November 7, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode of How 2 Sport, Melissa Thompson reminds us how important relationships are in the sports industry and why Indiana Sports Corp continues to push the envelope with new initiatives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to How to Sport, the show that
highlights the unique experiences and journeys.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Of professionals and sports biz.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm your host, Megan Robertson, and I have the privilege
to be here today with Vice President of Biz and
External Affairs for the Indiana Sports Court, Melissa Thompson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome, Melissa. Hi, Megan, it's nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Thank you for joining us. So we're going to start
from the beginning. You have quite a diverse background, so
I'm excited to work through it with you today. But
you're native to Indianapolis. You graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University
with your Bachelor of Science and Business Administration, and then
you started with the Marion County Auditor's Office as a
(00:44):
real estate manager. What led you to that career, Well,
first of all, I was a.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Real estate manager at the Auder's office while I was
getting my degree at Indiana Wesleyan got it at the
same time. Yeah, I actually started there because I was
twenty years old, needed a job, and a lady that
I had known sort of been a mentor to me
for years, was the HR director for the City of
Indianapolis and Marion County and She's like, come in, we'll
(01:10):
find you a job. And that really is what started
my career in local government. And I started as a
real estate manager, but basically we were doing property taxes
for the City of Indianapolis and so individual homeowners. But
what that did for me was allowed me to understand
how local government works, how taxes are assessed and what
(01:34):
they pay for, and then what local government uses them for,
which turns out helped me helps me even today because
I understand how the city comes up with money, where
they spend it, how they spend it, and it allows
me to then use that when I'm working on bids
or we're asking the city for money. So it all
kind of weaves together. But you know, when you start
(01:56):
in that job, it was really a job where I
needed a but I got really good at it. But
I learned a ton then and now it helps me
every day.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So it was like a stepping stone to where we're
at now.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
That I didn't know I was going to be stepping into. Right, yeah, right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So then you started as the real estate manager, you
progress to the special project projects manager. Was there a
big difference in what you were doing?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Actually, I changed agencies when I was a special project manager,
I was at the Marin County Prosecutor's Office, and so
that transition led me to learn another side of government
that still helps me today sometimes, but in the criminal
justice side, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, and getting to meet
(02:44):
people in those realms and which again we still you know,
police officers, which we still use in our events today
or we need public safety to help us do our events.
So all of that then culminated for me in the
last job that I held with the city, which I ran.
I'm sorry, I'm just going on here for it. This
is the perfect So it all culminated for me in
(03:07):
the last job that I held when I was at
the city, which was I ran our city council office.
So we have a part time council, so they don't
work full time, but they have a full time staff,
and so I was able to be the city clerk
and run that office, and in that position, I literally
was able to use all of the knowledge I had
(03:28):
learned from being from learning about taxes and how money
is spent, taxes and budget to the criminal side or
criminal justice side, police side, fireside, to learn all of
that to use all of that in helping run the
city council office. So I was the liaison for both
the council president and our Public Safety chair to in
(03:52):
all of the meetings that they should have been in.
They allowed me to go because I knew enough about
the infrastructure of the city and so I just really
got an opportunity to showcase what I had learned in
that role. Now, that role was also appointed. It's an
appointed role, as appointed by whichever party is in the
majority of the council. So also one of the really
(04:16):
the first roles that I was in that literally in
the course of twelve hours, you can lose your job
on election day, and so that happened in twenty eleven,
after I'd been there for four years, and so then
it became Okay, what are we going to do next?
And I had been increased. I felt I really felt
like I was outgrowing sort of that city government and
(04:39):
didn't want to get stuck. I didn't want to be
a government employee my entire career, and so what was
I going to do next in order to transition out
of there? And so the same time, the City of
Indianapolis was getting ready to host the twenty twelve super Bowl,
and we had taken a downtown street it's three blocks long,
(05:02):
and turned it into sort of a basically an event space.
And so we were the first city to ever host
the super Bowl Village, an outdoor experience space that's free
to the public, and they took that space, they turned
it that, they turned that street into an event venue,
and then after the super Bowl, I became the first
venue manager for that space. So I worked for our
(05:24):
downtown Association and got to really build it out. We
used to joke that you don't build a church for
Easter Sunday, but we built Georgia Street for the super Bowl,
which is the mecha of what it would ever be,
right and so then figuring out what it looked like
every single day. We did tons of tailgates for our
(05:45):
NFL team, and we do lots of food truck Fridays
and having music and food trucks there, and so just
ways that we could engage the community to come down
and use that space as a venue over the court.
And so I did that for about two and a
half years. And that was a ton of fun too,
because I could take the relationships that I'd made at
the city and then use them in my day to day, right,
(06:05):
So all of those relationships I've made with public safety,
with even Department of Public Works, I still needed those
in my new job. And so if we're looking for
a theme here in my career, it's about relationships. You
sold the words right out of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Our relationship building is so key, and I mean it's
just that's literally like the word of your career, right,
It's relationships and how one thing leads to the next.
Even though you didn't necessarily know. I mean, you losing
your job based on the election, a lot of people
would freak out, right, But because you had built those
relationships and learned something each step.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Of the way of your career, it was an it
for me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It sounds like, now whether this is the case, it
sounds like it was a somewhat smooth transition into this
new exciting role.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
There were some freakout moments, Don't get me wrong. We're
definitely some freakout moments. And there was a point where
I was in that period of time. It was about
a two and a half month period of time. I
was still employed at the city, but I was trying
to figure out what I was going to do next.
There was a two month period of time where I
almost took a job that would have completely changed the
course of my career and probably in not a great way.
(07:16):
And so, you know, being being willing to wait on
the thing that I wanted or was I thought was
the right path, which was this running this venue was
really really hard because I didn't I'm like, they're not
calling me back? Do I keep waiting the jobs right here?
I could just transition. It's still with the city. So yeah,
(07:38):
I mean there were some freak out moments, but you're right.
I mean it was relationships, and it was That's the
reason that I got the job to run the venue
was because of my relationships. Years later, I was in
a leadership class with someone and he goes, do you
know that I was the person you were up against
for that job? No way, It's like I had no
idea who you were at the time, but said I
(08:00):
was the number two pick. I was like, oh, this
is And he's like, you were definitely the right person
for the job, but he said, yeah, we were definitely
competing for that job. So that was kind of crazy but.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, awkward, but also yeah, cool, let you got the job,
all right? So one more stop before you landed at
any in a sports court Hathaway strategies. So can you
explain the transition from going to running Georgia Street to
then Hathaway Strategies.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
How did that come to be? I've always had this
desire to have a very sort of entrepreneurial spirit. I
love new things, I love creating new things, being a
part of new initiatives, and I've always really thought that
maybe I wanted to start my own business. But I
also am incredibly risk adverse. Just can be those two
things don't really go together. And so as I was
(08:50):
learning more about sort of the event industry, the sports industry,
convention of visitors industry, I thought maybe I wanted to
do my own, try my own thing with event planning,
but again very risk adverse. And so another mentor of mine,
Anne Hathaway, not that Anne Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Not the Devilawares product or Princess Diaries, An Hathaway, not
that one.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Uh. We were having dinner one time and I kind
of was telling her what I was thinking, and she's like,
so let me take the risk, and she's like, come
work for me. We can build this together and see
where it goes, and so I sort of jumped at
that opportunity and ended up doing that for about four years.
It was it ended up being not a great fit,
(09:37):
which was fine. Sometimes you know, take you take choice
that you make choices that are not necessarily a good fit,
but it's you know, you also have to recognize that
and then move on. And so actually what ended up
happening was, at about the end of that four years,
my previous boss from the city Council became the Relationships
well again relationships yep, became the president of Indiana Sports Corp.
(09:59):
And had he had a couple of people quit and
what they were doing really fit my skill set, and
so he called and said, I'd really like you to
come do this. And I'd had enough interaction when I
ran Georgia Street with the Indiana Sports Corp. To know
that I really respected the organization. I loved what they did.
I never will I never dreamed I would work in sports.
(10:21):
That was never something I thought about as a kid.
I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That would
have been a terrible job for me, you know, but
working in sports is really all about relationships, and frankly,
sometimes you know this the politics of sports is so bad.
And I've said from the beginning, the politics of sports
(10:41):
can be worse than the politics of politics. But knowing
how to navigate that and what I learned years ago
helps me now to be strategic and build the right
relationships to be successful in what I do now. Love it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That is again not wanting to work in sports and
endiop in sports. I love stories like this. So when
you started at the Indiana Sports Corp.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You were the chief.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Community Officer and now you're the vice president of bids
and External Affairs. Can you explain the difference in what
you started doing versus what you do now and if
there was any overlap.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
There's really no difference other than we changed the title.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Got it good?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Chief Community Officer did not actually reflect what I was doing.
I I've always been on the external affairs side, so
I do all of our government affairs, our interaction with
the state and local governments, other venues, things like that.
So I do all of those things and that's how
we got the community piece of it. But when I'm out,
so I do all of our sales for I'm basically
(11:39):
the salesperson from Indianapolis from a sports perspective, got it.
Some people call that business development. Here in Indiana Sports Corp.
Our membership and sponsorship teams are called business development. So
it needed to be very clear what I was actually doing.
So when somebody was just cold calling Indiana Sports Corp.
They were getting to the right person. So changed we
(12:00):
just changed the title. But what I do is I
get to bid on new events. So I build relationships
with rights holders, the NCAA, the NFL, the NBA, national
governing bodies for a myriad of sports. To build the
relationships with them, for them to bring their events to
Indianapolis and allow them to see what our team can
(12:21):
do and what our city can do, and how great
a host city we are. So that's the majority of
what I do. And then again like I work on
our stakeholder relations, external affairs we get. We do a
lot of work with the State of Indiana. They are
very generous and give us grant funding and so all
of that and doling out that grant funding all falls
(12:42):
under me and my team. So and then we get
to work on special little projects. I've got somebody right
now that's working with our NFL team to honor all
of our Indiana Olympians in an upcoming game, and so
he's getting to do all the outreach to Olympians and
so we get to do fun stuff like that too.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So well, this is again a great segue. You're setting
me up perfectly talking about Olympians. So you all just
hosted the US Olympic team swimming trials in June at
Lucas Soil Stadium, and that was the first time that
swimming trials had been in a stadium.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It looked incredible. Can you explain that? And what a
phenomenal experience it was? It was It was amazing. We
had started conversations back in twenty sixteen about with USA Swimming.
They really wanted to grow their event. So the US
Swimming trials had been in Indianapolis at our natatorium through
(13:35):
for years, or for Olympia ads through twenty twenty, or
excuse me, two thousand and they outgrew our natatorium in
two thousand and so since then they've been playing or
they've been hosting that event in a basketball stadium or
basketball arena in Omaha, Ebrosca. So they've been building a
pool in a basketball basketball arena, So there's precedent for that.
(13:59):
They really like they had outgrown that. Their there night
over nights and it's an eight to nine day event.
Their night over night attendance was well exceeding, and they
thought they could they could move up. So we started
that conversation with them in twenty sixteen. They chose in
both twenty sixteen and twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty
one to stay in Omaha, and then their leadership decided
(14:22):
for twenty twenty four they were going to take the
jump and they were going to move it to an
NFL stadium, and so we built two and a half
three pools in the stadium we had. Our facility is
actually built to host final fours. So the way that
the seating bowl is arranged, you can hang a center
(14:42):
hung curtain so that you cut the field in half
and then on one side you can do competition and
on one side you can do warm up or other
events on the other side of the curtain. So for
basketball regionals, specifically NCAA basketball regionals, we put a court
on one side and then we put warm up court
or something active or things on the other side. And
in this case we built a competition pool on one
(15:04):
side and then a ginormous, the largest ever indoor pool
temporary pool ever constructed on the other side, and then unbelievable,
it was. It was something to behold and the start
contrast actually to then going to a football game a
couple of months later, to having been at Trials and
it being two giant pools and all of a sudden
(15:25):
it was a football field again. Those folks at Lucas
Oil Stadium are amazing in what they can accomplish with
that facility, and so there are great partners for us.
And then we had some other really good partners come
in and do all of the audio and the lighting
and everything, and it literally looked like a rock concert
every night when it was kicking off and it was
(15:47):
a swim meet. It was super cool. I couldn't you
just couldn't believe it, and it was. And then outside
of that, outside we had a massive Paris themed tailgate
that was happening on Georgia Street. So it all comes
back around which is a street that I started on
and just getting to engage our local community, which is
(16:09):
what we're all about. We want to engage our community.
For the first time ever, they got to see a
swim meet in building that big and we broke all
kinds of records which was awesome, attendance records for swim
meets attendants, records for an Olympic trials, and then had
two world records broken in the pool, one on the
very first night, which was awesome. So it was just
(16:30):
a really great experience. It was a lot of work,
but it was also a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So I have chills just imagining it. It just shows
that really the world is your oyster, and I can't
wait to see everything that comes to Indianapolis. So in
our last couple of minutes, I want to shift a
little bit to kind of a little bit more personal.
So you and your significant other both work in sports
(16:55):
MLS and then Indiana Sports Corp. So what's that dynamic like?
Are you able to bounce ideas off of each other?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah? Uh yeah. A lot of times he came from
the venue side, so he actually used to work at
Lukes Oil Stadium before he left or before he went
to MLS, and so yeah, there's lots of times when
I will pick his brain and say, I'm putting this
bid together from a venue side, what do I need
to think about? What do I need to remember? Uh.
And there's also there's a lot of what's a good
(17:27):
word for this, a mutual I mean, we mutually use
each other all the time. There's no better way to
say it. When you know, he needs a connection in
some world that I may have a relationship in, or
I need something that he hasn't. So I think the
ability for both of us to be able to use
the connections we have to benefit the other is really helpful.
(17:50):
It can be really hard because both of our jobs
are intense and sometimes they're really long hours, and our
schedules don't even match up for phone calls and things
like that. So but we both love what we do,
and I don't think that we would change, you know,
we just have to make it work because we want
to be able professionally to do what we want to
(18:12):
do and what we love doing. So yeah, that's huge. Yeah,
that's huge.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
All Right, So one question before the final question. So
two more questions, and this one like maybe the most
important question I've asked today. All Right, Harry and Izzy's
in Indianapolis.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
What a place?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
So if I were going to eat there, tell me
the and drink, tell me the three things that you
would order.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Shrimp, cocktail is Saint Almo's famous shrimp cocktail that is
the best stuff on the planet. You want drink too, write, Yeah,
just three things, that's it. Shrimp cocktail, Saint Elmo's cola,
which is bourbon infu or vanilla being infused bourbon with coke. Okay,
(19:01):
and honestly, their porktops are the best thing in the world.
I'd done chips. Yep. So there you.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Go for all of you listeners out there, that's your
order when you go to Harry and disease.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
All right, final question, and I'm going to put the
caveat that you cannot use relationships. So I like to
end my podcast with one final question. If you were
to provide one word that describes the culmination of your
career up until now, what would that word be?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Not relationships? Community. Do you want to elaborate I would say,
do you want me to elaborate community? I think that
while relationships has played into it, I think what I
each one of the roles that I have had have
been giving back to my community. And really, if you
(19:49):
ask me what I do on a daily basis, its
community development, making sure that our community gets access to
sports in a different way than they may on any
given day the week, right, So we try really hard
when we're bidding on an event to make sure there's
a community component that kids that may not have access
to ever being Lucas Soil Stadium get a chance to
(20:09):
do that because of our rights holders that are coming,
how do we engage with them? And all through yeah,
all through my career, it's been about this community and
making sure that it's the best place to live, work
and play. Incredible, what a way to sum it up.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
There you go, Melissa, It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank
you so much for joining me today on the How
To Sport podcast.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You're welcome. Thank you.
Hi, and welcome to How to Sport, the show that
highlights the unique experiences and journeys.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Of professionals and sports biz.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm your host, Megan Robertson, and I have the privilege
to be here today with Vice President of Biz and
External Affairs for the Indiana Sports Court, Melissa Thompson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome, Melissa. Hi, Megan, it's nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Thank you for joining us. So we're going to start
from the beginning. You have quite a diverse background, so
I'm excited to work through it with you today. But
you're native to Indianapolis. You graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University
with your Bachelor of Science and Business Administration, and then
you started with the Marion County Auditor's Office as a
(00:44):
real estate manager. What led you to that career, Well,
first of all, I was a.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Real estate manager at the Auder's office while I was
getting my degree at Indiana Wesleyan got it at the
same time. Yeah, I actually started there because I was
twenty years old, needed a job, and a lady that
I had known sort of been a mentor to me
for years, was the HR director for the City of
Indianapolis and Marion County and She's like, come in, we'll
(01:10):
find you a job. And that really is what started
my career in local government. And I started as a
real estate manager, but basically we were doing property taxes
for the City of Indianapolis and so individual homeowners. But
what that did for me was allowed me to understand
how local government works, how taxes are assessed and what
(01:34):
they pay for, and then what local government uses them for,
which turns out helped me helps me even today because
I understand how the city comes up with money, where
they spend it, how they spend it, and it allows
me to then use that when I'm working on bids
or we're asking the city for money. So it all
kind of weaves together. But you know, when you start
(01:56):
in that job, it was really a job where I
needed a but I got really good at it. But
I learned a ton then and now it helps me
every day.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So it was like a stepping stone to where we're
at now.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
That I didn't know I was going to be stepping into. Right, yeah, right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So then you started as the real estate manager, you
progress to the special project projects manager. Was there a
big difference in what you were doing?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Actually, I changed agencies when I was a special project manager,
I was at the Marin County Prosecutor's Office, and so
that transition led me to learn another side of government
that still helps me today sometimes, but in the criminal
justice side, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, and getting to meet
(02:44):
people in those realms and which again we still you know,
police officers, which we still use in our events today
or we need public safety to help us do our events.
So all of that then culminated for me in the
last job that I held with the city, which I ran.
I'm sorry, I'm just going on here for it. This
is the perfect So it all culminated for me in
(03:07):
the last job that I held when I was at
the city, which was I ran our city council office.
So we have a part time council, so they don't
work full time, but they have a full time staff,
and so I was able to be the city clerk
and run that office, and in that position, I literally
was able to use all of the knowledge I had
(03:28):
learned from being from learning about taxes and how money
is spent, taxes and budget to the criminal side or
criminal justice side, police side, fireside, to learn all of
that to use all of that in helping run the
city council office. So I was the liaison for both
the council president and our Public Safety chair to in
(03:52):
all of the meetings that they should have been in.
They allowed me to go because I knew enough about
the infrastructure of the city and so I just really
got an opportunity to showcase what I had learned in
that role. Now, that role was also appointed. It's an
appointed role, as appointed by whichever party is in the
majority of the council. So also one of the really
(04:16):
the first roles that I was in that literally in
the course of twelve hours, you can lose your job
on election day, and so that happened in twenty eleven,
after I'd been there for four years, and so then
it became Okay, what are we going to do next?
And I had been increased. I felt I really felt
like I was outgrowing sort of that city government and
(04:39):
didn't want to get stuck. I didn't want to be
a government employee my entire career, and so what was
I going to do next in order to transition out
of there? And so the same time, the City of
Indianapolis was getting ready to host the twenty twelve super Bowl,
and we had taken a downtown street it's three blocks long,
(05:02):
and turned it into sort of a basically an event space.
And so we were the first city to ever host
the super Bowl Village, an outdoor experience space that's free
to the public, and they took that space, they turned
it that, they turned that street into an event venue,
and then after the super Bowl, I became the first
venue manager for that space. So I worked for our
(05:24):
downtown Association and got to really build it out. We
used to joke that you don't build a church for
Easter Sunday, but we built Georgia Street for the super Bowl,
which is the mecha of what it would ever be,
right and so then figuring out what it looked like
every single day. We did tons of tailgates for our
(05:45):
NFL team, and we do lots of food truck Fridays
and having music and food trucks there, and so just
ways that we could engage the community to come down
and use that space as a venue over the court.
And so I did that for about two and a
half years. And that was a ton of fun too,
because I could take the relationships that I'd made at
the city and then use them in my day to day, right,
(06:05):
So all of those relationships I've made with public safety,
with even Department of Public Works, I still needed those
in my new job. And so if we're looking for
a theme here in my career, it's about relationships. You
sold the words right out of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Our relationship building is so key, and I mean it's
just that's literally like the word of your career, right,
It's relationships and how one thing leads to the next.
Even though you didn't necessarily know. I mean, you losing
your job based on the election, a lot of people
would freak out, right, But because you had built those
relationships and learned something each step.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Of the way of your career, it was an it
for me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It sounds like, now whether this is the case, it
sounds like it was a somewhat smooth transition into this
new exciting role.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
There were some freakout moments, Don't get me wrong. We're
definitely some freakout moments. And there was a point where
I was in that period of time. It was about
a two and a half month period of time. I
was still employed at the city, but I was trying
to figure out what I was going to do next.
There was a two month period of time where I
almost took a job that would have completely changed the
course of my career and probably in not a great way.
(07:16):
And so, you know, being being willing to wait on
the thing that I wanted or was I thought was
the right path, which was this running this venue was
really really hard because I didn't I'm like, they're not
calling me back? Do I keep waiting the jobs right here?
I could just transition. It's still with the city. So yeah,
(07:38):
I mean there were some freak out moments, but you're right.
I mean it was relationships, and it was That's the
reason that I got the job to run the venue
was because of my relationships. Years later, I was in
a leadership class with someone and he goes, do you
know that I was the person you were up against
for that job? No way, It's like I had no
idea who you were at the time, but said I
(08:00):
was the number two pick. I was like, oh, this
is And he's like, you were definitely the right person
for the job, but he said, yeah, we were definitely
competing for that job. So that was kind of crazy but.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, awkward, but also yeah, cool, let you got the job,
all right? So one more stop before you landed at
any in a sports court Hathaway strategies. So can you
explain the transition from going to running Georgia Street to
then Hathaway Strategies.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
How did that come to be? I've always had this
desire to have a very sort of entrepreneurial spirit. I
love new things, I love creating new things, being a
part of new initiatives, and I've always really thought that
maybe I wanted to start my own business. But I
also am incredibly risk adverse. Just can be those two
things don't really go together. And so as I was
(08:50):
learning more about sort of the event industry, the sports industry,
convention of visitors industry, I thought maybe I wanted to
do my own, try my own thing with event planning,
but again very risk adverse. And so another mentor of mine,
Anne Hathaway, not that Anne Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Not the Devilawares product or Princess Diaries, An Hathaway, not
that one.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Uh. We were having dinner one time and I kind
of was telling her what I was thinking, and she's like,
so let me take the risk, and she's like, come
work for me. We can build this together and see
where it goes, and so I sort of jumped at
that opportunity and ended up doing that for about four years.
It was it ended up being not a great fit,
(09:37):
which was fine. Sometimes you know, take you take choice
that you make choices that are not necessarily a good fit,
but it's you know, you also have to recognize that
and then move on. And so actually what ended up
happening was, at about the end of that four years,
my previous boss from the city Council became the Relationships
well again relationships yep, became the president of Indiana Sports Corp.
(09:59):
And had he had a couple of people quit and
what they were doing really fit my skill set, and
so he called and said, I'd really like you to
come do this. And I'd had enough interaction when I
ran Georgia Street with the Indiana Sports Corp. To know
that I really respected the organization. I loved what they did.
I never will I never dreamed I would work in sports.
(10:21):
That was never something I thought about as a kid.
I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That would
have been a terrible job for me, you know, but
working in sports is really all about relationships, and frankly,
sometimes you know this the politics of sports is so bad.
And I've said from the beginning, the politics of sports
(10:41):
can be worse than the politics of politics. But knowing
how to navigate that and what I learned years ago
helps me now to be strategic and build the right
relationships to be successful in what I do now. Love it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That is again not wanting to work in sports and
endiop in sports. I love stories like this. So when
you started at the Indiana Sports Corp.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You were the chief.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Community Officer and now you're the vice president of bids
and External Affairs. Can you explain the difference in what
you started doing versus what you do now and if
there was any overlap.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
There's really no difference other than we changed the title.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Got it good?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Chief Community Officer did not actually reflect what I was doing.
I I've always been on the external affairs side, so
I do all of our government affairs, our interaction with
the state and local governments, other venues, things like that.
So I do all of those things and that's how
we got the community piece of it. But when I'm out,
so I do all of our sales for I'm basically
(11:39):
the salesperson from Indianapolis from a sports perspective, got it.
Some people call that business development. Here in Indiana Sports Corp.
Our membership and sponsorship teams are called business development. So
it needed to be very clear what I was actually doing.
So when somebody was just cold calling Indiana Sports Corp.
They were getting to the right person. So changed we
(12:00):
just changed the title. But what I do is I
get to bid on new events. So I build relationships
with rights holders, the NCAA, the NFL, the NBA, national
governing bodies for a myriad of sports. To build the
relationships with them, for them to bring their events to
Indianapolis and allow them to see what our team can
(12:21):
do and what our city can do, and how great
a host city we are. So that's the majority of
what I do. And then again like I work on
our stakeholder relations, external affairs we get. We do a
lot of work with the State of Indiana. They are
very generous and give us grant funding and so all
of that and doling out that grant funding all falls
(12:42):
under me and my team. So and then we get
to work on special little projects. I've got somebody right
now that's working with our NFL team to honor all
of our Indiana Olympians in an upcoming game, and so
he's getting to do all the outreach to Olympians and
so we get to do fun stuff like that too.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So well, this is again a great segue. You're setting
me up perfectly talking about Olympians. So you all just
hosted the US Olympic team swimming trials in June at
Lucas Soil Stadium, and that was the first time that
swimming trials had been in a stadium.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It looked incredible. Can you explain that? And what a
phenomenal experience it was? It was It was amazing. We
had started conversations back in twenty sixteen about with USA Swimming.
They really wanted to grow their event. So the US
Swimming trials had been in Indianapolis at our natatorium through
(13:35):
for years, or for Olympia ads through twenty twenty, or
excuse me, two thousand and they outgrew our natatorium in
two thousand and so since then they've been playing or
they've been hosting that event in a basketball stadium or
basketball arena in Omaha, Ebrosca. So they've been building a
pool in a basketball basketball arena, So there's precedent for that.
(13:59):
They really like they had outgrown that. Their there night
over nights and it's an eight to nine day event.
Their night over night attendance was well exceeding, and they
thought they could they could move up. So we started
that conversation with them in twenty sixteen. They chose in
both twenty sixteen and twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty
one to stay in Omaha, and then their leadership decided
(14:22):
for twenty twenty four they were going to take the
jump and they were going to move it to an
NFL stadium, and so we built two and a half
three pools in the stadium we had. Our facility is
actually built to host final fours. So the way that
the seating bowl is arranged, you can hang a center
(14:42):
hung curtain so that you cut the field in half
and then on one side you can do competition and
on one side you can do warm up or other
events on the other side of the curtain. So for
basketball regionals, specifically NCAA basketball regionals, we put a court
on one side and then we put warm up court
or something active or things on the other side. And
in this case we built a competition pool on one
(15:04):
side and then a ginormous, the largest ever indoor pool
temporary pool ever constructed on the other side, and then unbelievable,
it was. It was something to behold and the start
contrast actually to then going to a football game a
couple of months later, to having been at Trials and
it being two giant pools and all of a sudden
(15:25):
it was a football field again. Those folks at Lucas
Oil Stadium are amazing in what they can accomplish with
that facility, and so there are great partners for us.
And then we had some other really good partners come
in and do all of the audio and the lighting
and everything, and it literally looked like a rock concert
every night when it was kicking off and it was
(15:47):
a swim meet. It was super cool. I couldn't you
just couldn't believe it, and it was. And then outside
of that, outside we had a massive Paris themed tailgate
that was happening on Georgia Street. So it all comes
back around which is a street that I started on
and just getting to engage our local community, which is
(16:09):
what we're all about. We want to engage our community.
For the first time ever, they got to see a
swim meet in building that big and we broke all
kinds of records which was awesome, attendance records for swim
meets attendants, records for an Olympic trials, and then had
two world records broken in the pool, one on the
very first night, which was awesome. So it was just
(16:30):
a really great experience. It was a lot of work,
but it was also a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So I have chills just imagining it. It just shows
that really the world is your oyster, and I can't
wait to see everything that comes to Indianapolis. So in
our last couple of minutes, I want to shift a
little bit to kind of a little bit more personal.
So you and your significant other both work in sports
(16:55):
MLS and then Indiana Sports Corp. So what's that dynamic like?
Are you able to bounce ideas off of each other?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah? Uh yeah. A lot of times he came from
the venue side, so he actually used to work at
Lukes Oil Stadium before he left or before he went
to MLS, and so yeah, there's lots of times when
I will pick his brain and say, I'm putting this
bid together from a venue side, what do I need
to think about? What do I need to remember? Uh.
And there's also there's a lot of what's a good
(17:27):
word for this, a mutual I mean, we mutually use
each other all the time. There's no better way to
say it. When you know, he needs a connection in
some world that I may have a relationship in, or
I need something that he hasn't. So I think the
ability for both of us to be able to use
the connections we have to benefit the other is really helpful.
(17:50):
It can be really hard because both of our jobs
are intense and sometimes they're really long hours, and our
schedules don't even match up for phone calls and things
like that. So but we both love what we do,
and I don't think that we would change, you know,
we just have to make it work because we want
to be able professionally to do what we want to
(18:12):
do and what we love doing. So yeah, that's huge. Yeah,
that's huge.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
All Right, So one question before the final question. So
two more questions, and this one like maybe the most
important question I've asked today. All Right, Harry and Izzy's
in Indianapolis.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
What a place?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
So if I were going to eat there, tell me
the and drink, tell me the three things that you
would order.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Shrimp, cocktail is Saint Almo's famous shrimp cocktail that is
the best stuff on the planet. You want drink too, write, Yeah,
just three things, that's it. Shrimp cocktail, Saint Elmo's cola,
which is bourbon infu or vanilla being infused bourbon with coke. Okay,
(19:01):
and honestly, their porktops are the best thing in the world.
I'd done chips. Yep. So there you.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Go for all of you listeners out there, that's your
order when you go to Harry and disease.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
All right, final question, and I'm going to put the
caveat that you cannot use relationships. So I like to
end my podcast with one final question. If you were
to provide one word that describes the culmination of your
career up until now, what would that word be?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Not relationships? Community. Do you want to elaborate I would say,
do you want me to elaborate community? I think that
while relationships has played into it, I think what I
each one of the roles that I have had have
been giving back to my community. And really, if you
(19:49):
ask me what I do on a daily basis, its
community development, making sure that our community gets access to
sports in a different way than they may on any
given day the week, right, So we try really hard
when we're bidding on an event to make sure there's
a community component that kids that may not have access
to ever being Lucas Soil Stadium get a chance to
(20:09):
do that because of our rights holders that are coming,
how do we engage with them? And all through yeah,
all through my career, it's been about this community and
making sure that it's the best place to live, work
and play. Incredible, what a way to sum it up.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
There you go, Melissa, It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank
you so much for joining me today on the How
To Sport podcast.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You're welcome. Thank you.
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