50 women who have made a positive difference to me - Meredith Geisler

2022 - On the?50th?anniversary of Title IX, I have been and will continue to shine?a?light on?50?women who have been amazing teachers, thereby affecting my?sports?career as well as the careers of other?women and men in sport.

Meredith Geisler: Joy comes from helping people look good?

In the late 70s there were two major sports marketing firms representing athletes—my employer, IMG (Mark McCormack’s International Management Group) and the law firm of Dell, Craighill, Fentress and Benton.??In fact, Mark McCormack’s leadership team were also lawyers.??These two companies represented the world’s best tennis players; we at IMG added golfers, cartoonists, sports broadcasters, Olympians, race car drivers and even the Pope to our client roster! Then in 1983, Frank Craighill and Lee Fentress, two of Donald Dell's partners, broke off to create Advantage International while Donald Dell and Ray Benton rebranded their firm as ProServ.???

Rivalries are instilled in competitive sports teams - Michigan vs Ohio State - for example, as are businesses - Coke vs Pepsi.??We IMGers considered Dell, Craighill, Fentress and Benton, or ProServ/ Advantage, as our main competitors.???We’d be pitching the same athletes for our services.??Interpublic Companies acquired Advantage in 1999 and renamed it as Octagon.???

I first met?Meredith?Geisler in 1986 after she had been Advantage’s Director of Communications for three years.??Meredith?had landed there in 1983, a year after I left IMG.??Nonetheless, I instinctively viewed her as a rival.??She was a woman as well, a rarity in the agencies in the early 80s.??We’ve since become good friends.??

Meredith’s role as a sports publicist has been to make athletes look good.??And she’s made some winning athletes even better off the court - Grant Hill, Ray Allen, Tim Duncan - to name a few.??She’s worked at two athlete agencies, Fila Sports and then at her own business, the latter while raising a family with her husband, Barry, who ran George Mason University’s arena, Patriot Center, for Monumental Sports.??Meredith?has given back to the next generation by teaching as an adjunct sports communications professor at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and American University.?And today, after 40 years as a sports public relations professional,?Meredith?is joining GWU full-time as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the School of Business.

Every year?Meredith’s been the moderator of an annual sports career panel at the SEME Sports Marketing Conference. This panel typically features the same two Human Resources officers and me.??I sit on this panel more as a fly-on-the-wall observing the jousting between (a) John Ferguson, formerly Monumental??Sports’ VP of People and Culture, who is a supporter of and online hire of TeamWork Online, and now is the Chief Human Resources Officer at NASCAR, and (b) Mary Sirico, Vice President of People and Culture at Octagon,?Meredith’s former employer.??Both?Meredith?and I remain in the background as John and Mary star in a kind of “Siskel and Ebert” show on sports-career-candidate-application-advice.??(An ongoing argument they have is on the merits of cover letters!)?

If?Meredith?has been the agent to help make pro athletes look good, I’ve followed her lead.??She has taught me that joy comes from helping other people look good.??For me it’s being that “agent,” that publicist, to the passionate committed sports industry candidate wanting to look good to the right employer for the right sports job.?Thanks,?Meredith!

TeamWork Online is the leading hiring platform and talent community in sports and entertainment. Our mission is to connect talented people with the right employers.??If your career has been positively affected by one of the women, please share your comments.