Episode #119

Athlete: Morgan Shaw Parker

“Becoming President: Morgan Shaw Parker, President of the Atlanta Dream”

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Morgan Shaw Parker 

By the way, I was traveling with the team. I was traveling on the team plane. So I could tell you stories all day long about what it's like to pump in every single stadium. I have puked in the bush behind the coach's press conference while having not told them I was pregnant for the first four months. I got told I was a distraction on the field. It was an interesting environment, it was an adjustment for them, but it was an adjustment for me because I did have to learn to talk the talk.

Stef

 Welcome to the Voice in Sport podcast, new exclusive series, Becoming President, where we are bringing you more visibility to the challenges and opportunities the top women in sports face while earning their way to the president's office.  This new series showcases the path of several presidents and CEOs across the sports industry and how each one is uniquely different.

In this episode, we are excited to speak with a woman named one of Atlanta's most admired  COOs and recognized as a game changer by Sports Business Journal. And that is Morgan Shaw Parker President and Chief Operating Officer of the Atlanta Dream

Morgan Shaw Parker 

She slid a job description across my desk and she said, this job was built for you.  And I looked at it and it was, it was,  the president of the WNBA team in Atlanta. And I went, Oh, thanks. Here you go. You can take this back.  But I had this opportunity. I saw through it to say, man, if everything that my career.  Has culminated in has led me to this.  Wow, what an opportunity to build something from scratch. And now I can do it for women. 

Morgan is a dynamic storyteller as she walks through an illustrious career spanning 27 years. Her career has been characterized by values driven leadership and ground breaking achievements across various sectors of the sports industry

Morgan Shaw Parker 

People were starting to watch and pay attention to women's sports more, but this organization was in shambles and it took me the better part of 18 months to clean it up, to hire the right people. And what I will say is now we have 50 plus human beings. And we were just named last year, the most diverse team in the WNBA. And the  📍 WNBA is the most diverse league in all of professional sports. 

Stef

Before we get started, if you love this podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And don't forget to sign up at voiceinsport. com. Join our community and gain access to mentorship, experts, and educational content on mind, body, and nutrition.

Morgan, welcome to the Voice in Sport podcast.

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Morgan Shaw Parker Thanks so much for having me, Stef. This is awesome.

Stef Every journey to becoming president is very different and unique, and we're excited to dive into your journey to becoming president. So if you had to describe that journey, just high level, how would you describe it after college to then becoming president 22 years later?

Morgan Shaw Parker I have had a really amazing career path. Lots of amazing mentors along the way. I've been in sport for the greater part of 28 years. It's taken me probably 22 years to get to the presidential level which basically does not mean being in charge. It means that there's a lot more work on the other side. So I have worked in all facets of sport from the agency side to the brand side, to the team side, to the agency side, even in front of the camera. 

Stef You're definitely a natural. Come on, yeah, I could tell that you were an on air reporter. I'm so excited to dive into your to your journey a little bit here. And as part of this podcast series, we're going to describe your journey in five different chapters. And we're really starting with after college and then those 22 years it took you to become president of the Atlanta Dream. So how would you describe, the title, what is the title of your first chapter and what did that look like right out of college?

Morgan Shaw Parker I think the title of chapter one after college would have to be 'Wait on air what?' And I have to laugh because I never had the dream of being on camera. Never thought I would be on camera. But I was an intern with the Kansas City Chiefs. I ended up working as an intern, delivering pocket schedules. It was not the most sexy job. I'll tell you that most of the pocket schedules ended up in the trash bin behind Arrowhead Stadium.

I actually ended up getting a full time job in the PR department, and one of the things that I had to do was going and giving press announcements to the media that would physically come to the stadium. Now we can do it all on zoom right now. But I would give the press announcements and ESPN would take the live feed of the press conference to talk about boring TV. Nobody really wanted to watch Coach Schottenheimer, and Vermeil doing all those press conferences, but it was new at the time. So I had to give all the updates and someone at ESPN said, ‘Oh, she looks nice. Oh, she can speak. Hey, do you want to do sideline reporting for the chiefs game day show?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting. What does that entail?’

Stef So that was your first job. That was your first job right out of college. 

Morgan Shaw Parker That was my first job. I was on the PR team, but I actually got a really amazing opportunity. to figure out how to storytell in a really different way. Because when you're doing it in front of a camera, the lights are on and you've got to know your stuff. And I didn't until that time really give the credibility to the men and women who do that job, whether you're an analyst, whether you're calling a game or whether you're doing sideline reporting, that's really hard. What I had the opportunity to do is I had the trust of the football players in the locker room because that was my full time job, but they always gave me the opportunity to break a story. So for instance, I had the opportunity to break the story with Tony Gonzalez when he wanted to go to the NBA and he was playing full time in the NFL. And he sat down with me because he trusted me. So at the time I got to learn to cut tape. I got to learn to be on camera. I got to learn to ask the questions. And so I was understanding how media worked but also how broadcast at the time worked. So it was a skill set I didn't really know I was developing.

Stef How interesting, like I had no idea that was your first job out of college and you didn't really know that was gonna be your first job right out of college.

Morgan Shaw Parker No way am I gonna be able to make money doing this for the rest of my life. It's really hard. 

Stef In this chapter, you describe it as something that you weren't really expecting to do. And you got into a lot of positions that you had no experience really in. So tell us a little bit about the rest of that time in this chapter with the agency work and what that experience looked like for you. And then I guess, what was the learning of this first chapter? 

Morgan Shaw Parker Yeah. I think the big learning of chapter one, when you say, wait, what you want me to do? What? I don't know how to do that. What's really interesting in life is you find out that you're never going to learn how to do a job until you're in the job. And so I was getting these opportunities and thinking, okay, I don't know if I want this to be my full time job forever. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to take the good from it. I'm going to figure out what I don't like, and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability in that time. And then I'm going to move on to the next when the door opens for the next opportunity. And I have looked at my career that way at the same way I did when I was walking down the halls at the Chiefs and I met a woman –  God rest her soul – Anita Bailey, Anita has passed away, but she was the head of sponsorships at the Kansas City Chiefs. And I thought she was amazing. And I would always finish my job in PR and I would walk down the hall in sales and sponsorships and ask what was she doing because she was open and wanted to share and wanted to teach and would take the five extra minutes That would be required to answer my dumb question, or so I thought.

But meanwhile, I was soaking it in. And I think I gained more from that experience. And having applied those things along my career. And asking those questions to the people down the hall and learning what they did. I think that's helped me more than a lot. 

Stef Oh, I think that's such an important lesson because often people don't ask questions, especially like younger people in early jobs. They're afraid to ask questions because they don't want to come off as they don't know it.

Morgan Shaw Parker That is a female trait. Yeah. I've got a know everything before I jump into this job or before I apply for this job.

Stef Yeah.

Morgan Shaw Parker Guess what? You don't have to know everything. It's how you tell your story. It's the intangibles It's how you present yourself and it's how you connect the dots along the way and you figure it out.

Stef Yeah, amazing, such good advice. Okay, so you have your first job on air. You have, you spent some time in agency after that, working for some different leagues and then you eventually get to chapter two. So what does chapter two look like? And what is the title of chapter two? 

Morgan Shaw Parker I think chapter two's title is just ‘Nike’ because that 10 years of my life was so all consuming and life changing on so many different levels. I remember in Kansas city when I was with the Chiefs, I, one of my goals before I turned 30 was to buy my own house by myself with my money, nothing to do with my parents and to live on my own and be on my own two feet. I did that. And then at the same time was being interviewed for several different positions.

Nike was looking at me at the time. The NFL was looking at me at the time. The Olympic committee, the NBA. And I chose the Nike path thinking, wow, that's a dream job, right? I've finally made it. If Nike wants to hire me. What I failed to realize is that I knew nothing about the world because when I got to New York, I'm wide eyed and bushy tailed. I'm this Kansas city, midwest-born in the South girl who has found herself to New York in Nike communications going, wait a second, I don't know how to sell a $90 T-shirt, much less would I pay for a 90 T-shirt? And I learned very quickly that you don't voice that in the office. I literally held up his T-Shirt. I think it was from a graffiti artist named Futura. I totally remember.

Stef Oh my gosh, I think my husband actually was the art director on that. 

Morgan Shaw Parker I said, I would not pay 90 for your husband's T-Shirt, and every head in the Nike office turned towards me. That's crazy. And it was silent. And I was like, Oh Lord, this is not going to be easy because I realized at that time I had no idea what I was doing. And a friend of mine at the time who worked for Nike said, ‘Hey, you're going to sink or swim here. And there's a lot of people who sink and they don't make it.’ And she just stopped with that and I went, ‘Oh, wow, I'm not in Kansas anymore.’

Stef That's amazing. And to start at Nike in a city like that where it's pretty hardcore, there's a lot of hustle. It's a competitive environment already at Nike, but then ultra competitive when you're in a city like New York City.

Morgan Shaw Parker It was, I had just bought my house in Kansas and my moving truck literally dumped a four bedroom house worth of stuff in a New York city apartment. And the only way I got through it was because of my uncle who graciously came over and helped unpack me. He was like my whoopee. I've helped him find my footing because I was off to work day two. I dumped, they dumped my stuff on day one and day two, I'm off. And literally I feel like 10 years went by in the blink of an eye because The company moved at such a fast pace, but what was really fascinating is it completely switched the way I thought about storytelling and about building high performing teams and what it took at every level. Of the organization. I also loved the fact that Nike was such an advocate of moving you around new job every two years was such a foreign concept in so many worlds. And especially to my parents who thought first of all, how are you going to make money in sports anyway? And the second of all, to me who thought, watching my dad and watching my family grow up is you're going to be in one job and this is going to be where you retire.

That's not the case anymore. And I love the fact that they moved me into probably I think five or six different positions. They started me off in women's. When the only experience I had in sport was on the men's side. And I was a little offended. I was like, Oh, you think I can't do the men's side? Lo and behold, what they were doing very specifically is giving me the experience so that when Nike brought on the NFL partnership in 2012, I was the one leading it. I was the one they chose. I was the one female in the room that was leading that partnership on the communication side. And it was a powerful thing because they wanted me in that role because I could think differently. Because I understood the men's market and we could make it more powerful for the women. And once I put that together, and once I was connecting the dots and putting those two and two things together, I was like, Oh, this is how we do it. This is how we build, this is how we change the game.

Stef Okay, so my last question on this chapter then would be like, what advice would you have to other young women that are going into big, large corporations or brands like a Nike to not get lost and to really stand out and be successful in a large multinational company like that?

Morgan Shaw Parker Gosh, I would say be open to taking on any challenge. anything, especially things that scare you, especially things that are outside your comfort zone. One of the roles that I had was being the liaison for Cole Haan, Hurley, Umbro and Converse. And I'm like, wait a second. I talk about football, that's what I know how to do, and you want me to go now talk to Cole Haan and Converse. And I wrote, these are companies that Nike Inc. owned at the time. What a different mindset you have to be in where you're connecting a corporate entity to these subsidiaries, who were also big brands of their own. And so I got thrown into a lot of things that challenged me, a lot of things that scared me. And I think my lesson would be go in eyes wide open and figure it out because you wouldn't be there if you weren't smart enough to figure it out. 

Stef Love it. Such good advice. Okay. So let's move to chapter number three. 

Morgan Shaw Parker So chapter three is called 'being the first.' This is an interesting chapter because I had said I would never work for another NFL team after I had interned and worked for the Kansas city chiefs full time, great organization. I always say that was BT before Taylor, who I love Taylor Swift. Don't get me wrong, but I didn't know that I wanted to be in that environment. It wasn't very progressive. It was a very old school environment where there was not a clear path to grow. Much less a clear path for a female to grow. And so the opportunity came along.

I was happy at Nike. I had met my husband convinced him to spend, his life with me. And I met him later in life. And here we were, and I got this job opportunity for AMBSE, which is Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment as the vice president of communication. Mind you, there were no other female vice presidents of communications in the entire NFL. And so the Falcons thought that was pretty cool. I thought that was pretty cool. We moved our lives to Atlanta, Georgia, which is another place that I said, I don't know if I'll ever live in Atlanta, but here we are for this amazing opportunity. Because in my mind, I thought, okay, we can build something different.

The leadership structure was what I wanted. The ownership structure was what I wanted. We were going to build communications and digital and content in a completely different way. And. I got there and I realized, wow, there's no one to my right. There's no one to my left. And I'm literally on an island and the head coach who to this day is a dear friend, Dan Quinn.

He was worried. He's like you're going to have to be in the locker room. And I'm like, yeah, duh. And I think I realized, oh, we have to change policies because this woman's going to be coming in the locker room. And I'm like, thinking to myself, why did you even think to hire a woman if that was actually going to be part of this conversation? And I should have brought it to our conversation, but I still have the piece of paper that was sent to all staff. And ironically, I don't think he meant to do this, but he highlighted it in pink. our room policies would change because he said, this is specifically for Morgan. He didn't mean it. 

Stef Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Morgan Shaw Parker He wanted to try to help me. 

Stef Yeah. Wow. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Have to laugh about it now because since that day, and that was what, six, nine years ago, I've had it tacked to my wall in my office because it's a reminder of, hey, Morgan, you can do hard things, this sucked. You're the head of communications and you can't go get players to do their job with the media. So how are you going to do that? So I laugh about it now because it just set the stage for this atmosphere that was tough. I was also in a stage where I wanted to start a family. And by the way, I was traveling with the team. I was traveling on the team plane. So I could tell you stories all day long about what it's like to pump in every single stadium.

I have puked in the bush behind the coach's press conference while having not told them I was pregnant for the first four months. There was a lot of not being secure and not being comfortable being me, being female. Yeah. I was told quite a bit, hey, we don't wear those shoes out here on the field. I'm like this isn't my first rodeo. Actually, I could probably play the game better than some, but what I'm talking about, and if I want to wear a pair of wedges out here, then I'll be fine, thanks. 

I got told I was a distraction on the field. It was an interesting environment, it was an adjustment for them, but it was an adjustment for me because I did have to learn to talk the talk. I did have to prove that, hey, I didn't have to come from a football family, which I was told she didn't come from a football family, why is she here? Those were said. I did have to overcome those things. But I think with tenacity and perseverance and the belief in myself and what I was there to do. And quite frankly, I was the breadwinner for our family, so I could not fail.

I asked my husband to come to Atlanta and stay at home for a few years, taking care of our child while I was figuring this out. And it was an incredible journey because what I said before is the leadership, the people who hired me were actually on board with figuring this out and creating a pipeline for women in that space. And I had to go through some really hard things to be able to figure out how to pave the path for other women. 

Stef  It's also not easy being the first and, but being the first hopefully means that there's many more coming in behind you, which is really what we're trying to prepare all these women that are listening to the Voice in Sport podcast is to really think about, okay, what can they learn from the trailblazers before them? So when you like reflect back now, in hindsight, of being the first woman in, as a VP of Comms for an NFL team or any other firsts out there that women are trying to, burst through and burst through those barriers.

Morgan Shaw Parker I would say stay the course. I would say, you know, you've got to work on creating a pipeline for women to succeed. And someone who's done a great job doing that is a woman named Sam Rappaport. I don't know if you've met her. She's a part of the NFL League office. You need to interview her. She's absolutely incredible. What she's done to change the landscape of females in NFL coaching positions is phenomenal. I don't even know what the stats are now, but what she realized is the same thing we on the business side have realized too, is you've got to teach, you've got to create every level of job opportunity and then let these women succeed, but also let them fail. And if they fail, you can't chalk it up to ‘oh, see, we tried and it didn't work.’ You've got to create a pipeline and a path for them to learn and for them to grow and then them to succeed and be promoted within these spaces. You know, It's the same with organizations who have said from a diversity and inclusion perspective. We want to be more diverse, right? If you fish in the same pond, you get the same results. But if you fish in a different pond, you have to learn what that requires. You have to be able to teach and you have to be committed to figuring out how to help them succeed along the way. 

Stef Absolutely. Okay, so looking back in your first three chapters, Morgan, it's a lot of actually communication, right? So that journalism part of your major really led right strong. You have to be a strong writer to be in comms, you have to be a great communicator. You have to be able to articulate a point of view in a lot of ways. That's also leads into being a great brand marketer, which you had experience doing that as well at A&B sports, but also at Nike. So when you then take a look at your next chapter chapter four. One of my favorites. You're coming into the world of general management and becoming a president. And that's a much more dynamic position where you're looking across many different functions and leading functions from finance to comms to marketing. So I'm excited to hear about this next chapter. What would you title it? And what was your key lesson? 

Morgan Shaw Parker Oh, my goodness. So many lessons. The title of my chapter four would be the 'Courage to Build.' And so at the end of my chapter three, I was the Chief Marketing Officer for Mercedes Benz stadium and for the Atlanta Falcons, an incredible role that I had grown into and really merged the worlds of communications, marketing, content, digging into the sales and sponsorship space. And at that time I was happy. I wasn't looking to leave, I had my second baby. My husband and I welcomed our youngest, our oldest son now to the world and, I was thinking, okay, I'm set for a little bit. And a friend of mine who I respect to the nth degree, she slid a job description across my desk and she said, ‘this job was built for you.’

And I looked at it and it was, it was, the president of the WNBA team in Atlanta. And I went, ‘Oh, thanks. Here you go. You can take this back.’ Because if you remember in 2020, but this was also coming out of a very tumultuous time for the WNBA coming out of the 'wobble.' The whole Black Lives Matter issue, we were coming out of COVID. I had just led through a millions and millions of dollars lost in the NFL and trying to recoup that with sponsors, plus trying to figure out how do we rebuild our team when we had folks pass away? Like we, there were leadership moments where you never expected to be in a situation where you were guiding people through life decisions, much less, turmoil within the civil rights states. And so here's this team. With a league comprised of 85 percent black women in the heart of Atlanta with an ownership group that was very subpar. And I'll refrain that for another podcast. We can talk about all the baggage 

Stef Part two.

Morgan Shaw Parker But I had this opportunity. I saw through it to say, man, if everything that my career has culminated in has led me to this. Wow, what an opportunity to build something from scratch and now I can do it for women. And my husband and I talked about it and it kept waking me up at night. And I kept saying, man, I think I have to do this. I think this is the right group for me. And the more and more I interviewed our ownership, the more I realized they're not in it for the sexiness, they're not in it for the money. They're in it for long term investment, long term growth. And they had already shown that within their prior business. And so I thought, man, let's take the leap. And my husband actually shoved me off the rug and he said, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? We'll both go flip burgers. And I'm like, okay, let's go. 

Stef That's amazing. So what was the biggest challenge when you look back at that chapter of like the first time coming into the president role?

Morgan Shaw Parker First of all, it was understanding what I had just jumped into and really taking a moment to listen and taking another moment to listen and then taking a moment to digest and then figuring out, okay, what's the next step. Meanwhile, my owners are saying, okay how much money is it going to take to run this team? And I'm going, oh my God, I've never built a PNL in my life. I've managed plenty of million dollar budgets, plenty of them, but for a whole company with all headcount, with all benefits, with, every department reporting up to me, HR being hired, finance being hired, sponsorship and sales being hired. And oh, by the way, we need to make money too. So you got to go out there and sell. And it took me a minute to find my footing, but what I found is, as any good journalist will tell you, as any good marketer will tell you, if you put the story out there and you paint the picture of what you're trying to build, and you articulate the infrastructure and how you want to build it, people will come and especially when it hits on something they care so deeply about and they feel that the leader in charge or the leader in that seat is just as passionate as they are.

And what was really cool to me is to see the number of people within my own network raise their hand, say, oh, I want to come work for you. I really like what you stood for in this role or in that role or in my interaction with you. And so that was really interesting. And the journey over the last three years and women's sports has been nothing short of spectacular and it is hard every single day. But look at where we are. What I inherited and what our ownership group inherited. We had seven people running this organization. The WNBA really was just starting to gain its footing under Kathy Engelbert. We had a 75 million capital raise. People were starting to watch and pay attention to women's sports more, but I had a mess on my hands to clean up.

This organization was in shambles and it took me the better part of 18 months to clean it up, to hire the right people. And what I will say is now we have 50+ human beings. And we were just named last year, the most diverse team in the WNBA. And the WNBA is the most diverse league in all of professional sports. So you think about what we've done when you're intentional, you hire good people for the right reasons. You hire for diversity and you hire for people who think differently. Something we talked about in my career at Nike. It surprised me that they hired me because I thought differently, but now I'm intentionally putting those practices into place and it's working.

Stef That's so amazing. It's exciting to see what you've built. And I love it when you're in a role now for three years, and then you're kind of in that space of looking back and thinking about how much you've created and then the people you've brought on, and then you can just accelerate so many great initiatives. So I love that is where you're at, and it's a powerful position to be. And, That kind of brings us to your last chapter. I mean, It's not your last chapter, but it's just, chapter five for this podcast. Yeah, so tell me about your last chapter here, chapter five, what does it look like for you?

Morgan Shaw Parker I won't say the last, but I will say my current chapter five in this book that we're writing together. Stef five is titled ' leadership doesn't mean being in charge.' And I will say, yes, I have the corner office and yes, I have the title. And yes, I have the things that so many young people aspire to have in that bubble. But I'll tell you right now I can't just go sit in that office and pretend that this company is going to build itself. I don't spend a whole lot of time in that office because I've realized, and I'm going to steal a line from Abby Wambach, I don't know if you listened to her graduation speech, but it is one of my favorite speeches of all time.

And I always tuck this into my bag of leadership, advice. It's you've got to learn to lead from the bench because if you can't learn to open a door for someone else and then help them succeed, you're never going to do it on your own.

There's no way that I can say that I've built the Atlanta Dream to what it is because of what I'm doing. Yes, I'm the captain of the ship, right? But there's no chance that we'd be rowing in the same direction. We would have built the culture where people want to come to work every day and to change this game or to have grown exponentially in three years, not only financially, but in sellouts in what we're able to give our athletes and in the human beings we've been able to bring on board over the last three years.

And I look back at that and I say, man that's because of my team. That's because of the humans that I've been able and had the good fortune to be able to empower with a drive that I have and with the belief that we can build something different. And, a lot of times I'm a cheerleader, I'm taking direction from them and I learned, back in the day, back in, a lot of my Nike careers, don't be afraid to surround yourself with people who are a hell of a lot smarter than you. You're not going to get fired. They're going to make you better. 

Stef I love that. Last night my daughter said to me, ‘Mom you were a cheerleader.’ I go I was not a cheerleader in the sense of like being on the cheerleading team, but I was voted most spirited in high school after graduation because I always cheered people on. And I was telling her how I was the president of my class. And that a big part of my role was to elevate other people and cheer people on. so yes, in that sense, I was a cheerleader. 

Morgan Shaw Parker You bring up a great point, Stef, because in this role, a lot of people will say being in this role is lonely. And sometimes it is because at the end of the day, you can't have a bad day.

You don't get to have bad days. You will. Let me tell you. There's been plenty of times that I've gone in the bathroom down the hall and in every single role, but in this one too, and just bang my fist on the wall.

Stef I thought you were going to say like every single stall I've been in there crying. That one. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Yeah. I think there's in every, in every job. at every stage of my life, there's been like a crying stall in the bathroom. I've talked about this with other women and they're like, oh my God, I totally know the crying stall. It's okay. You'll wipe your tears off and you get back in the game.

Stef There's also the stall though, that I have to also mention here that you go into before you present to do the super woman pose, the super woman pose, the, like all that. That's also very handy for. for all of you out there that hasn't used the stalls yet.

Morgan Shaw Parker What a great analogy, right? 

Stef Okay well, I love your chapters and your story, and it's really quite powerful and unique to see.

And it was 22 years put into five chapters, but I want to go back and talk a little bit more about like your top challenges because at the end of the day, we're trying to really make sure that these young women understand it's not all glory along the path. There tend to be challenges.

We all have them. We all have failures. We all have things that we look back on in our careers and say, oh, I could have done that better, but let's learn from that. So I want to hit on your top three challenges for the young women out there that you faced along your journey and what's that learning to pass on.

Morgan Shaw Parker So if I were to think about my top three challenges, the first challenge I would say is take time to find your tribe. You've got to find other humans. And frankly, yes, you want other women, but sometimes if you can't find other women, you're going to have to understand that there are plenty of men out there who want you to succeed.

You've just got to be open to it. And I've learned throughout most of my career, it's the men who have taught me all of the lessons, right? I found amazing women and I'm finding more and more along the way, but you've got to be really intentional about it. You also have to be intentional about finding people with the same mission in mind and also people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get in the mud with you. And it's hard to test out people on when the times get tough. Are you really going to get in the mud? Are you going to sling the mud back at me when you don't agree with something? And that's a tough thing. I think I still find that to be a challenge, but I'm continually amazed with the people that will jump in the mud for the greater good of changing the game for women's sports.

Stef Yeah, and it's hard. It's really important when you're building your team to find people that are going to be in the mud with you. And that's so hard to hire for you. Sometimes you don't know, you can't always tell work ethic are they going to get in the mud with you? Those sorts of those sort of qualities. So that's a really important one. 

Morgan Shaw Parker You also have to take time to teach. You have to allow people to fail. That's a challenge for me too, because I want to jump in the deep end. My team knows I want to swim in the deep end. I want to do big things. I have huge audacious goals, but then they swim me back to shore and help me get one foot back on the shore and one foot in the deep end. And we make great things happen. And in my own mind, my challenge sometimes is myself is I've got to learn when I've got to slow down and when I've got to teach and when I've got to let specific things happen in order to build up to the greater things we want to achieve. 

Stef Absolutely. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Second thing, and this is probably a little controversial, but I will tell you right now that as women, no, we cannot do it all. And don't succumb to the mindset of, you can have it all, do it all, be it all. That would mean you are taking care of families or dogs or whomever it is you care about. You're kicking ass at work. You're cooking dinners. You're collecting whatever you collect. You're traveling wherever you're like, wait a second. Like life is short, right? And you've got to think about the things that you're willing to sacrifice along the way. And what is hard to remember sometimes when you're in the moment is you don't have to do it all of the time.

Life is like, it's like a book, it's chapter by chapter, and in this chapter of my life, I may not be able to be the friend that I want to be to the people who love me, right? I try and you know what? They're my friends because they know that I love them and we can pick back up at any point, right? But in this next chapter, it might be all about my kids who are so needy and that I need to lean in there and my job has to take a step back. But that's okay because I know I can make up for that later. You just might have to do it and find another creative way around a particular circumstance. But as women, we become really good at that. And so I think the notion of you can have it all of the time is a false one. And it makes us think we should do it all and not complain about it. 

Stef It's also the same thing as like the word balance. Sometimes it drives me nuts. It's like on one side it's yes, we want balance, and balance is good because, think about like mind body balance kind of thing, but then balance it, it doesn't, it's not all equal. Like a lot of times one thing is going really great and the other needs to take the back seat and being okay with that is a lesson. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Yeah, it's true. I think one of the cool things too, is that COVID has taught us that it's okay to be real. We got to see people's real lives on screen during COVID. And, now it's helped me understand that, Hey, my kids are going to come to work sometimes. Hey, I'm going to be on a zoom call as the president of this organization. And my dogs might be going berserk in the back or my kids might be hanging from the rafters, but Hey, welcome to the Parkers. We're going to figure this out. We're still going to do great work. And Hey, I'm human too. 

Stef I love it. 

Morgan Shaw Parker All right. Number three. My biggest challenge is to realize that it's just a rubber shoe. Okay. I learned that at Nike when my dad would call me at nine o'clock at night almost every night and he would pick up the phone and I'd be working on something like the Olympics or something amazingly important like the next Air Max launch or, the NFL launch and he would say, Morgan, what are you doing? Dad, I'm working on this, that, or the other. And it's Morgan, it's just a rubber shoe. And I would slam the phone down and just curse. I'm sure I said horrible things about my dad at that point, but it took me a while to realize that yes, he was trying to poke me a little bit and get me out of the office, but when he said that it's just a rubber shoe, he reduced something that is a behemoth in so many minds to something that is so simple and insignificant. 

It's a rubber shoe. And you know what? It'll be there in the morning. And I think to me that was so important and I still have it on my board today in my office because I have to remember that it's about balance. It's not about the title. It's not about the office. It's not about a big football game or, changing the world for women's sports. it's just one day at a time and it will all happen in due time. 

Stef I love that. It's hard to have that mindset in the moment. Sometimes you need a, like a reminder. So having a visual reminder on your board or having a go to friend or loved one that you can be like, Hey, look, if I ever get a little too like serious about this, can you just give me a little call, please, and that's what great friends are for. And I think it's hard though, when you're when you're passionate about your work and like what you're doing and you care about, doing a great job. It's sometimes hard to get out of that, get out of your own way, but such a good lesson. 

And this brings me to leadership. I want to talk about leadership. I think It's so important, in order to have a successful business and drive revenue and team culture is to have an incredible leadership style, one in which that works well for the culture of your company. So when you think about your journey of ups and downs of all these chapters, you have developed your own leadership style and it's really important also when you're interviewing for jobs to be able to describe your leadership style. I think I got asked that question every new job at Nike before I got the job. A good lesson for all the young women out there listening to this podcast, but how would you describe your leadership style? 

Morgan Shaw Parker It's funny when you sent this question over to me, I really had to sit there and think about it.

And then I thought about calling up all of my leadership team and my staff members and going, What would you describe it as? And then I was like no, I'm not doing that. Not today. The word that kept coming back to me is hungry. I'm eager to learn. I'm hungry for what's next. I'm excited about the role. I'm excited about women's sports. I'm excited about the job and I'm excited about the difference that we have the opportunity to make at this tipping point at this time. I couldn't be in a better space. So hungry, I would say. 

Stef Do you think that style has stayed the same throughout the years or have you developed that style over the years?

Morgan Shaw Parker I very much developed that style. I didn't come out of school as the most confident person in the world. I'll tell you, growing up in high school, I was probably the shyest kid in class. I did not speak up. It took other people recognizing skills and strength that I had. And my values have stayed the same. My dad would always say, do good things for the right reasons. Your values need to stay the same or you need to figure out what those are. But the style in which you lead can evolve because different people will come in and out of your life and you'll take the good and you'll throw away the bad. And trust me, I've had some horrible leaders, but I've had some amazing leaders. And I have had leaders that are a mixture of both. Because we're dealing in a world of humans and you got to take the good and the bad. 

Stef Absolutely. This year, we've kicked off this incredible partnership at Voice in Sport with the WNBA and the WNBA Changemakers. And kind of center to that is mentorship. And we have these incredible partners and the Changemakers, which include AT&T, CarMax, Deloitte, Google, Nike where we both spent some time and U. S. Bank. And they're all committed to keeping girls in sport. They believe as we do strongly here at VIS, that mentorship and visibility to role models can be a huge part in keeping girls in sport.

One of the mentors we have is at the WNBA dream. Haley Jones, she's amazing and we're really excited to have her. Yeah, shout out to Haley. But I'd like to know a little bit more about like your own relationship with mentorship along the way, if you think about really the advice that you would like to share or that you would have liked to known along the way in your journey, this is your moment to say to your younger self, and we're going to go through a couple different scenarios where you're going to give some advice to all of the women out there listening to this podcast.

We're going to start with, these are all different scenarios that we all go through in our journey, and we want your one piece of advice to help mentor these women. So what's your one piece of advice here to women that are leaving college for the first time heading into their first job?

Morgan Shaw Parker My advice going into your first job is it's okay to fail. And it's okay to say, hey, this might not be something I want to do for my whole career. Don't look back. for your fifth job when it's only your first. Get your foot in the door, get some experience, work hard, do your job. And move to the next. 

Stef So good. Such good advice. I didn't love every single job I had, by the way, but I did an excellent job at it. And that's how you get your next opportunity. 

Morgan Shaw Parker That's the biggest piece of advice is so many people want to know what the next step is before they've even had success in the first role or the first step.

Stef Okay, now I want to give advice to all the women out there. This is a little bit more focused on college women, but what's your one tip for the women that are in an internship right now? 

Morgan Shaw Parker In an internship, be a sponge. I'll steal that one from Nike. Just be a sponge. Soak it in. There are so many things to learn and ask a lot of questions. Don't be afraid to go down the hall. Everybody puts their pants on the same way. That's how I got every job that I've ever had is, ironically, I haven't had to go apply for a job, knock on wood in my career because I've gone down the hall, I've understood what people do, and I've asked 'em if I could help.

And in my spare time, I always did what my full time job was, but in my spare time, I would go chip in, I would go help out. And it really, I think stood out because it opened up doors for me. I learned a heck of a lot and I learned what I did and didn't like. And, they learned that I was willing to do things outside of my comfort zone.

Stef Amazing. Okay. Your tip for first time managing a team.

Morgan Shaw Parker Be quick to listen and slow to speak. 

Stef Love that. Just mic drop. No explanation on that. My last one is, what is your tip on day one? So literally day one of becoming the president.

Morgan Shaw Parker Don't go sit in your chair. Don't go sit and soak it in oh, I've made it, 'cause you're gonna quickly realize that. Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I've inherited or what I'm doing. Yes, you will. You have earned the right to be there. And I say that in jest because you shouldn't be sitting in that chair in that corner office. You should be out amongst your team members, amongst the community you seek to serve, out there listening and out there gathering input. You shouldn't be sitting in your office the majority of the time. So I would say on day one. That's what I would advise. 

Stef Okay. But let me just say there's a moment, at least two seconds, right? Where you can sit in the amazing chair, kick up your feet. Like 

Morgan Shaw Parker I will say I walk into my office every day. And I say, wow. And I pinch myself. I do. And maybe there's a little bit of that, that horrible saying about imposter syndrome or whatnot, but part of that is what makes us great as females is you know what, we're always aspiring to be better.

We're always aspiring to do more, but I don't take it for granted that I've got an amazing job, an amazing title. I've got an amazing team, but what a cool opportunity. So I do, I walk into my office every day and I pinch myself. It's a pretty cool place to be. 

Stef Amazing. Thank you so much for all of this incredible advice. I would love to end with just, you speaking directly to all of the young women out there that eventually want to be in your position one day maybe it's not the president of the Atlanta Dream, but another president role out there. What would be one final piece of advice for all those women out there that want to work in the sports industry and eventually get to where you are?

Morgan Shaw Parker Stef, this is the hardest part. I literally, I looked at this and I'm like, I don't know that I can summarize all of that. 

Stef Just listen to the whole podcast. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Just listen to the podcast, listen to Stef. I would say to any woman that is out there wanting to aspire to be in a seat like this to do the work, that respect is not given, it's earned. You really have to roll up your sleeves and you have to learn all facets of the business. So get in there, learn areas of the business that are hard. You've gotta know how to sell. You've gotta understand finance. So if you didn't do well in accounting 101, like me, you got to figure it out.

You understand the various as humans tick and you need to tell your story and paint a picture that other people want to follow. And I'm still working on that every single day. And I think it'll be interesting to see what the future holds. And I can't wait to see women's sports grow and to see the Atlanta dream thrive.

Stef I love it. It's been a pleasure to hear your story and I'm so excited to see the work that you're going to do and continue to do with the Atlanta Dream. So thank you for joining us on the Voice in Sport podcast. 

Morgan Shaw Parker Thanks for having me Stef. 

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Stef Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Our mission at Voice in Sport is to bring more visibility to women. And so often we don't take the time to give each other our flowers. We wanted to give our guests an opportunity to shout out other inspiring women that deserve more VIS. So let's hear from Morgan.

Morgan Shaw Parker I would like to shout out Renee Montgomery and Suzanne Abair, two of our co owners of the Atlanta Dream for being badass women and literally changing the game in multiple industries.

Stef This week's episode was produced and edited by VIS creator, Elizabeth Martin. Morgan shares that it's so important to be intentional about curating a team who you're ready to roll up your sleeves with and get in the mud together. Success comes with strong teams comprised of people with a shared mission and mutual respect. Morgan also shares that in life and career paths, not every position you end up with will be a perfect fit. But each of those roles will provide valuable and diverse experiences along your path. 

Please click on the share button in this episode and send it to another athlete that you think might enjoy this conversation. And if you liked our conversation with Morgan, please leave us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. If you're part of the Voice in Sport community and logged in, head over to the SESSIONS tab and filter by topic, sport, or mentor type and join one of our mentorship sessions, or one of our 100 experts in sports, psychology, nutrition, and, sports science.

And thanks to our incredible partnership with the WNBA Changemakers, we are excited to offer free mentoring with Atlanta Dream player, Haley Jones. Haley provides monthly sessions on the Voice in Sport platform, and she recently was featured in an article titled, How Haley Jones Uses Social Media for Change. To learn more about our partnership and sign up for a session with Haley Jones, please visit voiceinsport.com/WNBA. See you next week on the Voice in Sport podcast. 

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