 Hi everyone. So glad you could join us for another episode of Most Powerful Women in Sports where the world's greatest marketers, media pros, athletes and coaches share their remarkable journeys and how they achieve peak performance. We'd also like to hear from you to join the conversation in the chat and questions in the Q&A box. Today, we'll be speaking with Jessica Berman, National La Crosse League Deputy Commissioner and EVP of Business Affairs. We're going to talk to Jessica about leadership lessons learned from the different stops, her different stops along the way, but first a little background on Jessica. Jessica joined the National La Crosse League in 2019 after 13 years with the NHL where she was VP, community development, culture and growth. Jessica was and is the first woman to hold the title of Deputy Commissioner at any professional sports league in North America. She oversees all of the league's legal affairs and transactions, manages team services and assists the commissioner with the National La Crosse League's growth strategy. That's a lot to chew on. Jessica, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. We have a lot to dig into here. Thanks for having me. This is crazy. You have a big job. So I'm told or so my kids tell me. So let's start from the beginning just a little bit of you know where you grew up and who shaped you in terms of just in terms of your your leadership style. If you got into sports, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, which for those who are less familiar, well, I call it real Brooklyn. It's not probably what people think of today as Brooklyn. Really, it was a melting pot of people from different backgrounds and I was actually the minority in my community. And that really shaped me in terms of the things that drove me and inspired me in my life. I was always interested in and passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion really since I was a young child and had firsthand and front row seat to the impact of how being underrepresented or marginalized in a community impact you and that really was the catalyst for me wanting to work in sports because I always believed that sport has the power to change the world and was inspired by Nelson Mandela from the time I was a young child and felt that if I could have a role to play in an industry that was a community asset the way that sports are that that would be the way that I wanted to have a positive impact on the world. In terms of my leadership style, I guess I'll start with my parents probably had the biggest impact on me. My mom's a child psychologist and forced a lot of self reflection in my life, including daily journal writing and just really being self aware, taking tabs on at any given minute hour or day what I need in order to be my best self. That was a practice that was instilled in me from the time I was young really given permission to have ups and downs and really just be human. And I do think that that sort of empathy and compassion is not just how I lead myself through my life, but also how I try to mentor and manage and support others around me. And my dad was an entrepreneur, unfortunately passed away earlier this year, but he self made ran his own business built from scratch was a started pumping gas and his dad's gas station and went on to buy a lot of gas stations and gas and oil businesses and his hard work and work at work ethic really shapes who I am every single day. Well, I want to get into a little bit more on the leadership side of things. That sounds really interesting to me on on your approach. Were you always sporty? Is this something were you a late bloomer or were you into sports early on? I was into sports as a fan from the time I was young, but actually my role directly in sports was really I think more on the periphery growing up. I don't know. My my parents didn't have me play sports when I was a kid. Like I was never put in team activities. I was a dancer and so I was a cheerleader and a dance part of the dance team throughout my life through college actually and through that ended up doing halftime shows and being sort of on on the sidelines. But also play a role as a manager of various different teams from the time I was a freshman in high school keeping stats and doing press notes and organizing interviews for players. And so I was always around sports. My brother was actually a football player and played in college. So I definitely had influences from him watching him actually be on the field. So yeah, just always in and around sports. So how did you get into the NHL? Hockey was actually my favorite sport growing up. And so for better or worse, it was sort of to me as a teenager, the pinnacle of working in sports. That was my framework because it was my favorite sport as a fan. And I worked at Prosk Arrow Rose, which is the law firm that represents all the major sports leagues, but the NHL as well. And I happened to link up with the main partner who represented the NHL and collective bargaining back in 2003. When I was a young associate at Prosk Arrow and Bob Baperman, who was the partner was looking for a young eager, hardworking associate who could manage the project with him and for him. And so with with him as my mentor, I got to work every single day. That was like every day was like a year in collective bargaining when the NHL had a season long work stoppage in 0405. And that was really my very quick indoctrination into the NHL world I got to as a very young person, probably unusually so got to work directly with Commissioner Bettman and Bill Daly and David Zimmerman and all of the senior leadership at the NHL and so much so that when collective bargaining was over and we had our new agreement, they hired me to come in house. Interesting. So in talking to a lot of people in the women in the sports arena, it seems that a lot of people came from the outside in rather than started maybe as an intern. There were a few people who started as an intern or you know a floor wiper or whatever unbasketball. But would you say that a legal profession or business profession is the way to go for somebody trying to break in? It was for me a successful route for a couple of reasons. I felt like as a woman as an underrepresented person in the industry, it gave me, I think a level of credibility coming in the door through the professional route that was helpful. I think as a starting point, but also I would say I also really worked my way up like some of the stories that you're referencing throughout my career. I had countless internships really from the time I was 16. I worked at the NFL. I worked at agencies. I worked at marketing agencies. I worked for on air talent. I worked at different media companies on the sports side all in an internship capacity really to learn the industry and to build my network because as folks who work in the industry now or others who are interested in being in the industry know it is a very small industry and everyone seems to know everyone and when you're not in it, it can be very intimidating. But my approach was really to have a quality based networking approach where I would try to attend conferences or events consistently so that repeat instances of meeting people. I was able to really build I think more substantive and long lasting relationships which really helped me in my career. Okay. And did some of those relationships help you go from the NHL to lacrosse? Like talk about a little bit of that transition and what that was like that's a big change in many ways. It was a big change. It was a very hard change for a lot of reasons leaving the NHL which as I just described was my dream job. I mean if you met people I went to high school with they would have said that I would have never left the NHL because I love hockey and I love the NHL. I made a decision and maybe it's in part some of the references I made earlier to the self-reflection that I do as a general practice for my own sort of keeping tabs on how I'm doing that continuing to work at the NHL in that capacity wouldn't really allow me to reach my potential and in part because it's such a big organization and no matter how important my role was there and I do feel like I had the opportunity to contribute and worked with amazing people and got amazing opportunities to contribute. It just felt like at the end of the day I was a very small cog in a very big wheel and that's probably the case for a lot of big businesses and I really felt like I wanted the opportunity to try and work in a different kind of work environment where it was a little more scrappy in terms of being a challenger property being more risk tolerant and being able to infuse more innovation into our approach to the next generation of fans and to have more leadership role in the full holistic business as opposed to one vertical that I was responsible for and that's really what led me to the NLL in my current role and yes it was absolutely by virtue of my network of people who helped me do a lot of soul searching about what I was looking for to really make sure that what I was going to was going to really help me to achieve what I was looking to achieve in the next phase of my career. And so what was it what was it like when you first got to La Crosse? I mean it's you've been there a little while now do you feel the game has really seen some momentum? What's what's happening on that front? So I'm two and a half years into my role and since I've joined we have expanded by two teams. So we've gone from 13 to 15 teams which each of those transactions is massive undertaking massive opportunity for growth. We've recast our media partnerships and landscapes. So we went from a deal with Turner and be our live to now we are on ESPN in the US and TSN in Canada which for those who aren't familiar with the Canadian media landscape really the sort of equivalent of ESPN they're actually related related entities. So we've completely recast our media distribution strategy. We have introduced new corporate social responsibility initiatives at the league actually this past November we announced NLL Unites which is our CSR platform to really communicate our our why our cause. I really believe that purpose driven storytelling and education initiatives is really particularly for a challenger property like ours a differentiator in the marketplace and we have a very strong culture around indigenous roots obviously very socially relevant today and very authentic to the sport of lacrosse and yeah we're working on a variety of new initiatives we've announced several and one more to come on Friday that's in the works new non-indemic sponsorship and partnerships. Again all towards sort of taking the league more mainstream having the league be where sports fans are and go we are now as of a year ago since I joined selling merchandise with Fanatics our partner at Fanatics so that sports fans can shop in the place where they shop for other sports NLL shirts hats jerseys etc. So yeah there there's a lot of momentum in the league in terms of our growth so I'm just I actually have always wondered about this it lacrosse is so popular in schools at all levels what what's been the challenge at at the professional level. Yeah it's it's very it's a question that I had frankly before I joined because it's a little perplexing why lacrosse isn't more popular considering the grassroots growth. Yeah I guess what I would say is that it takes a generation number one to build fandom right particularly if you're doing it through grassroots so 30 years ago 20 years ago lacrosse was not popular like it is today so the people who grew up playing lacrosse are just now getting to the point where they're in their 20s 30s 40s and that is the beginning of sort of this next generation of fans for us a good example of that is that our most recent one of our most recent ownership groups are former lacrosse players and they run enormous hedge funds now but yeah super helpful. They love the game they love lacrosse they want to be involved in the growth of lacrosse they coach on the side their kids play and so yeah I think over time you're just going to start to see that but also I the other observation that we're really trying to take a leadership role in is really about the fragmentation of the sport and I think the more we can serve as a beacon of unification for the different stakeholders to come together on joint initiatives the the easier it'll be for the consumer to find us and support us and not be confused by the landscape there needs to be like a North Star that everybody from I mean from a marketing perspective. You know having too many initials brands messages communicators can really bifurcate your audience and I think that's been a bit of a of impediment to the lacrosse growth. Okay I have a question from the audience I'm going to ask you now and it has to do with marketing. Can you talk about cause marketing and sports philanthropy and how much that has changed in the last decade or so. Yes well for me for you this is my passion point I I genuinely believe that really the sort of old school way of marketing which is just like branding or static images or what has been in sports just like a Dasher board signage just not going to penetrate and one of the things that cause marketing will will do for leagues and for sports is really have the fans understand why we matter and what we stand for what we care about and we know from the data that the next generation of fans particularly Millennials and Gen Z's will make decisions based on their belief that a sports brand or any brand for that matter really genuinely and authentically care about cause and so to from my perspective it's table stakes at this point and I think the sports industry is a little bit late to this line of thinking I'll give credit to the NBA that started NBA cares at least 10 to 15 years ago before the rest of professional sports frankly had sort of bought on to this concept of do good and do well that you can appropriately leverage philanthropy and doing good in the communities for your brand to do well as long as it's done the right way and as long as it's done appropriately and in good faith. So I think it's essential to any marketing strategy at this point certainly that's the NLL's focus. So another question do you think do you think there'll be a point where we'll start to see women's teams flourish or is it still early days? This is the time I think for women's sports and I think you're starting to see it right the the WNBA the NWSL they're flourishing and it's not philanthropy for a business any thought of as philanthropy there's a little data real data to support that there's business reasons to invest in women's sports people care and watch about women's sports in fact some of the data shows that a women's sports fan is a more engaged sports fan because of that cause related element they really care they really wanted to be successful there's it's not a passive experience for a women's sports fan I would argue in some ways and I've often said this internally that the NLL has a lot of similarities to women's sports in that way because people who follow it like really care and it's much less of a casual or passive experience. Do you think there'll be a time where you'll see professional and women playing in the NLL like a women's league or are we a little ways off that's I think certainly in the field game probably closer in time than the door game which is our version of lacrosse but and again this is sort of a little bit in the weeds of what I was referring to about the fragmentation of lacrosse which is that there's so many versions of lacrosse this is the other thing that I think is a real challenge for people you know unlike say like soccer like you can pick up a soccer ball like whether you're in Mexico or in Canada or Israel you're soccer is soccer right in lacrosse there's girls lacrosse there's boys lacrosse there's field game there's the there's the indoor game there's now fixes which is another version of lacrosse that just came out that is the international version and so from that perspective it it will be a potential obstacle I think for for making the transitions for example there's an outdoor lacrosse league the PLL we share 40% of our players with them but not 100% because not every player can play in both leagues so because it's a different version of the game. Got it. Okay. Wow that yeah that'll that'll create some some complications but but it but it is interesting to see the momentum that's been going on and we actually are just about out of time so I'm going to have you throw to your takeaways. This has been a really great conversation by the way and we'll go from there. My takeaways this is actually really fun to do when when you guys asked me to think about three key takeaways so I guess my first takeaway is I think maybe the opposite of what I think people's tendency is to do which is to try to really like lean into just proportionally focusing on your weaknesses improving your weaknesses and that's not to say that you shouldn't be aware of them and manage them but I think really what I've tried to do in my career is manage my weaknesses and backfill as needed in areas where I know I might not be as strong but really lean into my strengths and and do the things that you know you do well and not be afraid to sort of acknowledge or admit that you need help in some areas because not everybody can be everything to everyone and I think that's okay. That's why we have a lot of people around us who can who can help us. The second is to we talked about this a little bit already to always remember and share your why. I think context is everything. I really live by this not just in my professional life in terms of how I manage people and initiatives that we do that are public facing with fans but also in my personal life with my children. It's it's my mantra of how I parent my children. I always try to give them some context if I'm asking them for something or asking them to do something. And the last one this is really I can't take credit for this. This is this is a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is my my one of my many sheroes which is to fight for the things you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. I think there are ways to build consensus and have people really want to join you in your efforts to be successful or to push forward with an initiative but it's the old like honey versus vinegar thing. You get a lot done if you have allies and people around you who are supporting you and wanting you to be successful and it's definitely a lot harder to do it when you're going at it alone. So I surround myself with a very large village of people who are part of every single success that I've ever had. So yeah, those are my three takeaways. They're excellent and very thoughtful. They're actually really great words to live and work by. So thank you for them and and thank you for joining us today today. This has been a lot of fun and really interesting learning more about La Crosse and and what you what your role is. So thanks for joining us and hope to see you again soon at one of our events. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Lisa and have a great day. Thank you too. And thanks to everyone for joining us today. We will see you back here on January 26th.