For those who may not know, what does your job entail?

My role entails leading all of the league’s efforts to grow flag football both in the U.S. and globally. That includes everything from growing youth participation, from getting more opportunities for girls and boys to play flag football, working really closely with the clubs because they drive a lot of our efforts to grow flag football at the grassroots level, including high school sanctioning, which is a really big priority for us. I think a lot of people think of flag football as still a recreational sport, but there are increasing opportunities for women to play at the college level, as well. So we work with the NCAA, the NAIA, with junior colleges on increasing those opportunities. Then the last piece I’ll mention is obviously with flag football in the 2028 Summer Olympics. That’s a huge way that flag football is getting elevated both on the global scale and on the professional level. We also work closely with International Federation of American Football around getting flag football into the Olympics in L.A., looking ahead to Brisbane, and just continuing to promote the Olympics, as well.

What kind of changes have you seen just since starting this job in May?

The momentum that flag football has is so large. I think since starting in the role, in July we held the flag football championships. So that’s one of the largest, if not the largest national youth tournaments that we run through the NFL FLAG program. It wasn’t the first championship, but it’s the first time we really made it into a marquee tentpole event and put all of the NFL’s resources behind it. It was broadcast on ESPN, and just being there and being able to see these 15-year-old, 17-year-old boys and girls being able to play on this national, televised stage, I think that was a really big milestone for flag football, a way to expose more people in the U.S. and globally to flag football. That was a pretty big milestone just in the first few months. Also in 2024, five more states have sanctioned girls flag, and that’s at a pretty rapid clip, as well, so I think all of the state associations and all of the clubs are just seeing the momentum behind flag football. With all of the regular-season NFL games, seeing all of the ways that clubs are supporting flag football, and highlighting these high school girls teams during the games and during the broadcast, it certainly feels like there’s even more momentum than when I first joined.

It’s definitely taken the world by storm the last couple months.

Yes, and we’ve seen so many NFL players excited about the prospect of playing in the Olympics, so I think just knowing that it’s an Olympic sport, the players having the opportunity to represent your country drives so much excitement as well.

Can you take me through your career journey to this point and how it led you to this position?

So, I’ve been in sports for a lot of my career, I’d say, going back even to high school. One of my first jobs was as a ball girl at the U.S. Open; I did an internship at a sports marketing company and at the USTA. Then, after college, I went into management consulting for a few years, and then, after business school, I was determined to get back into sports. So I took a role at Madison Square Garden doing marketing for the New York Knicks, Rangers and Liberty, and that was an amazing opportunity, to be exposed to multiple sports, to work for teams but also to work for a facility in Madison Square Garden. I then worked at FanDuel for about six years, joining when it was a small company and was there through the expansion into sports betting. So I’ve been in sports for a while, but this is my first official role in football. In some ways, I feel like my career has led up to this.

Football was one of my favorite sports growing up, but I went to New York City public school, and so my exposure to football and my opportunities as a girl, too, were really just tossing the football around in the courtyard. The first time I played organized football was in college playing intramurals. Flag football is one of the most popular intramural sports, but that was my first time playing organized football. And that was touch football, and when I got to business school, that was actually the first time I was exposed to flag football. In business school, I ran all of the sports teams for my section, and I was also sports commissioner, so I oversaw all of the sports leagues and competitions for the business school. I spent a lot of my time doing that, kind of a little job in itself. After business school, while I was at Madison Square Garden and FanDuel, I was playing flag football three times a week in New York City, and I ran a flag football tournament company on the side with a few friends. Taking this role at the NFL, having the opportunity to combine the industry experience that I have in sports with that very real personal passion for flag football, that just felt like a dream opportunity.