The ROAR Podcast: Hannah Berregaard, Chicago Fire FC

# ROAR Podcast: Hannah Berregaard
**Guest:** Hannah Berregaard
**Date:** 2026-03-12
**YouTube URL:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_kRt3is7U0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_kRt3is7U0)
**Source:** YouTube auto-generated captions (no speaker diarization)

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(0:05) One of the primary goals of this podcast is to get listeners of you into not only careers in sports and sports business, but the path that people took to get to those careers. What's interesting is that there's very rarely a linear path to those careers. Today's guest is living proof that the most interesting paths are rarely straight lines. Hannah Bierard is the director of league operations at the Chicago Fire FC, but her story starts far from the pitch. After stepping away from sports during college, Hannah built a career in real estate in Iowa. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she made a pivot, enrolling in Northwestern's Masters the Arts and Sports Administration program and picking up coaching at a youth soccer club just to get back around the game she loved.

(0:52) What started as part-time coaching turned into a full-time career at Chicago FC United, one of the largest youth soccer clubs in the Chicagoland area. In just over two years, Hannah went from the assistant girls director to director of club operations, overseeing everything from scheduling and facilities to staffing and player experience across thousands of players and dozens of teams. In 2025, she made another big leap, joining the Chicago Fire FC as director of league operations. But as she'll tell you, the title doesn't quite capture what she actually does dayto-day.

(1:25) Hannah has run the Chicagoland Indoor Soccer League, a youth indoor league the fired that now shows roughly 14,000 players and a thousand club teams across the Chicagoland area. Her job is to operationalize it, grow it, and connect it back to the broader fire organization as the club heads to its new purpose-built stadium opening in 2028 and the World Cup coming to the United States. Today we dig into our nonlinear paths, the realities of running operations both the club and professional level, the growth in women's soccer, and what excites you most about where the sport is headed. I'm Bryce Clinton, and this is the revenue bub replacement podcast.

(2:04) Hannah, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. >> Thanks for having me. It's exciting because Hannah is a former student and a graduate of the Northwestern MSA program. We always love to have former students back that have done really cool things in their career and are continuing to evolve. And I really want to dig down into what you're doing today with the fire and your path in soccer, but to get us started for the listeners, give us a view into your background and your path into sports. >> Yeah. So, I'm not sure that there is a conventional route into sports, but I certainly didn't have one. It during my undergrad, I I had stopped playing sports. I wanted to get away from it.

(2:46) So, I did my got my degree in three years and then I got done with my undergrad and I was like, "Oh, I don't know what's next." So, I took the path of least resistant into a business that I grew up in, which was real estate. I worked in that for a few years and then was already thinking about how can I pivot but then co happened so seemed a great time to pivot. So in 2020 is when I applied for the MSA program and did the first six months of that probably completely virtual. My only work in sports was on the coaching side of things. So, I was coaching at a local youth soccer club part-time, very just trying to get back into sports in a way that I love it and instead of the burnout that I had previously. But then as I was coaching more and more, getting in more knowledge of the system of youth soccer, I was like, I wonder if I could make this a full-time career.

(3:42) So, I applied at FC United, which is a large youth soccer club up in the Northshore suburbs of Chicago. They are part of the girls academy. They're part of MLS next academy. And then really they filter down all the way to like grassroots level as young as like U3, you four really developmental side of soccer. So, I got a job there as the assistant girls director. So my job was primarily and because my only real experience in sports that up to that point was coaching was primarily to coach four teams and then also oversee part of the girls program. So we're talking 4 to 10:00 p.m. every night coaching on the fields weekends coaching games and then overseeing staff during the daytime, other coaches, other directors.

(4:36) And from that point, I moved up pretty quickly at FC United. There's a lot of turnover in you sports. And I moved from assistant girls director to the youth director to director of operations within about two years. And then I was director of operations at FC United. So over all of all of the programs instead of just the girls, over the boys, girls, youth, bothmies, a lot more logistics, organization, that kind of stuff. a lot less coaching but still coaching. And then when our season wrapped in 2025, June 2025, I took a job with the Chicago Fire. My title here is director of league operations. I think my title is maybe a bit deceiving in terms of what I actually do. So obviously I work for the MLS organization, but there's lots of facets to any organization of this size.

(5:32) So, the fire actually acquired a youth indoor soccer league in 2025. So, there are about a thousand club teams in the Chicago area, Chicago suburbs, 14,000 players or so. It runs from November to March. My primary job is to run the operations of that league, connect it to the other facets of the fire organization, and then ultimately my main job is to grow the revenue and the locations that operates in. So we went from about 800 teams to when we purchased it to a,000 in two months really before the season started. And then the goal would be by no next November that we're getting somewhere in 1500 to 2,000 teams. Yeah. So, probably not exactly what my title would the outside person may not know what that means, but I'm part of the soccer business unit within the fire organization. So, that's anything outside of corporate partnerships and ticket sales basically. So, yeah, maybe that's a little >> No, it's a good answer. It was a question I had around the league operations and that makes sense. There's so many things in there to dig into. One thing that you mentioned at the start was a non-traditional path into sports.

(6:51) I think that's one important thing for listeners to keep in mind and one of the things that's great about having you as a guest is that there are so many nontraditional paths to sports. We think of this as a linear thing and it's really not. There's some linear paths, but more often than not, it's a very nonlinear path. And when you look back at that, you mentioned being in real estate. Is there anything from a real estate perspective that you find useful in an operations role and what you were doing in the original sports roles that you had? >> Yeah, I think just the business side of things. I think a lot of times people go into sports maybe not recognizing how much of a business it is, right? And I would argue that it's probably like the most you have to be having revenue increase over the years or your P&L is important. I think that as a real estate agent, we were independent contractors, right? So like I was the only thing that could create revenue. So I think the people skills that went along with that probably translated well into the youth side of things. And then the knowledge that I got working in the youth space is definitely what allowed me to get the job at the fire. Everything in youth sports is I think relationship based.

(7:59) So, all of my connections with other clubs and their directors, really getting into like the sponsorship side of things, like who do I know in the Northshore and how does that then help impact the league and corporate partnerships is huge for the fire right now in general with the new stadium coming up, but there's also a lot of interest on the indoor league side of things. There's a different realm of people that are coming in and out of those doors every day. There's some crazy statistics on the number of eyeballs that are going in let's say like one of our indoor facilities in a month versus let's say like a professional stadium, right? Because of the frequency and the turnover of the people coming in and out of those games.

(8:37) So I think just maybe the the path that I had has allowed me to gain something different from each of those jobs. But I would say definitely the knowledge of the soccer space is the most critical and something that not everybody who works for a professional organization has, right? A lot of people just maybe go into the pro side of things right away and just are on that side only. But everything is connected and it I think maybe we'll get to this later but like my connection with ticket sales, my connection with corporate partnerships, my connection with the fires marketing team, social media, like all of those are very important to the success of both sides. So I think at FC United I was all of those things, right? I was marketing, I was social media, I was operations, I was the scheduler. So now the fire has those things, but at least I have a baseline of knowledge to facilitate how we can all help each other.

(9:36) >> You can be in those conversations with all those different groups because you've had exposure to them, which is really important. You mentioned that if you come right in without that experience, it's breaking from a fire hose in many ways because you have to learn what those things are. One thing you've mentioned a lot is club soccer and youth soccer. Let's step back for a second and talk about the framework of what that means. So for a lay person like myself who did not play any soccer growing up, came from such a small place that we didn't even have soccer as an option as a high school sport. What do you mean when you say club soccer and how is that integrated into an ecosystem of youth sports?

(10:14) >> Yeah, when I say club soccer, the competitive side of soccer, so traditional travel teams, right now the extent to which they travel is varying depending on the level they're at. But most people think of starting soccer at a very young age, right? Three, four, five, you go do little kickers or you can go to your park district, kick the ball around and that's the same thing. But most clubs have some sort of starting point like that. So they have a little sparks program. That's what the fires program is. That starts at that young age, then filters into their club program. The club program holds tryyout.

(10:50) So you have to make a team. Now, most clubs have tiers of teams, right? So pretty much everyone will make a team, but in the Chicagoland area is one of the largest ecosystems of you soccer, which I think would make sense in terms of the scale, but everything from the south suburbs, the west suburbs, the north shore, the northwest suburbs to the city, all of those different clubs compete and play against each other at the grassroot level, which is like local leagues, just a game on Saturdays or Sundays practicing twice a week, all the way up to regional leagues, and Then national leagues which are like the academy, ECNL which FC United has.

(11:32) Basically clubs try to get a platform to have a top tier and then they filter down from there. Ultimately soccer is very much a pay-to-play sport in this country, right? So a lot of club goal is to get the most players playing in their system with the goal that you can then find the talent or grow the talent within your own system. And then obviously the top of that would be like the Chicago Fires Academy which is not paytoplay and that is just them going out and finding talent at all of these clubs in the area and then getting them into their academy with the hopes of them someday playing for our first team or selling the player rights to for them to play overseas perhaps.

(12:14) >> You obviously have enormous knowledge of that club level and what goes into it with your time at Chicago FC United. When you think about that time, what were the biggest operational challenges at the club level and how do you approach those with the resources that you have at that club level? >> Yeah. So, I think the logistical challenges of at the club level are immense primarily because the scale of players at the larger clubs is huge, right? We're talking 3 to 4,000 players, 75 to 100 teams year-over-year, coaches that are assigned to those teams. So, I would say the scheduling and the facilities are a big one, especially because Chicago is a more densely populated area. There aren't a lot of huge soccer complexes or huge indoor facilities that you can get proper training in. So, everybody's competing for park district field, everybody's competing for indoor space. So ensuring that players have access to frankly what they paid for, right? Because that's a big aspect of what they're paying for and their player fees is quality training grounds. I would say staffing is another huge challenge. Not just getting the proper coaches and other directors into the system, but retaining the talent year-over-year. There's a lot of turnover. Like I said, everybody wants to move up, right? And I think that's a good thing. But because of that, there is not as much consistency in staffing, which then filters down to the player experience. Right? If every year they're getting a new coach, getting a new director, that is altering their development long term. So I think once I got to the operations role because I had gone through it as just a coach and an assistant director, my main goal was like how can I make this the best place for a staff member to want to stay, want to be. So that way the player experience is easier if you're retaining the best staff that you can. Players want to play there, which solves another problem of the player experience, getting players to return year-over-year. But it is it's a big challenge because you have so many competitors. You have so many other clubs. You have obviously the professional teams to compete with this for the same talent. You have themies.

(14:25) And frankly like it's a very transient population of coaches. They'll just go move to Philadelphia and take a job with the union or they'll move to the west coast or they'll it's just a lot of they have a lot of opportunities. So I think maintaining the staff is a big challenge. I don't know. I would say for me it was like personally balancing life coaching and the administrative operations side of things. Coaching takes up such a large chunk of your evenings and weekends and then trying to maintain the love for the sport while also progressing and growing in your career. But I think I spent a lot of time giving like 100% of my effort and time to the industry and had to suffer is a strong word but go through it for four years right of giving those hours giving 100% to eventually get to this point where then I can move on to the next thing and and frankly I don't coach at all anymore so now my schedule although it's still forge right I'm still working weekends and still working some evenings but it's a lot were flexible and just different. So, I feel like you had to put in a little bit of time to get to that point.

(15:40) >> For sure. You obviously did a good job of that because you went from the assistant girls director to director in under a year. What did that acceleration look like for you from the inside at Chicago FC United and what were you doing that gave you that expanded responsibility? >> Yeah, I think once I got into it, I started looking at what differentiates me from the average. So maybe I should start from the beginning. The whole reason that I wanted to go into soccer is because I personally as a kid never had women as coaches, as directors. I was always primarily being coached by expats from England who had come over, stayed here, and made soccer their career. So the onfield side of things was their bread and butter. That's what they were good at. I thought I was a good coach as well, but I knew that I had more to offer off the field. And so I think I started spending time developing those skills. So things like the marketing side of things, the social media side of things, the organization and operations side of things. Not a lot of soccer people happen to be good at those things as well. So I tried to really focus on that side of things because I knew that was an element of the company that needed to grow and I felt like nobody else really either enjoyed or had the skill set to go that way. So, I feel like I focused a lot on those things to develop those skills.

(17:02) They found them valuable and then that's how I continued to get promoted within the club. >> I think that's a really important point for everybody to understand is inside of sports, you obviously get a lot of people that have played sports that are soccer people, baseball people, basketball people, but as you said earlier, especially when you get to the level, these are big businesses and even you sports, you enormous business across the US. You talked about the ecosystem that you have there. I lived in Carmel, Indiana. One of our previous guests was the head of the Carmel Sports Organization who has 14,000 youth participants at any one time. And you sports is a huge ecosystem and the business aspect of those things are really important. I think when you transition, it's easier for us to think about professional organizations from a business perspective, but sometimes you don't think about it at that level. But you moved from a youth and semi-pro club environment to an NLS operation, which is a significant jump in both scale and I'm sure complexity in making that jump.

(18:02) What surprised you most about how the operations work at a professional level versus at the club level? >> Yeah, I think the scale is definitely the big one that jumps out. Like I said, at S United, although we might have had people who had a little bit of expertise in each area, right? like operations was a lot more than just day-to-day logistics. It included a lot of the other departments. So, I think coming into the fire, I still had the attitude of, "Oh, I bring all these things to the table." But in reality, my knowledge was so minuscule in comparison to a team of 15 to 20 people on the marketing team, a team of endless amounts of ticket sales people, right, who are focused on that side of things. Same thing on the corporate partnership side. So I think like the resources that were available here was surprise like shocking but also figuring out how to then tap into those resources and utilize everyone to the best of their ability. Especially because my side of the business is soccer business is separate from the first team, right? So like educating everybody here. As far as I know, the fire acquiring this youth indoor league is the first of any professional team to acquire a an indoor league like this. So not everybody that works here is a soccer person, right? So educating them on what this is, how it benefits the fire as a whole, what are some areas that we can tap into, which the whole reason that the fire bought the league is to grow the fandom. Obviously, we're in the process of we broke ground on a new stadium. So, like it's really important for people to know about the fire, become fire fans when they're kids. So, like helping everybody within the fire system understand what Chicago indoor soccer league is and how they can tap into it and we can help each other with the growth of it. That's something that I'm still still building on. But now, as we're wrapping up our first season, it ends this weekend. I think everyone has a much clearer picture of that. And then we have the off season to go into how can we foster that further because the growth is going to take more than just me on my the league end and it's going to take the league on everyone else's end to grow that fandom.

(20:22) So yeah, I'd say the skill is definitely the the main one, but also just the ins and outs of managing my own department and my own budget. I think that is something that at the youth side of things was top down and I had insight into numbers but I didn't have I wasn't the one designing it setting it being held to it so now I am and I think that is a good thing right it comes with some ownership but it also comes with a lot more numbers that I was used to but it's been good because I feel like I have autonomy and control over how to grow that more insight into expenses as well so it's been a learning experience experience since July. But all good things, it's always better to have more resources, right?

(21:08) >> Absolutely. Better to have more resources. And again, like you talked about building on the skills that you had an understanding of the infrastructure and the ecosystem around soccer. Now those business components can start to translate into it, especially from some of your other backgrounds. You've mentioned the new stadium a few times. give us some insight into the new stadium and obviously something to be very excited about, but for listeners that don't know what's going on, talk to us about the new stadium. >> Yeah, so the fire's owner, Joe, is privately funding a new stadium for the fire. It will be in the new neighborhood, the 78 near South. We broke ground 10 days ago to open in 2028. Right now, we play at Soldier Field, which is obviously not designed for soccer. and previously played a Sege Geek in Bridge View. So, I think there's a lot of excitement building towards an owner that's that willing to invest in FIRE and the future of soccer because personally, I always feel like Chicago as a city has like so much room to grow in terms of soccer fandom. I think there is a large percentage of people that are interested in soccer but maybe aren't coming to games consistently or they have kids that are playing but like I mentioned earlier like their parents don't have as much knowledge. So I think it will do a lot for the growth of the sport in the city of Chicago. We also have the World Cup coming up in the summer. So I think it's like a perfect launching point for the next two years of growing that fandom of soccer in Chicago. And yeah, it's just going to be soccer specific, so it was going to be a great place to play. And yeah, just I think the for me the timing felt right to come to the fire because I saw the investment that was being made. That's not always the case with Pro Teams. It's ironic right now like the Bears are having their debate. I don't even know what to call it, but so to be in a place where they are investing in it, it makes me want to invest time into growing the sport and helping in that. It is a really interesting kind of for soccer and like you said that investment in not only the sport itself, the club itself, but the community and the community around building in the city and building off that fandom. I had a chance to live in Europe for quite a while and one thing that surprised me was I'd been to soccer games in the US and I often played like you mentioned in American football stadiums. to go to a football soccer game in a purpose-built stadium is such a different experience and I think that it will be a huge uptick for that because it makes it much more enjoyable because of being purpose-built for that sport. Exactly.

(23:48) >> Yeah. I think it's such a global game, right? And it's always been a mystery to me as to like why can the US never quite catch up to the love of soccer that other countries have? And there's some element of we have so many other choices, right, for sports to consume and attend games of. But I do think that there's a real opportunity because so many kids start playing soccer as like their first sport, right? So if you can get them invested in the game at that age going to professional games, even the semipro and like USL space is growing in the in this country. So I think like all of those different levels have to be tapped into to grow the fans and that's how it is in Europe, right?

(24:33) They are very connected to whatever their hometown um team is. So I would love to see Chicago become like that. >> And that hometown team sometimes can be a major city like Chicago. Yeah. >> But sometimes it's a little village and they're very committed to that hometown team. You talked about this a little bit earlier, your job and how the title itself doesn't necessarily match the day-to-day. I honestly think that sometimes those are the best kind of jobs because you get to expand and do different things. But when you look at your job, what's the dayto-day look like?

(25:07) >> Every day is different. The hours I work are different. It's different in season and out of season. By season, I mean my season and then once the fire season starts, it's a different look. But I would say daytoday from probably September 1st through March 31st, I'm working close to seven days a week every week. And that is because it's our prime season, right? We're starting with scheduling and logistics kind of things. So like registration in September scheduling, there are 14,000 players in the league. About a thousand teams. So, we're talking somewhere around 4,000 games have to happen between Thanksgiving weekend and spring break.

(25:49) So, it's the logistics of scheduling all of those games, ensuring that there's no overlap, coach conflicts, it is the connection with the first team. So, it's getting out player experiences at these different facilities which are primarily in the south and west suburbs. So, I'm doing a lot of driving out to the south and west suburbs right now. On every week is a set of part-time staff that run and manage the operations on site. So, it's ensuring that staffing is all set up for the weekend. Training new staff as they come on, which is quite frequent. Just because of the growth of the league, we've needed to add staff.

(26:28) It's maintaining our website. It's running our social media account, which was like a huge priority for me because we purchased a league from a single just a guy that owned it. And so a lot of the public, he just hadn't done a lot of that stuff. So like social media growth was a huge priority for me. Things from even going out on site and taking pictures that I could post on the Instagram account that I can tag the club in so that they're sharing it and their parents are then seeing and making the connection from the league to Chicago Fire. Right now, we're in growth mode. So, trying to look at what contracts can we sign for next season for indoor facilities to hopefully grow to the north and northwest suburbs and as well as our city location. So, a lot of meetings are happening right now out on sites to try to grow the league.

(27:20) I'm sure I'm missing a lot of big, but yeah. And then right now, we're also trying to find a new operation system. So, I think because of buying it from someone who just did everything kind of old school to now getting it up to what we would deem as premier for an indoor league. It's a lot of changes right now. We've done some video shoots, connection to our academy, connection to Greg and the first team. So, it's been press releases. Lots of things have happened this first year that may not happen every year, but crazy during the season. And then now that the fire season has started, home games are something that we to grow the league as well. So like we have competitions, goal of the week competitions where then we send players and their families to the fire game. We host directors and coaches in some suites to ensure that everything's going well with the league, continuing the conversation and relationship building.

(28:19) Yeah. So looks different every day but lot of logistics >> in your title is operations and it's a lot of operationalizing what is out there today. You mentioned growing it from what the lead was and owned by a single entity to bringing it into a special organization and operationalizing that. It'll be interesting to see how you evolve that going forward. how your job gets different because you have put these systems in place to make it more streamlined and easier for you to manage, but also easier for those people that are participating and want to participate to find that to be able to not only find it to participate, but to engage with it because ultimately the goal is to grow that fandom and grow that interest in soccer. Being able to find that more easily and again operationalizing it goes a long way in doing that. I think one thing that we've seen a lot of overall and obviously it's a little bit away from the fighter because being men's soccer and men's professional soccer, but you spent several years developing things on the girls side at FC United. Given how much women's soccer's grown in the US and a general investment wave in that, how do you see the growth changing landscape for soccer itself, the interest in it, but also women working in soccer?

(29:34) >> Yeah. So I think like I said that was the whole reason I got into soccer is just try to be a woman in soccer. It's something that I didn't see a whole lot of growing up of. I think the growth has been pretty tremendous in terms of the professional game, but I don't think that it lines up with how many girls are playing soccer at the youth level. So I think that is still where the gap is like how can we capitalize on how many girls love soccer as a kid like through high school and then don't continue on in terms of either working in it or playing in it. It's interesting because at the corporate office here it's actually quite a few women that work in sports, but it still is primarily marketing ticket sales. It's less of the actual soccer sporting side or the soccer business side of things, but it's growing for sure. I would say it's important to have people that you have as mentors. I don't know. So, going through the MSA program, I think I was one of the only ones, at least in a lot of my classes, that was in youth sports.

(30:43) I feel like it was like an un untapped area or maybe not what people were shooting for. So I think going through the youth side of things gave like opened my eyes to how much room there is for growth still. But I actually feel like the professional side of things is it has done a lot of that growth. I feel like it's important for kids playing to see that is an avenue for them and frankly not even doesn't have to be people who play sports right there are a lot of people who work in sports who are not interested or never played sports or not at least not at a high level. So, I think there's a lot of potential heading into the next women's World Cup and then potentially the World Cup here for that to continue to grow. I personally am now trying to do some connection with the stars with our youth league because I would say our youth league skews probably 70% boys players and 30% girls, but that is not reflective of the larger youth ecosystem. there actually are plenty of girls that are playing. So, one of my goals is to do more things to attract girls teams to come play in the league. Part of that is social media.

(31:55) Part of that is showing that side of things. We just had National Girls and Women's Sports Day. So, I think like highlighting players, highlighting coaches that are in the industry, I think that was important to me. But still a lot of work to do. feel like the only way that I know to keep working on it is to just be visible and bring people along. >> Absolutely. And I think what you said earlier is really important to show the people that could potentially want to work in this space someday that there are people like them that are in these spaces. people that have the backgrounds that they've had as you mentioned doesn't necessarily have to be directly in sports, doesn't have to be a soccer person, >> but you can still get to these roles and have nonlinear paths to them. It's a good transition to as you look ahead.

(32:42) What excites you most about not only soccer in this country right now, but what you're doing specifically from an NLS level? >> Yeah, it's hard not to look towards 2028 and the new stadium. I feel like everything is going towards that date, which is a great runway from the World Cup, the activations that the fire are going to do around the World Cup, hosting watch parties, etc. I feel like that connection between the youth side and the professional side still has so much room for growth, and I feel like that I'm well positioned to be that connection. There are a lot of youth players who don't even know the path, right? So, they're just playing for their club team, right? they don't necessarily know here are the next steps, here's how you could get involved, let's say at the academy level, let's say the first team level, whatever, whether it's as a player or as a fan. I think that fandom is like the most exciting part to me. Every So, I grew up in Iowa, right? We don't have any professional teams. So, I didn't have a natural tie to any professional sports teams, just family history, right? But I think growing up in Chicago, it's so easy to have those connections to a professional team. And for soccer, I want that to be the buyer. And I think it's getting closer and closer. And I think kids who are playing in our league will will start to see that. We brought like Champions League, Champions League like mock trophies. They're like 5 feet high to all the champion in our league for the past couple of weekends. and like seeing the little kids hoist that trophy and then associate it with the professional team I think is really cool. So yeah, I think growing the fandom, growing the connection between the youth and the professional side is the most thing I'm looking the biggest thing I'm looking forward to. And then personally just like how can I continue to grow what is already a good base, right? So like the league is already successful. the growth from the time we purchased it to now has already been pretty extreme, but how can I take that to the next level? I think as you saw in my time at S United, I like to continually progress. So, I'm excited to see what is next. And I think that's relatively untapped right now because of all the areas that we haven't gotten into. And even beyond Chicagoland, like there's not another professional soccer team in Southwest Wisconsin. So, can we grow there? Parts of Indiana, right? So, there's just a lot of potential growth for the league, for tournaments, for everything surrounding the youth space.

(35:22) And now that it's connected to a professional team, I feel like that it just is way more exciting rather than just having it on an island in the youth space. >> Right. I think there's so many things to look forward to in this country from a soccer perspective. Obviously the growth in women's soccer, the new stadium opening the World Cup coming the women's world cup few years after that. So many things that are pointing up and to the right from a trajectory perspective for soccer as being a student. There are obviously many of our listener that are students or people that work in sports or want to work in sports and want to continue to evolve. And so we'll get you out of here on this one. If you were to go back and think about the pathway you had into sports for someone who's starting out today, what would you tell them to prioritize or how would you tell them to look at a career in sports? I think it's an interesting question for you because you had a great answer around that nonlinear path into sports. So, if you were telling someone today how to design that, what would be the advice that you would give her?

(36:24) >> Yeah. So, it's interesting. Even though my path was nonlinear, I feel like I was trying to make it linear the whole time. I have to pick a lane and I have to really focus on that. It's not that easy unless you're already working in it, right? Like you don't know what the opportunity is going to be that's going to present itself. So I think in the end the fact that I had gotten just business experience, right? It forth our business. So however you can get experience and I think frankly the more well-rounded that experience is going to lend itself better to whatever opens up.

(36:59) You may think you have one specific goal in mind and that's honestly great if you do, but I think what you might think when you're however whatever age you are when you first start thinking about a career in sports until the time when it actually comes to life, it might be something different. And I feel like if I hadn't had such a varied background, my assets to an organization when I started applying for jobs probably wouldn't have been there. They would have just been really narrow. And if there was no job in that narrow focus, I'm out of luck. So, I think looking at just the program in general, like how it was, I didn't focus on any one specific thing as I was going through FC United, each of the courses lended themselves differently to something that was coming up in my day job. And so being able to have all of that knowledge rather than just one thing, just corporate partnerships or sponsorships, just marketing, whatever, having a little bit of knowledge and experience in each of those things I think is important. So maybe that's a long answer to say I don't think I would change anything I had done, but while I was going through it, I think I probably would have been a little bit more open to it as it was happening rather than trying to force it down one specific lane.

(38:13) >> Good. Great advice. >> Yeah, I was an intern in a compliance office at the college level, right? So, sure that's what I wanted to do and that path didn't work out for me. If I had just continued to do that, I would have only had experience in that. So, I think it's it's all worked out because it's been pretty broad. >> The end goal is always great to have in mind, but being open to the diversions on the path is always what leads to something really interesting. And I think you're a great example of that. and we cannot thank you enough for taking the time to talk to us today, Hannah. I have so much to look forward to from a soccer perspective and we'll all be watching. So, thank you so much for the time today.

(38:53) >> Yeah, thanks for having me.