Building a Purpose-Driven League: Inside Athletes Unlimited w/ Hilary Meyer

Teresa Saputo-Crerend: Hello everyone. Welcome back. Launch break. The podcast continues. I'm your host, Zora Stevenson. And I always joke that I'm a has-been Hooper, but we all know, right? If you're an athlete, once an athlete, always an athlete. I can't pass a conditioning test. The jumper is spotty right now, but the impact, right? The relationships, the lessons, the experiences that stays with us forever. You don't have to be in shape for that to still have a lasting impact on your life. And what this series is all about, it's about hearing from highly, highly successful women who have athletic backgrounds, just like you, just like me. It's an opportunity to listen, learn, and then leave empowered. And I hope you'll just take some gems and apply them to your own life. If you're new to Launch Break, Launch Break is a global professional network for women athletes connecting current and former college, pro, national, Olympic, and Paralympic competitors. And throughout the season, you will get a chance to hear their stories. Be sure. to give us a follow at The Launch Break on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe and listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Our podcast is brought to you by FiveWinds. Launch Break is proud to have them on board. I used to get frustrated trying to find women's sports coverage, and then I found FiveWinds. FiveWinds offers truly original content and real community. Real stories from athletes, smart takes on the games, bracket challenges, and even live events with other fans. Whether you're watching from the couch, in the stands, or still playing yourself, Five Winds is where the women's sports community hangs out. Check it out at fivewinds.com. That's the number five, winds.com. All right, without further ado, I love to hype people up, Hillary. All right, drum roll and everything. Today on the podcast, we are joined by a true force behind purpose-driven change in sports. I'm talking about Hillary. Meyer, Chief Impact and Athlete Engagement Officer at Athletes Unlimited. Some of you are probably familiar with that brand. I can't wait to get into it a little bit more. But Hillary, D1 athlete, lacrosse and field hockey player at Colgate with now over 17 years of experience in strategic planning, community engagement, and program development. Hillary is leading the charge on how professional women's sports can drive real social and environmental impact. At AU Sports, she oversees athlete programming, social justice advocacy, civic leadership, ESG initiatives, ensuring that impact isn't just a side project, but it's something that is done every single day and a core part of the league's mission. Hillary's work sits at the intersection of sports purpose, community, creating meaningful experience for fans, athletes, and leaders. And I love this line. Listen to this. We're going to leave everyone with a cliffhanger because we're going to come back to it. This conversation is about impact. leadership and what it truly means to use sport as a platform for change. Use sport as a platform for change. We're going to come back to that, Hilary, but we've got to set the scene because I told the people that you were a dual D1 athlete. Field hockey and lacrosse, how did that even come to be? Yes, that is true. And it was many, many years ago. But so I don't know if I could say the same now, but I've sort been a lifelong athlete. I love that. that note that once an athlete always an athlete. I was a kid who loved sports, always on the playground, wanting to scrap around during recess playing games. I spent the majority of my time as a kid actually playing ice hockey. ⁓ And that's really the first sport that I played in any real organized way. ⁓ By the time that I got to high school, I was a little bit leaning away from ice hockey, wanting to do something more based in the high school that I was in. I went to a public high school outside of Boston and Massachusetts. And lacrosse and field hockey were both sports that were pretty easily adaptable from ⁓ my roots in ice hockey. And so they were both new to me in high school. I started both. I loved the sport of lacrosse just so fast. had actually a lot of similarities to ice hockey as well. I was a goalie in both ⁓ and field hockey was, it was more social and again, a transferable skills on the field, ⁓ but I loved the team atmosphere. The coach was amazing. And so I just started playing both, but. ended up playing both in college as well, largely because I didn't want to, I was recruited for lacrosse, but I really didn't want to play fall ball, which was the sort of, this is a season that where you weren't actually competing. It was a means to get out of something, huh? It to get out of fall ball and it worked. So I played all eight seasons, both ⁓ of the sports combined. So I was basically never out of, competitive season. So yeah, and I haven't really played either since I've continued to play ice hockey throughout my adulthood, but I haven't played either of those sports. played actually I played for about a year and a half after college, I played at the national level in lacrosse, but then I, I retired, I like to say retired at the peak of my game, and I never want to pick up another stick because it would be embarrassing if people Said that's what, that was elite athletes 20 years ago. I don't know, that's suspect now, but. Maybe you play some defense. ⁓ I played lacrosse in high school, I had no stick skills, so they just stuck me on defense. Yeah, well in goal, you don't have to have any stick skills, you just need to stop shots, so that was. Right, right, right, reflexes, reflexes. I do wanna talk about another part of your college experience is the academic part of it, psychology. Why is that what you went into it and how is that expertise come into play with your various roles in the sports industry? I was always really intrigued and interested in what in sort of the workings of how people function in the world on an individual basis. think one of my favorite classes in college was focused on the motivation, the ways that people are motivated, self-motivated, they, you know, because they have internal drive, because they're chasing externally motivated sources, that just was always very compelling to me. It was an intellectual study for me. When I got out of college, I ended up going ⁓ into a social work path and I did some work. on direct services with kids and with adults in that overlay of mental health. Fast forward to where I sit right now, I think where that is really compelling, especially as it relates to how athletes think, how they function in the world. ⁓ It's really helpful to think about all of those things that I learned about many years ago around what really drives people, what makes people want to do things, what... be it stepping out on issues and being really forthright in activism, ⁓ helping your teammates, ⁓ making problematic decisions on the field of play, ⁓ how you become a leader, all of that is sort of a ⁓ part and parcel function of the study of psychology, at least in the track that I was in. So it is very relevant. Still, even though I'm not, you know, looking at textbooks anymore related to psychology. But the core of sports and honestly any field is the human aspect. Yes. And so if you can understand even a percentage of what's going on in our mind and how it's processing, then you can help people reach their goals and their full potential. Yes. ⁓ We brought up a lot of athletes unlimited and we're talking in a space we're both familiar with the league. For those who are not though. Just in a couple of sentences, Athletes Unlimited is blank. So Athletes Unlimited is a public benefit corporation, which is a really interesting note because we are the only ⁓ US-based public benefit corporation ⁓ running professional women's sports. ⁓ We run three different leagues, softball, basketball, and volleyball. And ⁓ their league run insofar as there are no team owners. ⁓ And the governance structure is highly focused on putting the athletes at the center. And so you see athletes from our board of directors, which is really unique. We have two athletes that sit on our board of directors, which is comprised of eight people total. So that in and of itself is groundbreaking all the way through to our, ⁓ what we call our player executive committees where there are five athletes that are really the people that. work with our leadership every single week to make decisions about anything and everything on how the leagues are structured. And so the intention is that the athletes are at the forefront and then ultimately the athletes benefit from the long-term success of the league. So one really unique aspect of ⁓ athletes unlimited structure is that we have this system ⁓ that globally is called mission equity, which is in part the ⁓ Invest people who invest in the league are capped at a certain investment level. And the idea is to signal their support for the mission and the goals of athletes unlimited long term. so, what it means in reality is that once the company has a certain valuation and that the investors receive their what they put back into the company, plus the cap on the investment. The surplus of that money goes no less than 50 % of that goes back into the mission related initiatives of athletes unlimited. And part of that mission related ⁓ aspect is making sure that athletes who played for the organization as far back as 20 seasons ago ⁓ get shares of that profit. And so the idea is that the athletes are you know, who are building the leagues now and that may not be seeing the money that they should ⁓ ultimately be the beneficiary of. If it's not there yet, long-term it will be. And so the goal is to make sure that those athletes are compensated going back a while. And that really speaks to that concept of we're building something that is putting the athletes at the center. both for long-term ⁓ financial well-being as well as their current empowerment and how we think about supporting our athletes as they play and play with us today. Yeah. And specifically on the basketball side, do you like, people are using it in addition to other professional leagues that they play in. Yeah. Do you all welcome that? You know, where some leagues may see it as, we want you to focus on us. Like you all understand. that people may be playing in other leagues during different seasons, how do you receive that? Yeah, that's really critical. I part of what we are doing for volleyball and basketball certainly is just another opportunity in the US for athletes who want to stay stateside or want to come if they're international athletes, come in and play in the states as part of their athletic career. So ideally, want athletes to be, if that's their career path and... that's what they want to do. We want to be able to have an opportunity for them to supplement salaries that they're making in other leagues as well. so that's been very successful. We were actually the first US-based professional indoor women's volleyball league. Since then, two others have been incorporated and are now running. You know, we're part of that landscape now. Of course, in basketball, you have the WNBA is the the big league in the in the States, but and now there's unrivaled. came along after us as well. And so there's all these different opportunities for women in those sports and softball. We actually are ⁓ really the the premier softball professional softball league in the United States. ⁓ And then our athletes have the ability to go go international. during the off season, ⁓ we would consider the league is called the AUSL to be really the premier place that athletes are playing professional softball in the US. Given all that context into the league's mission and how players are such a huge part of it and what players want and need being such a huge part of it, in your role as Chief Impact and Athlete Engagement Officer, what is your goal day to day? Well, there's lots of different ways that our work funnels throughout the organization. mean, the mission is a piece of the work that Athletes Unlimited does is really woven into the DNA from the athlete governance through the ways that we think about philanthropic giving to how we think about community engagement. ⁓ So my day today is all over the place, I'll say. ⁓ Some of it's focused on fans and fan engagement. Some of it's working directly with the athletes themselves on their own leadership and voices. ⁓ Some of it's working internal. Some of it's policy driven, making sure that the policies that we have that support our athletes are really doing what we intend. And we've got some pretty groundbreaking policies around pregnancy and caregiving and so forth. so. ⁓ There's a real mix of the types of ways that our department and our work ⁓ carries out the whole purpose of being a mission-driven public benefit corporation, professional women's league. I want to go back to the statement that we used at the beginning, right? The impact of leadership and what it truly means to use sport as a platform for change. How have you seen, I don't know if you can give an anonymous example, but a human and an athlete evolve? whether it's on the field of play or in their confidence or in their professional life as they've been a part of Athletes Unlimited. Yeah, just to go back to the structure that I was telling you about around our player executive committees, that's a really powerful system and I think it doesn't get the airtime it really deserves. What this is is these are professional athletes, they're playing in the leagues. They're selected as representative of their entire roster. And in some sports, they're actually building the roster themselves. So they're going out and doing the recruiting and so forth for who they want to be playing with in any given season. ⁓ And some of them, it's less, the rosters are less driven by the athletes, but they're thinking about who they want coaching, who, what, once they're on the field, how they want the plays to run. When they're sitting with the executive team, we have a weekly meeting with the Athletes Unlimited executive front office staff talking about anything from what the uniforms look like all the way through to the compensation structure of the athletes. And this is a powerful group of women that really have the opportunity to sit ⁓ at the intersection of both the business of sports and the product. product itself and sort of having, creating the best rosters, creating the best environment for the athletes to thrive in those rosters. Of course, making sure that the business itself is, that the product itself is bringing in the right business. But when I talk to our PEC members, they talk about how, Some of them say, you know, I really didn't know anything about what I was getting into, but now that I'm sitting at this table, I'm sitting with the co-founders, I'm sitting with the CEO, the rest of the C-suite, I'm understanding now all of these different factors that go into what people see and what they experience when they're watching a game. And being an athlete representative of how we as athletes... ⁓ are feeling what we need that kind of supports the policies that are important to us. What does housing look like? What does the day-to-day look like? What does the strength training look like? There's all kinds of things and they say, this is stuff that I had never thought about, but it's so important and so critical that I'm sitting here and learning this stuff because ultimately when the playing career is over, all of these skills that I've learned about how to sit and think about all the different aspects of ⁓ of a very complicated business will translate into whatever I do next. Yeah. And in those meetings, like how have you helped guide athletes to have a better understanding or motivated them to want to understand where you at in those conversations when you talk about the meetings and, and the athletes in leadership roles, but also learning the business side of sport. Where do you come into play there? My role is, I am often trying to think, when I'm talking to my peers, what are the athletes on the roster level ⁓ going to care about and how do they get communicated with? And so when I'm talking to the PEC, there's often a question, like I'll raise my hand and say, have you guys thought about... as you're sitting here, have you thought about how somebody on, you know, over here that's, you know, at this type of level of their playing career and, ⁓ you know, have half of their time doing this other thing, like, how are they going to experience this? And, and, and actually, they don't, it doesn't take many reminders. And I'll say that once, once the PEC gets going, it's, my favorite part of the meetings are when they think, well, when they say like, well, I'm not speaking for myself, but I'm thinking about this person or I'm thinking about this person and how this will not, this kind of decision will matter to them. And then, and then, and then at the end of the meeting, Hey, can we go out and get a pulse check on whatever it is that this group thinks that, you know, we, think that this makes sense, but let's go and check in with the roster and find ways to communicate with them. Because part of that is really like, making sure that if you're representing a large group of people that all probably have a lot of different interests and a lot of different experiences that they're being pulled in in some way that their voice is represented. And so a lot of my sort of athlete engagement work is making sure that the full swath of all of the athletes that are under the rubric of Athletes Unlimited are represented there. And that's real challenge, right? Because one policy, one line in a contract. does not always reach everyone the same because as you noted, everybody's in different parts of their careers and lives and have different wants and needs. We so appreciate your time and your insight. And as we talked about in the beginning, like you have decades of experience in a lot of different avenues. This is just where you're at right now. I have a saying that's really near and dear to my heart. It's keep a going. And at this point in your career, what keeps you going every day? ⁓ Well, that's it. Yeah, that's a good question. ⁓ It might be different every day and there's so many things that we're thinking about ⁓ just in this microcosm of professional women's sports around equity across different represent representation. ⁓ You know, the fact that we're finally starting to see movement of people understanding that women's sports is a business, a thriving business, a great place to be investing in, not because, you know, they think of it as a charitable cause, but they see it as a, as a real business opportunity is really exciting. you know, globally, that's very, very motivating. There are times when I see our athletes, be really outspoken on issues of import in the world. And that I love to see that and that really motivates me to think that athletes are ready to talk when they care about something deeply. ⁓ And that keeps me going. ⁓ So there's a number of sort of institutional level ways that I think we're making change ⁓ that keep me going day to day, Zora. Yeah, I love that. I so appreciate just your time and your perspective too. And we need people like you continuing to move sports forward, women's sports forward. So many people talk about right now, it's not a moment, it's a movement. And I truly believe that, but the movement's not new. That's my own anecdote, right? Like we've been, we've been chopping at this. A moment in the What'd It's a moment in Ah, I love that. And it's a big moment in the movie, right? There'll be books and documentaries on this moment right now that we're living in, but there are definitely still so much more to go and so much happened beforehand as well. I feel like, know, launch break, we all have this shared thought process of moving things forward. Yeah. Right? And so. Thank you. You've been great. And I'm a big fan of Athletes Unlimited and what we got into is the model of it, right? And the athlete empowerment piece and athlete led. That's the huge part of it. ⁓ Thank you so much again to Hillary for sharing her story and you can check out much more on our podcast episodes if you go to at the launch break. If you want more from Hillary and Athletes Unlimited, go to at AUProsports. Remember, Launch Break helps women athletes get hired, get connected, and get seen with less guesswork, more trust, and the support of a team with shared experiences, just like we've talked about here today. So we want you to thank you for listening, and don't forget to follow us, drop your comments, and if you're looking to join us, get in touch with us at launchbreak.com. See you next time. Thank you, Hilary. Thank you, Zara. 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