We Need To Be Doing That

Katie Cavender is the Assistant Director of Communications and Branding for the College Football Playoff

She owns over a decade of experience in the college sports landscape, including 11 years at the Mountain West Conference. Katie has also spent time at Boise State University and the Pac-10 Conference as part of an incredibly impressive resume.

We talked to her about:

- her origin story and rise to a leadership in college athletics

- the ever changing dynamics in college sports

- the impact of NIL

- how the new expansion of the college football playoff will benefit fans

- her perspective on social/digital content creation for the college football playoff

Erica L Ayala is Founder of Black Rosie Media, an organization with a focus on empowering Black women and melanated people in sports media, who identify, amplify, and support emerging creators in sports media. 

Erica is a multimedia sports journalist, and her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and more. 

She covered her first Winter Olympics in 2022 in Beijing, China. 

She is the first Black & Latina broadcaster in the Premier Hockey Federation (and the former National Women’s Hockey League), and she is believed to be the first Black Woman to call an NHL game. 

Mark Fine is CEO of Las Vegas Desert Dogs, a new team in the National Lacrosse League (NLL) and the league’s 15th team

We discuss his career, starting in baseball, to the Harlem Globetrotters, the New York Mets (where he first met Elliot, and did a groundbreaking partnership with Marvel), the Brooklyn Nets, and now to CEO of Las Vegas Lacrosse

The Las Vegas Desert Dogs are co-owned by four investors:
Wayne Gretzky
Steve Nash
Dustin Johnson
Joe Tsai

We discuss what brought Mark to Vegas and specifically working in lacrosse, his views on the sport and the growth of the sport and the NLL 

Frank Verlizzo is an American design artist best known for creating the posters for many prominent Broadway productions, including The Lion King.

Frank is a native New Yorker, born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx. He attended the High School of Art and Design and the Pratt Institute. It was at Pratt that he received his first big break in the theater industry, as his illustration teacher was David Edward Byrd, the man who designed the poster art for the original productions of the musicals Follies and Godspell. Frank worked at The Blaine Thompson Agency, at the time the largest advertising agency for Broadway shows.

We discuss his career, his work and working primarily in Broadway and the theater/arts space, and his book.

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We Need To Be Doing That is a HEARTLENT Group Production

Jonah talks with Dr. Kimberly Wise White (Vice President, Regulatory & Scientific Affairs, American Chemistry Council) and Ashley Christopher (Founder and CEO of HBCU Week Foundation, Inc.) to discuss HBCU Week

- HBCU Week Foundation's Upcoming events
- Offering scholarships to students on the spot
- HBCU Week's partnership with Disney
- HBCU Ambassador and Winston Salem State University alum Stephen A. Smith
- How other HBCU alumni spread the word
- The importance of culture and opportunity at HBCU's
- Exposing prospective students to STEM occupations

Since its inception in 2017, more than 3,500 students have been admitted into HBCUs with HBCU Week scholarship awards exceeding $50 million.


ABOUT HBCU WEEK FOUNDATION
The mission of the HBCU Week Foundation is to encourage high-school aged youth to enroll into HBCUs, provide scholarship dollars for matriculation and sustain a pipeline for employment from undergraduate school to corporate America.  The most impactful event during HBCU Week is the HBCU College Fair.  HBCU Week Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

EPISODE 50! 

This episode is just the 3 of us with no guest, exactly how we started this thing 43 episodes prior.

We dig into how this podcast started and why, and how it has been beneficial to us.

We also discuss the first year of HEARTLENT Group. The work we have done, the things we have learned, and some advice we want to pass on.

Rebecca Levin is a VP at IMG Media

- We talked about growing up outside NYC

- Rebecca was a Collegiate Club Rugby player and that involvement in and her contacts in the sport helped her determine she wanted to work in sports

- How her career started in Minor League Baseball and all that she was exposed to with that team

- How she arrived at Octagon, MLB Network, and then IMG Media where she's been now for over 10-years

- Where she spends her time with clients including LPGA, World's Strongest Man, and New York City Marathon

- The role of UFC since becoming a part of Endeavor

- The rise of the niche sport

- How IMG approaches content, and how Rebecca navigated World's Strongest Man during COVID

- What Rebecca's clients are doing within NFTs (example: Wimbledon and Andy Murray)

- Staying with a company for over 10-years is rare in our industry, so we ask Rebecca what people should look for and keep in mind when determining if you should stay with a company or leave to get a promotion/raise

- The change in the relationship between athletes and fans

Joe Pinchin is the Manager of Digital Content at the Chicago Bulls

Discussed:
- Career path that includes three years at FIBA prior to landing a position with the Chicago Bulls in 2020
- The experience of joining an organization in the middle of a pandemic and working remotely
- How the Bulls digital team handled content surrounding The Last Dance
- The Bulls strategic approach and new rollout of NFTs
- The balance of creating content for hardcore basketball fans and off the court content for casual fans
- Emerging tech to keep an eye on for content creators

Zach Best is General Manager and Founder at Fansided, recently acquired by Minute Media. We get into his Kansas City Chiefs fandom, how Fansided started with his brother, his thoughts on the industry and where things are headed.

We discussed:
- Career paths not being a straight line to where you end up. Zach came out of college in the Hospitality industry, decided that wasn’t for him and went and got his Masters in Secondary Education. While coaching and teaching he started Fansided with his brother and went full-time on Fansided after 5-years.
- How Fansided changed from inception to today, and after being acquired by Minute Media
- Centralized fan content coverage
- The opportunity Zach felt existed when launching Fansided
- The content Fansided focuses on, and how the company started in sports but has since broadened to entertainment
- Have fans changed with how they interact with teams?
- Sports Betting implications
- Why Zach thinks this year’s NFL outcome will be different than last year for the Chiefs
- The rise of niche sports

We welcomed the Creative Director for Duke Women’s Basketball, Selena Castillo on the show.  In this episode, we discussed:

• Working through Covid and how she and the team adapted
• What it’s like to work side-by-side with Kara Lawson as the Duke head coach
• Her creative approach to content
• The increased popularity of women’s college basketball and the WNBA

We talked about New York Knicks basketball with superfan and Knicks content/media personality Anthony Donahue, as the Knicks enter the Playoffs and continue their bright season.

Luc Doucet is Founder at The First Mint, a platform that covers NBA Top Shot, streams, analytics, and podcasts. They are building the future of reactive media in the social ecosystem of blockchain.

We recently talked to Jack Settleman about NBA Top Shot and in that episode he mentioned Luc, and based on what he said about him we knew we needed to talk to Luc.

We discussed: