In Search Of Excellence - Jessica Berman: The Future of Women’s Soccer | E100

Starting point is 00:00:00 The NHL was very much part of who I was after spending 13 years there. And I had to come to terms with the fact that if I wanted to ultimately achieve my dreams, I probably needed to work somewhere else. As a result, when I got this call to become the deputy commissioner of the NLL, my family was supportive of me taking on the challenge. But I had this sort of second epiphany in my life where I realized that proving the value of women's sports as a business in and of itself could change the way that people see women and girls forever.

Starting point is 00:00:43 You're listening to part two of my awesome conversation with jessica burman the commissioner of women's major league soccer if you haven't yet listened to part one be sure to check that one out first without further ado here's part two with the amazing jessica burman let's talk about lacrosse and i want to start with some statistics which i think most of my listeners and viewers don't know which i didn't know before preparing for our talk today. There are 1.89 million lacrosse players in the United States. 528 colleges have women's lacrosse teams and 398 have men's teams. There are two professional leagues, the PLL, which plays outdoors,

Starting point is 00:01:20 and the National Lacrosse League, which plays indoors, which is known as the NLL. It was founded in 1986 and has 15 teams. And here's one I'm sure nobody knows. It ranks third in average attendance for pro indoor sports worldwide behind only the NHL and NBA. I want to talk about what happened to your husband, Mark, and the National Women's Soccer League in a little while. But before we do, can you tell us about what it was like as a woman climbing up the ranks in male-dominated professional sports and your thought process changing jobs and the conversations you had with your husband and your kids at the time before making the leap? Yeah. I took the job at the NLL to be the deputy commissioner after several years of soul searching about how I was going to achieve my dreams of being in a position to actually

Starting point is 00:02:20 have more influence over the business of a league. And the NHL was an incredible place to learn and develop as a lawyer and then ultimately as a business person. I was so fortunate to work for Gary Bettman for so many years and observe the ways in which he made business decisions, how he managed the board of governors, which were the owners of the NHL. So many of the challenges he had to navigate with the Olympics and performance enhancing drugs and expansion and team ownership challenges and their media deals. I mean, just everything that he was able to accomplish has been able to accomplish. And all of that created a lot of mutual love and respect for me. And the

Starting point is 00:03:15 NHL was very much part of who I was after spending 13 years there. And I had to sort of come to terms with the fact that if I wanted to ultimately achieve my dreams, I probably needed to work somewhere else. And that was a really hard decision for me to leave the place I love and the people I loved and the people who supported me throughout my career and from whom I learned. But I ultimately decided that it was time for me to work in what I expected would be a smaller sport, a smaller business that would give me a wider purview over more areas of the business than I would be able to do with the NHL. And as a result, when I got this call to become the deputy commissioner of the NLL, I was fortunate that my family was supportive of me taking on the challenge.

Starting point is 00:04:15 I have two young boys and they were and continue to be my biggest supporters in what I'm doing. And we all are very honest in recognizing that there's a ton of sacrifice and compromise that comes with the demands of being a highly ranked executive in my industry with all the pressure that comes from it, especially those years in a male-dominated industry. And all of that really made my kids only want me to do it more. They felt like I had earned the right to capitalize on whatever opportunities I had been offered and that we were going to sort of tackle it together as a family. So yeah, becoming the deputy commissioner, I learned the day of the announcement that I was the highest ranking woman in a male sport

Starting point is 00:05:11 and that I was the first female deputy commissioner. And that was a big deal in our industry. It opened a lot of doors for me in terms of meeting different level of people, different executives in our industry who I wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to cross paths with. And more importantly, gave me substantive experience that ultimately prepared me for this job. I think that's such a good lesson. When I was 27, I got this amazing job. Eli Broad was my boss. I reported to him. They gave me a managing director title. He was a Forbes for 100 person worth, I think at the time, $4.2 billion. Before he died a few years ago, I think he was worth $8 or $9 billion. It was an amazing job. I think I had the best job of all my friends. And if I'm being truthful with myself,

Starting point is 00:06:04 I love the title. I had a business card, Randall Kaplan, managing director at Sun America. And if I'm being truthful with myself, I love the title. I had a business card, Randall Kaplan, Managing Director at Sun America. And I reported one of the most successful business people on the planet. And like you said, cocktail, what do you do? You want to be humble about it. And I think I was most of the time. But when you gave out your business card, it was phenomenal. Then I left to start a technology company with three other guys in Boston. And someone said, you know, you got one bullet to fire when you leave Sun America. And if that doesn't work out, whatever great name on your resume, no one is really going to care. And I think what you just said is such an important lesson. And like you, I wrote things down. I

Starting point is 00:06:42 prioritized. I wanted to learn. I had a t-shirt business at Michigan. I wanted to have my own company one day. I met some really bright people and I took the risk, but it was a very, very big risk. I talked about it with my mom, my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife. And it was finally, do you have the courage to go do this and do something that you want to pursue and have a passion? What I really thought about on the list was making money. And I know people are afraid to say that. And I do coach people, money should not be the number one goal. And later in life, I was 29 years old when I left Sun America. And at that point, you're thinking about getting married. I was getting married, paying for our own wedding.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And you do think about being able to buy a house and provide for kids that we didn't have. But it was scary as shit, I just got to tell you. And we got lucky. You talked about luck. We'll talk about that in a minute as well. But things worked out okay. But I can tell you, I bandied this around for eight months. It was a daily, nightly conversation, an hour a day,

Starting point is 00:07:51 and ultimately it proved to be the right choice, but it's very hard. Ego is a huge part of it. Let's talk about soccer, and we'll start with some stats again here. It's the most popular sport in the world. It has more than 5 billion fans, which is more than 62% of the world's population. It is the fourth most popular sport in the United States behind football, basketball, and baseball. 31% of Americans call themselves soccer fans, and other than pickleball, it is the fastest growing sport in America. The World Cup, which takes place every four years, is the most watched television event in the world. In 2022, the men's final between Argentina and France, which Argentina won on penalty kicks after a 3-3 tie in regulation, drew an estimated 1.5

Starting point is 00:08:38 billion viewers worldwide. In 2019, the women's final between the United States and the Netherlands, which the women won two to nothing, was viewed by 260 million people, which was more than last year's Super Bowl, where the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38 to 35. That game was watched by 116.1 million people and was not only the most watched Super Bowl in history, but at the time, it was the most popular TV program of all time in the United States. So you're at the NLL for a little less than three years. You get a call from a recruiter and you accept the job as the commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League. 25 years after your childhood dream to be a

Starting point is 00:09:23 commissioner of a sports league, that dream came true. Can you tell us about the league in general, which I think a lot of people don't know, the number of teams and games, why you took the job, and how you turned a massive landmine into a field of diamonds? Yeah. So the conversation with a recruiter and ultimately getting the job was very surreal. And I remember the final interview, and I always will, like it was yesterday, because I was very

Starting point is 00:09:57 intentional about showing up as my authentic self. And I actually remember calling my mom and saying, if I end up getting this job, please remind me that I told them exactly who I was, exactly what my strengths are, and where are the areas that I will need support. Because I have a feeling if I end up getting this job, I'm going to have a bit of imposter syndrome and worry about my ability to actually execute this hugely important responsibility. And when I got the call about the job, which was just a couple of hours after I left the interview, I pretty much wrapped my head almost immediately around the idea that this was an opportunity that could literally change the world. I had always believed, as we discussed earlier, that sport has the power to change the world. And that historically, I had defaulted to working in men's sports,

Starting point is 00:10:59 because it was the thing that had the outsized influence in our society. But I had this sort of second epiphany in my life where I realized that scaling and growing a women's professional league and proving the value of women's sports as a business in and of itself could change the way that people see women and girls forever. And it was the perfect opportunity for me to actually deploy the exact experience that I had had in my career, both from the NHL and from the NLL, put it all together into one and execute a vision that was really grounded in all the values that I've learned throughout my life, both personally and professionally, and create this foundational, pivotal shift in society that I genuinely believe had the tailwinds of the cultural relevance of the sport of soccer that was going to really get people's attention. What I did not know was how quickly that was going

Starting point is 00:12:15 to happen. And so I guess some of the stats of sort of like where we were, where we are. So when I joined, the league was in the midst of a league-wide investigation, going back to the origination of the league, focused on systemic abuse by coaches of players. And there were a lot of- Just to be clear, sexual abuse and racial abuse and emotional abuse. Mostly, there were several instances of sexual abuse and there was a lot of emotional abuse, more in the category of emotional abuse, but really more just the underpinnings of a system that was not built to be responsive to or support player experience. And franchise values were a few million dollars slash many people told me they were giving them away for free. We had a teeny tiny media deal with, by way of example, only six of our games were available in national broadcast. And the rest were behind a paywall. And the league right before I started was what had made the decision, but had not yet

Starting point is 00:13:55 absorbed the expansion of two teams to go to 12 teams. Fast forward to today, January of 2024, we have expanded. We will be 14 teams this coming season. We sold the team 14 to Sixth Street, the private equity fund, and they're going to be playing in the Bay Area. The team is called Bay FC and they bought that team for $53 million. So we drove franchise values by more than 10 times. We drove the value of our new media deal, which comes into effect on March 15th when our season starts by more than 40 times. So collectively between 2024 and 2027, our broadcast partners are investing a quarter of a billion dollars into the league. And we will have more than a hundred games on national distribution between Amazon Prime, CBS, ESPN, and Scripps Ion. So all of that sort of in a nutshell, I think, among other

Starting point is 00:15:12 records, setting attendance records, setting viewership records, setting sponsorship records, the business is booming and the world has taken notice. I think one of the more fun things that I've been able to do, which is a first for me as a first time CEO is build our organization. So when I was hired, I was employee number 18 and we now have 58 employees in under two years and we're actually approved to go up to 82. So we're in active hiring mode, which is super fun. We have a beautiful office on Madison Avenue and 40th Street where our employees come and work and collaborate. And it's just a beautiful representation of people who are committed and passionate to the growth of women's soccer but you got that call from a recruiter did you say holy shit this is incredible

Starting point is 00:16:15 and then you hang up the phone and you look around your room say oh my god this is incredible and then you say to yourself well wait a minute never played soccer and I'm not a soccer fan. The bottom line was I really genuinely believe and believed at the time that I don't need to have played soccer to do my job. I am obsessed with the things that I don't know, which has really helped me throughout my life. And I've hired really smart people who are subject matter experts in the areas that I don't have experience, one of them being the sport of soccer. And so I would never have the audacity to make decisions about our game without consulting with people who understand our game. You talk about the value of the team. When I made a little bit of money,

Starting point is 00:17:23 a fair amount of money after our company went public, I got a couple of calls for soccer teams. I think two for women's soccer teams and one for a men's professional soccer team. I thought, gosh, who in the US is watching soccer? No one I know is watching soccer. And these teams were losing money. So it's not like there was a big TV deal. I mean, you were paying millions of dollars to just keep the team. And it was more like saying, yeah, I own a professional sports team. And then you have the women's team in L.A. and you have all these celebrities, Jennifer Garner, Natalie Portman, Billie Jean King, who own this franchise that I think, if you

Starting point is 00:18:02 believe what Forbes and some of the other publications are saying, it's worth a hundred million dollars today. And then you have the men's club today, which is the first sports U S team that is worth a billion dollars. And I, and I know those guys, Larry Berg has been a friend forever. He's an amazing guy. He loves soccer. And it's just, like you said, the appreciation of these teams has been incredible. You deserve a lot of the credit. I think people are really happy that you're there, the people that I know in the sports world. I just want to congratulate you on that.

Starting point is 00:18:36 Thank you so much. It's a dream come true, literally, for me. I'm enjoying it, and we also feel like we're just getting started. Let's talk about the disparity in pay between men and women. And in particular, we'll talk about the World Cup. We'll start there. Historically, there was a huge pay gap between men's and women's soccer teams, especially with regard to prize money at major tournaments like the FIFA World Cup. For example, the total prize money for the 2018 Men's World Cup was about $400 million, while the Women's World Cup in 2019 had $30 million in prize money.

Starting point is 00:19:15 When the French men's team won the cup in 2018, they received $38 million. When the U.S. Women's National Team won the World Cup in 2019, they received $4 million. In the U.S. Women's National Team won the World Cup in 2019, they received $4 million. In the U.S., our women's team has been a dominant force since the Women's Inaugural World Cup in 1991. They won it that year in 1999, 2015, and 2019, four times in total. And despite the fact that the men's team has never won, they were paid much more in terms of salaries, bonuses, and prize money. Last year, Cristian Ronaldo made $200 million on the field and another $60 million off the field. Lionel Messi made $65 million on the field

Starting point is 00:19:56 and $70 million off the field, $135 million in total. Sam Kerr, the highest paid female soccer player in the world who is considered the best player in the world, made $450,000 last year. Maria Sanchez, who plays for the Houston Dash, recently became the highest paid player ever in the National Women's Soccer League when she signed a three-year contract with a mutual option for a fourth year, which could earn her $1.5 million over four years or $375,000 a year. If we do the math, the top men's player made 533 times more than the top female player. Will women's soccer players ever make anywhere close to these numbers or at least get to the point where they're making a few million dollars a year and what has to happen to make women's soccer explode in popularity in the U.S. and around

Starting point is 00:20:49 the world so women's leagues can get bigger TV contracts and get these bigger salaries? Yeah, great question. Well, as a labor lawyer coming from men's sports and having been part of work stoppages where male athletes were getting paid too much money. A lot of the work I did was about salary compression and wage suppression to make sure that there was the appropriate economics for owners to actually pull the revenues that would allow for them to grow the business. That is still, of course, my job to make sure that it's a sustainable business. But it is also true that it is my job to figure out the ways to build a revenue model that will allow for our players to actually get paid. And that is probably one of the most unexpected challenges of my career. And what I would say is that we've adopted the fundamental view that this is not a charity and that we're not looking to ask for handouts. And we're not, we therefore don't expect, shouldn't expect to pay players the type of

Starting point is 00:22:12 compensation that male athletes make without the revenue to support it. So we have to build a sustainable business model that allows compensation to grow quickly. So what we need to do is actually build the business. And that's our job. We can do that quicker when fans and consumers are buying tickets, buying merchandise, and watching on TV. Those are the three things that we need for people to do. If you want for women's sports and female athletes to have pay equity, we need to grow the consumption of this sport and ensure that people are actually watching. Not just talking about it on social media and not saying, why aren't the players getting paid, but to actually show up, buy season tickets, go to a game, watch on TV, wear a t-shirt, tell your friends about it. Those are the ways that we can unlock incremental investment from

Starting point is 00:23:17 sponsors and media partners. You can be sure with this new media deal that ESPN, CBS, ION, and Amazon, we are working night and day to drive tune-in so that the investment that they made in us actually proves to be valuable to them so that in our next media cycle, we can unlock more investment and pay our players more. So it's a cycle of growth like in any business. And we need to make sure that we're building it sustainably. We talk about brand names when we build businesses and you talk about sports. And when we think about it, you've got LeBron James, you've got Michael Jordan. In soccer, you've got Messi, Ronaldo. When we talk about women's soccer players, we don't really have any star. Megan Rapinoe, 16-year career,

Starting point is 00:24:15 two-time World Cup winner, 2.1 million followers on Instagram. Alex Morgan, one of the most recognizable players in the game, 34 years old now, 10.1 million followers. You think about the UFC, for example, as well, you have Conor McGregor. And in every major sport league, there seems to be one player, Tiger Woods, people want to go and watch that person. Does National Major League Soccer need a female superstar to help bring notoriety to the league and help propel you forward to the next level where everybody wants to watch her? Absolutely. We know that, especially this next generation of fans, they care about the athlete first. And we thankfully have Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, who are cultural icons. And with Megan Rapinoe retiring, we absolutely are focused on building that next generation of talent and making sure that they're superstars and they become household names. We're starting to see that with this next generation of talent on the U.S.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Women's National Team. This past summer was probably the youngest national team in the history the U.S. Women's National Team this past summer was probably the youngest national team in the history of U.S. soccer for women, for women's soccer. And in our league, we have, I think we now have three 15-year-olds playing in our league who are pros and who are incredibly talented. And we have actually seen really good data to support that that next generation of fans, Gen Zs and millennials love watching young athletes. And we actually think this next boom of talent is going to capture the hearts and minds of our country in ways that we were really excited to unlock. As you know, I live in Los Angeles. You drive down Sunset Boulevard and an entire building

Starting point is 00:26:12 is covered with something about a movie or every now and then a sports figure. I look forward to the day where you see the next female soccer star covering a building, kicking that ball, sweat falling out, or doing something great like that to instill incitement? I think there actually is one. I'm going to find out where it is, of Alyssa Thompson. She's 18. She just left Harvard-Westlake. She is now on Angel City. she actually played in Sydney this summer at the World Cup. And I do believe that she is on a billboard somewhere. I will find out where it is. That's awesome. Dana White has become a friend and he's going to be a guest on my show. And

Starting point is 00:27:00 it's interesting. They cultivate superstars, right? So you got Conor McGregor, who's great for the league. He's outlandish. He's a phenomenal fighter. He actually, the Fertitta brothers actually met him first, and they left this meeting. They called Dana up, and they said, I don't know if this guy's crazy or crackpot. He's going to be a complete failure.

Starting point is 00:27:19 He's going to be the best fighter that we've ever seen. Now you have Sugar Sean, who was on my show last week as the next Conor McGregor. And he said, no, Conor's going to be the next Sugar Sean O'Malley. So it's funny to see the leagues develop. And I think they should help promote their best players. So I think that's great. Let's switch gears. What are the five most important ingredients to be successful? Number one, empathy. Number two, hard work. Number three, at least for me, efficiency. Number four, relationships. Number five, contentment. That's a very interesting list.

Starting point is 00:28:08 It's a unique list. I've asked 100 guests that question. Empathy has never been number one. What does it mean to you, first of all, and why is it number one on your list? Yeah. everything we do in life is a form of trying to influence or sell what you either believe, that could be products, that could be services, that could be philosophy, that could be a vision, that could be a strategy, that could be anything, right? And I believe that in order to convince constituents of whatever it is you're trying to convince them of, you need to understand where they're coming from. You need to start

Starting point is 00:28:57 by listening and understanding their experience and meeting them where they are, which requires that, I think, emotional intelligence to not only know yourself, but in order to be empathetic, you actually have to know yourself. And then you have to be able to join someone where they are to bring them along on the journey. Where does passion fit in, if at all? And do you have to be passionate about what you're doing to be successful? I think you do. And maybe that could be among the five. I view that more as like table stakes, because I don't even think you're asking yourself

Starting point is 00:29:37 questions about how to be successful if you're not passionate. I think it's just like embed within. It's not a choice. You're probably focused on other things if or distracted, frankly, if you're not passionate about what you're doing. One of the things that's contributed to my success has made me successful something I call extreme preparation. That means when someone's prepared one hour, I may prepare five or 10. Someone prepares five, I may prepare 60 or 70, especially for an important corporate presentation that we do. Has extreme preparation been important in your career? And can you give us some examples if it has and how it's contributed

Starting point is 00:30:20 to your success, especially when the odds of success were stacked way against you? Yeah, of course. I mean, that's the hard work part. And, you know, preparation, I think shows up in both obvious and not obvious ways. So there's the obvious, more traditional preparation where you might do research. I may, for example, as I did, listen to a few of your podcasts to get a sense of sort of the kinds of questions you ask or the people you've interviewed, read your website so that I'm walking into the situation with sort of a baseline of information that allows for me to feel confident that I can engage in this conversation and show up in a way that I'd

Starting point is 00:31:11 be proud of. But then I think there's the non-traditional preparation, which I think is just as important. It's probably not talked about enough, which is your holistic preparation. So did I work out this morning? Have I drank enough water? Did I eat proper meals? Have I answered the calls of my kids when they called me earlier? If not, I'm probably distracted. Did I set myself up for success in this situation? And so that's both directly, meaning the literal meeting or conversation you have, but also indirectly. What are the externalities that could have me show up in a way that would not be my best self? And what can I do to mitigate that? You've talked about what it takes to be a good leader. And I think one of the things you've talked about before is something that most people

Starting point is 00:32:12 don't talk about because their ego gets in the way or they just don't want to share personal emotion. But let's talk about vulnerability. Is that important really to be a great leader? And if so, why? Yeah. And actually, if I had prepared my five things that might have been one of the five, because I think in order for, first of all, I think one of the most important things as a leader is to role model the behavior that you expect to see. It's always more effective to do it. Of course, you need to say it,

Starting point is 00:32:54 but then you also need to do it. You need to do it, you need to say it, you need to do it. You need to do it, you need to say it, and then you need to do it. And if we want our leaders or any employees to know when to ask for help, to not put themselves in situations that they're in equipped to handle, we have to show them that it's okay to ask for help and to say, I'm over my skis, or this is something I don't know the answer to. And the only way that they will ever feel safe enough to do that is if they see leadership doing that. And in fact, as we know, when we read about imposter syndrome, everybody experiences that in the world. Everybody has moments where they're worrying about whether they're either qualified or able to do X task, X job, manage X situation. And all that you're doing by verbalizing that is humanizing yourself.

Starting point is 00:33:59 I actually view it as giving you a position of strength, not weakness to show that vulnerability because you've now created a connection with someone that allows for them to feel like you're relatable. And in my experience, the biggest unlock you get from that is that that person is now invested in your success. They now recognize and know that they're part of your journey in a way that actually has them both actively and passively rooting for you. And it's a way to build coalitions around you to be able to show that you can't do it alone because we're so much stronger when people around us are trying to help us to be successful. If you don't give people a role in that, they don't actually know

Starting point is 00:34:52 how to be part of your success or to be there to support you. As I already mentioned in my show, my main goal is to inspire and motivate people to get over their challenges on their path to success. And by hearing the stories of successful people like you from all walks of life, I think everybody takes something a little different from each guest that I have. You've talked about what your main job is, too, and it's to inspire fill in the blank? I would like my legacy to be that you, universal you, in this case, me can show up as a leader in a way that's different from others, that you can be your authentic self and engage in the practices that allow for you and your company or business to be successful and feel really proud of how you did it and the people you worked around you and that it wasn't a zero sum game that I hope that at the end of

Starting point is 00:36:11 whatever my career is and along the way that the people I worked with and for in the league, but then also my family feel really good about what we collectively accomplish. Because when I think about vulnerability, what we were talking about earlier, it's not just internally with my staff. I do that with my kids. It's actually the reason I believe, this is something I want to write a book about one day. This is like on my list. I think it's the reason that it's one of the main reasons that I've been able to accomplish what I have in my life. Because I actually think the most important thing, the most important ingredients or recipe that I've unlocked is how to get my kids to want to make me successful. And so there's not a zero sum game. They're a hundred percent in my camp.

Starting point is 00:37:07 And it was very intentional. It was not by accident that, that that happened. And I feel like there's a lot to learn from that because I, I don't ever have to apologize for what I'm doing every day. I feel like what I'm feel like what I'm doing is a gift, not just to my staff and my board and my players here, the players at the NWSL, but also to my kids. That's awesome. I have five kids, three in college. My son, Charlie, is a sophomore in college.

Starting point is 00:37:41 And he helps and gives me suggestions on my podcast. He suggests guests. Some of them have been on my show and they came from him. And it's so cool to say, Dad, I'm proud of you. I love your show. My friends love your show. And I think as a dad, as a person, as a professional, that just lights me up like nothing else. I think as we get close to the end of our show, we've all had a lot of challenges in life. And one of the things that makes us successful is to get through those challenges. Your first husband, Brad, had some health challenges. And I want to know how you overcame those challenges while you had two young children, were working crazy job,

Starting point is 00:38:21 long hours and had to travel. How were you able to overcome that? Yeah. So I guess the cliff notes version of what happened to Brad is that when we were, he was 37 and I was 36 and he was perfectly healthy. What did not have any historical medical challenges. He had a massive stroke at the age of 37 and was in a coma for seven weeks and was hospitalized for four months and had to relearn how to breathe, walk, talk, eat. And our kids were five and two at the time. And I was at the NHL during those years. And so it's part of the reason that I have so much gratitude is because when you're faced with actual life and death with the people you love most, you build a level of resilience that I pray most of the world never has to learn and gain perspective that I pray most of the world never has to gain. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:39:38 that situation probably taught me more about who I am as a person, the core of who I am as a person and what matters most to me than almost any other experience in my life. Um, you know, they say, uh, God only gives you what you can handle. And people said that to me when Brad was super sick and expressed confidence that I could get through it. And of course at the time, that's not what I wanted to hear, but it was true. I, I really learned from that experience that I was stronger than I thought I could ever be. And it brought our family so close together, including Brad. We ended up getting divorced, but he's one of my closest friends in the world. We, um, we chose to not be married, but we chose to remain best friends. And, um,

Starting point is 00:40:36 those years were really hard years where my focus had to shift to caring for him and my children. Thankfully, the NHL was super supportive of me. I focused on the things that mattered most. We engaged in a fundraising campaign for the local hospital where Brad was doing his rehab. We raised a million dollars to bring robotics rehabilitation to our local hospital, which he used to rehab and get him to a point where he was not in a wheelchair anymore. All of that was incredible. And as someone who, to take it back to the beginning of our conversation, had dreamed of being a commissioner from the time I was 16. At age 36, I had to recognize that it wasn't in my control to continue to work on my career ambitions. And I had to focus on my family and know that it would either affect my career or wouldn't affect my career. But at that moment, I made the

Starting point is 00:41:46 choice that it didn't much matter because really what, what the only thing that mattered in that moment was my family. And, um, you know, believing and trusting again, that everything that I had proven up to that point in my career, I never lost any of that. And everybody who knew me and worked with me was always reminding me that no one could take away what I've accomplished. And when my family was in a better place that I could come back and resume whatever it is, the next steps would be, which of course is likely different than it otherwise would have been. But, um, I, I feel really proud of, of the way I and my family navigated that very challenging situation. And he's fully recovered today. Good ending. He has some challenges physically and a few otherwise, but he made a miraculous recovery.

Starting point is 00:42:57 We were told that he either wasn't going to live or was going to be a vegetable. And he managed to drive again and he returned to work. He's a tax lawyer. I always thought if anyone I knew almost died, they would change careers. You'd wake up and be a different person. That movie regarding Henry, do you know that movie? I just thought he was going to wake up a different person, but he wanted to go back to being a tax lawyer. He works at PWC. We're both very grateful. That's an awesome story. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask a more open-ended question. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Sure. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is? Love wins. My number one professional goal is? To feel purposeful. My biggest regret in life is?

Starting point is 00:43:59 Not traveling more. The craziest moment in my career is? Seeing the players who were the original whistleblowers, Sinead Fairley and Mana Shim, come back and play in our league last season. The funniest moment in my career is? Seeing how much people care about my rescued dogs. The one thing I've dreamt of doing for a long time but haven't done is? Learning how to technically climb a mountain.

Starting point is 00:44:47 If you could go back in time, the one piece of advice you would give to your 21-year-old self is? It's all going to work out. If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be? Nelson Mandela. The one question you wish I had asked you but didn't is? Who's my hero? I think I know what you're going to say, but who is your hero?

Starting point is 00:45:13 My dad. I knew that was coming. That's amazing. Jessica, I appreciate your time today. You've done so many amazing things in your career. You're an inspiration, not only to women, but to a lot of men as well. It's a great story about pursuing your dreams against all odds and achieving your dreams. So I hope this has been enjoyable for you and I appreciate you being on my show. Thank you so much. And thank you for your preparation. It shows and it made the

Starting point is 00:45:42 conversation really enjoyable. So thank you.

In Search Of Excellence - Jessica Berman: The Future of Women’s Soccer | E100

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