Photo: SASHA PREZIOSA / NFL
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s a youngster, Michele Carr boasted to her parents that she was going to be the first woman to manage a Major League Baseball team, preferably her beloved New York Mets. Some decades later, Carr has made it to the front lines of marketing at the NFL, and she expresses no disappointment over never having risen beyond college intern with the Mets.
Michele Carr
National Football League | Director, Corporate Sales and Marketing
“I knew I’d only be happy with a career in sports,” said Carr, who worked in research, brand marketing, and sports and entertainment marketing over the past 16 years at American Express before recently moving to a job at the NFL’s league offices in sponsorship sales and marketing.
Colleagues commend Carr’s knowledge of all sides of sports marketing, which should make moving from the buy side to the sell side an easy transition. They also mention that she’s a quick study.
“Michele’s a fantastic collaborator,’’ said NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum, who’s worked with Carr for more than a decade. “She’s taken the AmEx-NBA partnership to new heights through an insistence on innovation and a real focus on customers and fans.”
Like any contemporary marketer, Carr says that keeping up with new technology is her most difficult task. Consequently, her bulletin-board project over the past year was developing a radio-frequency identification wristband program for AmEx-sponsored golf and tennis events that provided fans access to activities on-site and packaged those experiences into a personalized email.
“Using wearable technology with a 160-year-old brand was some of the most fun I’ve had,” Carr said, “but whether I was good in marketing or not, I would have found my way in this business, because sports is just in my DNA.”
— Terry Lefton
- Notable professional achievement: Fulfilling my childhood dream of working in sports.
- Best advice received: Leaders have to trust their people and be willing to learn in order to earn their respect.
- Causes supported: Meals on Wheels, Help Hospitalized Veterans.
- Women in sports business I’d most like to meet: Becky Hammon and Jen Welter. They are shattering unprecedented glass ceilings.
- Most memorable sporting event attended: Any U.S. Open. The New York crowd at a tennis event just makes it amazing.
- If my colleagues were asked to describe me, they would say I: Am passionate, energetic and fun to work with.
