A woman in the NFL

October 2, 6:22 AMSeattle Women & Business ExaminerBetsy Talbot

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Susan Rothman

No, women haven't started playing football yet, but there are a few in critical positions within the business of the NFL.  Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Susan Rothman, VP of Consumer Products. 

NFL Headquarters is located in New York City, and there is no admission without clearance from security.  After getting my badge and going through the turnstile, I was taken up several floors to a spacious suite of offices.  The NFL actually covers several floors of this Manhattan building. 

Inside there were displays of helmets, huge championship rings, tributes to great coaches like Vince Lombardi, and even old-fashioned referee uniforms and leather helmets.  We peeked in the executive conference room, saw the Commissioner's suite (but didn't get to go in),  and took a tour of the "hub" of the officiating department where they review every single play of every single game every single week.  Those guys really love their jobs.

Before the tour we sat in her spacious corner office filled with the kind of sports memorabilia many men (and quite a few women) would love to own.  It is apparent she spends quite a bit of time here, which is what you would expect of someone responsible for the huge job of licensing the team names and logos on just about anything that can be worn.

Susan has been with the NFL since 1996, and during that time she's seen (and been partially responsible for) a growing number of women in the organization.  She credits a love of football, a great group of coworkers, and the obvious perks of the job to her long tenure.  She went through several interviews to get her job, and besides her expertise with licensing she had to demonstrate her knowledge of football.  Since she's a fan, this was a piece of cake. 

She conveys a quiet kind of confidence when she speaks, and it is apparent that she knows her stuff.  It is also obvious that her male coworkers respect her, from the head of the officiating department to the chef in the dining room.

You may or may not want to work at the NFL or some other male-dominated industry in your career, but you can still take a lesson from Susan:  be confident in what you know and how you project yourself, and leave things better than the way you found them.