in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota where she is Co-Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. She is program manager for the Tucker Center’s program, Coaching HER which aims to help youth sports coaches tackle unconscious bias. Her seminal research includes the annual Women in College Coaching Report Card which is aimed at retaining and increasing the number of women in the coaching profession, and a groundbreaking book Women in Sports Coaching (2016).

The following interview is edited for length and clarity.

You are one of the leading researchers on women in coaching. What drove your interest into this particular area? What has the research shown about women in coaching?

I was a college athlete in tennis, and then I parlayed my love of tennis into coaching at Wellesley College in my early 20s. I loved seeing that I could make a difference in the lives of the women I coached on my team. That really got me interested in how we can make a difference for millions of girls and women around the world through empowering more women to be coaches, by reducing the barriers and supporting women in coaching.

As a young coach, I experienced a lot of sexism, discrimination and harassment, but at that time, I didn’t know what I was experiencing. I just knew it made me mad or uncomfortable. Now, I have the language to talk about it. From that experience, I became interested in the intersection of gender, sport and coaching science and went to the University of Minnesota to study with Dr. Mary Jo Kane at the Tucker Center when it was just getting off the ground.

When I first started focusing my research on women in sport coaching around 2010, I distilled all the literature around the barriers that women face – whether it was societal around stereotypes, gender bias, homophobia, racism, ableism, or at the organizational level, where it’s about people in positions of power, pay inequities, and family-unfriendly policies. They’re treated differently because they’re women, and that impacts their self-perceptions, their confidence, their choices to coach or to leave coaching. What we also know from the research is that there are not many supports for women coaches.

We now know what the barriers are, so my focus and the focus of many of my colleagues is taking we’ve learned from women who have survived and thrived in coaching and using them to create supports for the next generation.

What do you wish more people understood about the importance of women in coaching roles?

Much of the work that we do in the Tucker Center is to dispel false narratives around women coaching with data, not opinions, because there are a lot of opinions about women and coaching. “They don’t apply for jobs. They won’t move for jobs. They don’t like to coach as much as man. They only get jobs because they’re women.” There’s a long litany of things that we hear about women, which I call “blame the women narratives.”

What I want to stress is that women are just as interested in coaching as men. They’re just as qualified if not more so than their male counterparts. What they need to be given is the opportunity to coach both women and men because they’re qualified, competent, amazing women, who often don’t get the opportunity in a system that doesn’t value and support them.

The biggest message is that if you hire women and give them opportunity, it is a good return on your investment. Women coaches matter. Same identity role models matter. Girls and women want and need that. Opposite gender role models matter too for boys and men because it changes their ideas about gender and leadership and can result in them respecting and valuing women to a greater and different level.

The latest project from the Tucker Center, Coaching HER, notes that coaches’ unconscious gender biases and stereotypes are often a reason girls drop of sport as teenagers. What are some of those unconscious gender biases and stereotypes and how can those be addressed?

Coaching HER is a free online digital platform for coaches of girls to self-guide themselves through an evidence based, research tested curriculum that helps to upskill coaches to recognize girls’ identities, support their needs, and increase their awareness of and reduce their own gender bias stereotypes in their coaching.

A lot of what we know about coaching girls is people think that “coaching girls is different than coaching boys” because many coaches unconsciously, and maybe consciously, have gender bias. They’ll say that girls are moody, girls are more emotional, girls are less competitive than boys. Girls take everything so personally. They’re sensitive. They’re less tough, they’re less aggressive. These are all gender stereotypes, which are not true for all girls.

We also want coaches to realize that if they internalize these gender stereotypes about girls, it probably impacts how they coach and teach. This may lead girls to feeling like they’re not valued, that they’re not competent, that they aren’t as talented, sport is not for them, and they may drop out a sport because of it, which is what we don’t want. What we’re trying to do with Coaching HER is address with coaching science how we interrogate gender stereotypes around coaching girls, and get coaches to realize they may be coaching in ways that are harmful to girls.

You have been part of the Gatorade Women’s Advisory Board. Through that role, how have you seen companies change the way they invest in women’s sports? What can other brands and businesses learn from big-time sponsors that they can apply in their own sponsorship strategies?

One of the other areas in the Tucker Center where we’ve carved out a niche is looking at the academic literature around the business of women’s sport, which honestly, in the last five years has exploded. Nobody was talking about this, except for very few of us. And now every time you get a media alert, it’s around the business of women’s sport, which is amazing.

The good news is that with this most recent data 9% of media spend, has gone to women’s sport in the last year. Now, you might say, 9%, that’s horrible. But it was 1% a couple of years ago. So, we’ve gone a long way in a little bit of time.

What I think that people should know, is that investing in women’s sport is a value proposition. When you invest in women’s sport, the return on investment is far greater than any investment you would make in men’s sport, because of the nature of the fan of women’s sport is highly loyal. They’re digital natives. They’re tech savvy, they’re highly engaged, and they support brands that support women’s sport. The data has proven that out.  I think it’s a very exciting time to be following the business of women’s sport.

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

Well, it’s not flying under my radar, but maybe for other people who are not immersed in this in this world, is how brands and private capital and venture capital is now investing in women’s sport. That’s a game changer.

As we like to say, follow the money. And people that are savvy investors and care about women’s sport, are changing the game by supporting, investing and sponsoring women’s sport.

I also think another thing to keep our eyes on is women or former high-profile women athletes and celebrities investing in women’s sport. We’ve had Billie Jean King for years being almost the lone advocate in terms of female athletes’ advocacy and investment. Now we’re seeing other women athletes – Serena Williams, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and others – using their social and athletic capital and actual monetary capital to invest in women’s sports in ways we haven’t seen in the past.

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Technology can move quickly, and change dramatically, over the course of a career. When Courtney Jeffries graduated from the University of Washington in 2004, social media wasn’t even part of the conversation for most sports organizations. Building on her own curiosity toward emerging business trends and her resume of experience – including VP of Business Operations for the New York Rangers – she now serves as CEO of VRTL, a digital platform that is easily scalable to connect brands, teams, and fans around the world in creative and meaningful ways.

The following conversation is edited for space and clarity:

Walk me through your company and the cutting-edge ideas that VRTL is bringing to sports marketing, sponsorship, and fans.

VRTL is changing how brands connect with their global fan base. As of late, there’s an over-indexing of focus on putting butts in seats – for selling tickets and driving fans to games, concerts, or events. We’re not going to suggest there isn’t value in that, but it greatly limits exposure to the majority of your fan base. Part of that is because there aren’t any tools to meaningfully engage fans globally.

Social media is really a content distribution channel at this point. There aren’t fan engagement platforms flexible enough for an entire brand to execute across the whole consumer funnel. We set out to build a platform that trends on behaviors we recognize as best practices – things like live autograph sessions, panel discussions, community group experiences – and deliver them on a platform that gives a brand ultimate flexibility.

Traditionally, you might have a basic standard 8×10 table and pipe-and-drape, in-person meet and greet. That’s the way it’s always been done – and that’s the challenge. There are legacy best practices that don’t account for new technologies. We’re trying to be that technology at the intersection of best practice engagement and fan base. It sounds very altruistic because sporting events are becoming less and less economical for many fans to attend live. But really, brands are leaving money on the table. If you’re not properly executing against your business model for the global fan base, you are leaving the lifetime value of most of your fans on the table while also failing to generate future fans since the people who can physically get there are only a small piece of the pie.

How would you describe the current climate for women in leadership positions in the sports industry? And how’s that changed over your career?

It’s better than when I started. I had the benefit of working for the Oakland Raiders in the early 2000s under Amy Trask. She was very rare in her field as a CEO leading a sports team. So, it has absolutely improved in the sense that you can look around and see other female executives, not only in C-Suite positions but also in presidential roles. Even the Raiders have carried on the legacy with their new president, Sandra Douglass Morgan. But we’re still not where we could be.

 What’s encouraging is the greater female representation in revenue-generating roles, as opposed to the typical assumption of women in marketing or customer service roles. These are real strategic business development and business intelligence roles, which is encouraging, but we have a long way to go.

I certainly benefited from the generation that came before me and I’m grateful for those female executives who changed how things were done. I think the landscape now lends itself to including more females at the top levels. It doesn’t feel like, “Hey, there’s only one seat here. So, it’s going to be me.” I’m not going to call it female-on-female hate in the office, but there was something to be said for feeling that this was my spot and I want to make sure I don’t lose it. I think that’s changed quite a bit. It’s no longer about having a woman in the room for the sake of checking a box. It’s having people with experience, who have demonstrated loyalty, and who are trying to bring innovation to the company. We can make more space for women in the room.

Starting with the Raiders and then with the New York Rangers and MSG, what are some of the things that you learned from those experiences that you carried into your own company?

I really undervalued the power of diplomacy; I didn’t really have it. I have to work very hard at being diplomatic. That’s not because it’s not the right thing to do, but I just see a clear path and want to say let’s go do it. What I learned along the way is leveraging graceful and effective diplomacy makes things go so much quicker.

I played softball in college, and I played for some baseball players who explained to me they were trying to put together a winning hand. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to have face cards every time. A winning hand can be made up of a mix of cards. It’s your job as a leader to put together a winning hand with what you have. So, diplomacy isn’t “rah-rah” and “you’ve got to be better than what you have.” It’s more like, “I know that you’re gonna give me X amount. I need to make sure that I get all of that. And I’m going to put that into this into this larger machine and make the whole thing work.”

That was a huge skill set I learned andI think it’s really shaped how I lead a team. It makes room for different types of talent, and different types of experience. It makes it much more of a “we’re in this together” atmosphere as opposed to a table of cool kids or all alphas. It’s a collective effort that everybody can be proud of, which is important.

The more tactical things I learned are how different departments have overlapping goals and they aren’t necessarily congruent with the company’s goals. That can be driven by bonuses and different incentives, and that was a challenge for me to understand. Not everybody sees or wants to see the big picture. It goes back to diplomacy and how I’m going to get you on board.

Here’s a great example. At the time I worked for Madison Square Garden in the sports division, there were three different teams – the Knicks, the Rangers, and the Liberty. I was the vice president of retention for all three of them. It’s the same company, and yet all three teams within the same company had their own culture, style, and individual goals. Anybody who worked across all three units had to morph and adjust. If you’re not into that, it’s probably going to be a short tenure, so to speak.

I’m curious about the virtual experience for fans as it pertains specifically to fans of women’s sports.

Our platform creates a much more economical opportunity for teams to engage in any kind of activation. It allows for repeat, serialized, and constant engagement that you otherwise could not execute in person. So when it comes to sports that perhaps don’t have the deep pockets and funding that maybe an NFL team has, we become a very compelling solution for fan engagement that doesn’t sacrifice the event.

For us, and this is true across sports, it allows for a lot more creativity.  If you are paying to present something in person, you are most likely relying on elements that you know will be successful, drive attendance, and yield the expected ROI based on the KPIs you have set for that event. Our platform allows for you to have that event because it’s not as expensive as hosting an in-person event. It’s a much more economical platform.

It’s fun to watch our clients push the boundaries. For example, we’ve launched an autograph experience with a mystery player. Would you do that in person? Maybe, but would you risk people not coming because they don’t know who is going to be there? That risk is dramatically mitigated when it comes to an online platform.

So, explain for a minute how autograph sessions work on a virtual platform.

It’s a very abstract concept until you experience it.  If you were the celebrity on the platform, while we are video chatting, you would use a touchscreen device, such as an iPhone or iPad, and use a stylus to autograph a pre-selected, pre-loaded action shot. The fan on the other end, sees it coming through in real-time.

Not only that, but we can have the signature over a video clip as well, so it’s not just a static moment in time. We know that sports are very emotional and people remember moments. When Brandy Chastain scored the game-winning goal in the 1999 World Cup, that was a very real moment for me as a sports fan, particularly as a woman witnessing her raw reaction to such an exceptional play and her tearing off her jersey and sliding. That video clip could be autographed and I could now have that moment preserved with Brandy’s autograph on it.

From a consumer standpoint, it also seems to lower that barrier of entry to be a fan.

We’ve had 100 different countries represented on our platform. We’ve had our platform translated into nine different languages. We’ve had translators on the platform to facilitate a conversation on behalf of a player that doesn’t speak the same native language as the fans. It really is reducing the physical gap, all in the name of pulling those fans deeper into your consumer fan funnel. How can brands create opportunities that are representative of the brand not just featuring an athlete, but really pulling the curtain back and bringing fans behind the scenes? That drives more loyalty around the organization and creates generational fans.

For teams and brands trying to build that fan base, how do they turn memorable moments into something sustained?

There is a best practice playbook for fan engagement and the majority of those best practices are based around male-dominated sports – like the NFL and NBA. My recommendation would be to have those best practices, but to create your own best practices playbook, too. You want to follow a path that resonates with your fan base.

An example is there used to be this derogatory motto in women’s sports apparel, “shrink it and pink it.” You take the same men’s shirt, make it smaller, and then just put pink and rhinestones on it. Alyssa Milano changed the game after she basically said she didn’t want to wear that. She created her own line of sports fan wear (Touch by Alyssa Milano) and did a great job of changing fan engagement.

What’s your advice to young women who want to work in the sports world?

I typically dispense three pieces of advice. The first one is that you need to understand in a sports organization there are revenue-generating roles and the rest is overhead. So, if you can figure out how to get into a position that is a revenue-generating role, you’re paying for yourself. You’re extending your lifetime at that organization. It also allows you to infiltrate and understand more about the organization to determine which direction you want your career path to go. That doesn’t mean you have to stay in sales. I’m not suggesting a lifetime of indentured servitude inside a sales room, but it does allow you to get your foot in the door. And sales skills are transferable; use that as a springboard to explore the rest of the organization.

The second piece of advice I usually offer to young people is that your job probably doesn’t exist yet. When I worked for the Oakland Raiders, there was no Twitter. There was no strong engagement on social media. There was Facebook, but nobody really understood how to make that into a sports tool. Today, you wouldn’t think of launching any brand without a social media manager or maybe even a social media director, who oversees that entirely. That’s a big deal to consider how these technologies can progress. Understand that the more flexible or transferable your skill sets are will probably tee you up to take advantage of those new jobs and those new positions.

The third thing I would say is to constantly be curious about things. It goes back to what we were saying about falling into old-school best practices – by staying curious and engaged with new trends, you’re going to be ahead of the game when it comes to what is the next job that might come into play. You can start asking how you can create an opportunity for yourself based on the importance of this new trend.

One last thing – if there’s a position that you have in mind that somebody has, and you think, “that’s my dream job”, see if you can get in front of those people and find out what jobs they said yes to and why they said yes to them, as well as what jobs they said no to. It doesn’t mean that’s the exact path you have to follow, but it’s going to help you navigate the opportunities that might be put in front of you. If somebody has this role that you’re into, and that’s the direction you want to take, find out how they got there and start piecing together your path. That doesn’t mean you have to take it, or that it’s the only way to get there, but it can help take some of the guesswork out of where to start. You want to learn from somebody else’s mistakes.

And by the way, I’m happy to be one of those people. If you’d like to talk to me, hit me up. Other people helped me understand the path to take. I’m happy to pass it on.

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An author, athlete, activist and documentary film maker, Kathryn Bertine has been on the forefront of advocating for equity for women in professional cycling. Instrumental in the movement that successfully lobbied the Tour de France to include women in the sport’s signature competition, she continues her work on the gender pay gap through her non-profit, Homestretch Foundation.

This conversation is edited for length and clarity.

Women have long been neglected in the sport of cycling – in opportunity, prize money and sponsorship. What was the tipping point for you that made you say, “I have to do something?”

What I have seen in the past is that change comes from those who are in the arena. When we look back, we see that Billie Jean King could create change while she was playing tennis, because she was experiencing those exact hurdles in her sport at the time. The same thing with women’s soccer and women’s ice hockey – they were lobbying for change and pay equity and it came in part because the work was being done by athletes who were currently playing the sport.

I knew when I was in cycling and racing things weren’t right. If I ever want to see change during my lifetime, while I’m engaged in this sport, then it had to come from me and others while we were playing the sport. Even now, as an alumna of pro cycling, I can still help affect change, but the next round of change will come from the women who are currently playing as well.

That was the key turning point where, like so many of us, I thought that change just happens. But no, change doesn’t have to happen. People must stand up and speak out and make change happen. Maybe in the beginning, I thought, “Oh, someone has to change this!” and then it very quickly became apparent, oh, wait, that’s me. And that’s the other women in the sport, too.

I was lucky enough to make it to the World Tour level of pro cycling, but I was not a world champion. I was not an Olympian. I didn’t have a plethora of gold medals around my neck. And what’s amazing about that is if I were able to create that change, then it should serve an example that we are all able to create change. That’s something I always try to drive home. You don’t have to be wealthy or famous, or a gold medalist or an influencer with millions of followers to make something happen. You can create change by connecting with other people who are in a similar position to you, create a team and a game plan. That’s how we got the ball rolling. At first, I tried doing this stuff by myself, but it kind of fell on deaf ears until there was a team of us that banded together to stand up and fight for change.

A victory came on July 27, 2014 when the pro women of road cycling raced on the Champs-Elysees two hours before the men’s Tour de France concluded their final stage. What was that moment like for you?

That moment was surreal and wonderful on a few different levels. As an athlete, I was able to race and stand on the start line of my dream. It was incredibly meaningful to be part of that day.

As an activist and advocate for change, it was equally meaningful. It was not lost on me on the bigger picture of what we had created. I think age plays a part in that, too. The day I stood there on the Champs-Elysees, I was 39 years old, and we had fought really hard for what happened. Maybe if I had been my 21- or 20-year-old self, it would have felt different. We had plenty of young athletes who are also on that start line. I’m sure they were equally jazzed to be at the Tour de France. But was it possible that they might not have grasped the entirety of that moment? So, I feel lucky that I got to see it from a variety of perspectives.

It was it was incredibly emotional all around, personally, professionally, as an athlete as an advocate. I’ll never forget any detail. Part of what I told myself was, “feel everything you can today, whether it’s tears of joy or exhaustion.”

But we have to be very careful that this doesn’t become tokenism. Like, “Oh, it worked. We’ve got women one day for women, that’s enough.” We’ve kept the pressure on saying it’s not enough. If your fans want more, your sponsors are reaping the benefits financially, and the athletes want more, if you have that trilogy in place, and it’s working, the fact that you’re not growing the race reeks of tokenism or apathy. The one-day race did finally change in 2022. We now have an eight-day race for women, which is great, but it’s still only one-third of what the men are doing.

What has been the impact of business and sponsors in growing women’s cycling? What are the next steps in terms of investing in women’s cycling?

The viewership has been phenomenal. One of the greatest parts is that cycling fans are tuning in because they love watching top level racing and they don’t care whether it’s male or female. They understand that sport is sport, and they want to tune in for the best of the best. What’s happening is that concept of a rising tide lifts all boats. Now, because we’re broadcasting the women, we are actually growing the spectatorship and the viewership of all of cycling.

So, the numbers are up, everything is huge, and where we need to keep the pressure on is that we don’t stay at eight days at the Tour de France for eight more years. And fans can play a huge role in this.

I love giving a few tips on how we, the general public, can actually use a term that I call benevolent shaming. That’s looking at the sponsors, the owners and the directors of the sport to say, “Amazing for the women to have eight days, however, shame on you for thinking the women aren’t capable of even completing 21 days. Shame on you for keeping the distance shorter, because you don’t think women can complete the distance. And shame on you for the fact that at the Women’s Tour de France, the women are earning 29% of what the men make.”

An important thing that I want to bring up about that point is yes, the women are racing eight days and the men are racing 21 days, but that 29% that I’m talking about, is specific eight days to eight days. I’m talking about what the men are earning for eight days to what the women are earning for eight days. And that’s not okay.

Where we can also direct a little bit of this benevolent shaming is to those sponsors who are onboard, they’re supporting a women’s race, but we’re not yet seeing equality in pay. We need to reach out to those sponsors and say, “I want to buy your product, I think what you’re doing for women’s cycling is great. But you’re in a position to make this prize purse bigger and better and stronger. And when you do, I will support your product.”

It’s what I like to call it the loophole of tradition. A lot of sponsors don’t think to ask where the women are because they either assume that it’s 2023 so of course, there’s a women’s equivalent. The race directors would naturally be bringing us that if it existed, wouldn’t they? It doesn’t cross their mind that perhaps whomever they’re talking to might be so old school or outdated that they’re not even bringing the pitch for the women’s inclusion to the table.

This happens a lot in sports, because when we look at something like cycling, which, over the decades has only really truly been televised on the men’s side, we begin to equate it as a male sport. When we bring in the marketing part and finally have the visibility and TV time for the women, it becomes a sport that both genders play. But until we have that leverage, there are things that remain men’s sports only in the public mind.

In 2017 you started the Homestretch Foundation to assist low-income female professional athletes and work for salary equity. What have you learned through this work?

We’re about to start our eighth season and to date we have helped 88 athletes from 18 different countries in women’s cycling as well as a few men who have come through our program. Primarily, what we’ve done is help these athletes who are already at the pro level or the very high elite level by providing them free housing, room and board for up to six months each year in Tucson, Arizona, which is kind of the mecca for road cycling training in North America. We’ve had six Olympians through our program, countless national champions, and it’s great to help another human being thrive and get to the next level. That feels great.

Then, behind the scenes, we fight to change that gender pay gap.

In cycling, our major league is the World Tour and our minor league is the Pro Continental level or Pro Conti. On the men’s side of the sport, there is a base salary for both the World Tour and the Pro Conti. And then of course, these athletes can make hundreds of millions on top of that base salary, but at least there’s a base salary in place.

For the women, there was no base salary at the World Tour or the Pro Conti level. What was happening was these athletes had to carry two, sometimes even three part time jobs, to be able to make it or they had to have financial support elsewhere, whether from spouses or family. And they were expected to do the same job as the guys, which is a very physical job when you talk about professional endurance sports.

Finally in 2020, and then moving up incrementally to 2023, the women at the World Tour now receive a base salary. Our impulse is to cheer, but the women on the World Tour are making the base salary of what the men at the Pro Conti level are making. And the Pro Conti women still have no base salary. That’s not okay. It almost falls back to that tokenism.

So back to what we do at Homestretch; we help the athletes who are here, but what we don’t want is a band aid situation of just helping these athletes and having this pro cycling gap wage gap go unnoticed. In fact, it’s our goal someday that we can close Homestretch down because women are being paid equally. We were created so that we could someday shut down.

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

I think one of the most important things we can do is play the investigator role. Look at these amazing changes taking place in women’s sport, but let’s peel back the layers of this onion. What isn’t taking place? What can we shine a light? Where can we make change happen?

One of the things I think we should all pay attention to is the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will be in Paris. For many years, the International Olympic Committee has been touting this as the Equality Games – that women and men will be equal at this Olympics. I mean, that sounds like a great thing, because we all love equality and we want to see it happen, but is the IOC doing their due diligence? Is it really going to be equal?

I think it’s fun for fans of sport to put on their investigator cap and magnifying glass and take a look at what’s going on. Sometimes it’s surprising to people how far down the inequality can stem. In cycling, even our junior girls race shorter distances than our junior boys. Who put that rule into place? That is happening in other sports, too. Are girls and boys playing different times, or distances, because an old rule is still in place? I hope it can empower people to look at whatever sport they love most and see, is it as equal as we hope that it might be?

Then, if you do find inequity, know you also have the power to create that change. Take off the inspector hat and put on the advocacy hat – whether we’re talking about youth cycling at the 9- to 10-year-old level, or the World Tour and salary equity. Change must happen in all of these places.