Bruce Warwick
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Jake Bye (left) chats with Bruce Warwick.
Photo by: LA Rams |
A seven-year veteran of the Rams, Warwick may be the MVP of the team, at least the front office. As head of operations, he has been in charge of perhaps the most complicated move in professional sports history.
“We had to multitask everything all at the same time,” he said. “So we had to move out of the [Edward Jones] Dome; we had to move out of training camp in St. Louis; we had to find a training camp facility; we had to find a temporary facility for the offseason; temporary office; we started to retrofit the Coliseum.”
There is also an in-season training facility; new office space that will double as a preview center; storage warehouses; a new office headquarters; and planning for the team’s game in London.
“Got to keep it in perspective,” Warwick said of all the balls in the air. “We are not curing cancer, we are not in a desert trying to take a hill.”
Chris Hibbs
Hibbs is not technically a Rams employee, but for all intents and purposes he is for the next three years. Legends Global Sales hired him in February from the Chicago Bears to manage the commercial sales process for the Rams.
Hibbs is integrated into the Rams staff, and manages his own team of 20 Legends employees. He has had to wear many hats, including commercial real estate.
With no training in the field, he found himself scouting locations for the new preview center for the Inglewood stadium now under construction. The center will open next March in Playa Vista.
“I didn’t know a ton about commercial real estate when I got here, but I quickly got on a bus with a bunch of real estate guys and looked at options for locations,” he said. “You had to jump in and understand the geography of the market, what location was going to make the most sense, you had to manage a budget.”
Jake Bye
Bye spent much of January and February living out of the Intercontinental hotel in Westwood. “I miss it,” he said laughing at the former luxury digs he occupied as he and a handful of Rams executives scrambled to establish a beachhead in L.A.
Bye’s job over nine years in St. Louis was ticket sales, an area he is still responsible for in L.A. But because the Rams hired Legends early on to handle the nitty gritty of ticket sales, a lot of that heavy lifting was done. So Bye’s portfolio has expanded to include other commercial areas.
“This is new for us, this is our 50th year [in L.A.] but it’s our first year,” he said. “We are a startup, we are an expansion team, all those cliches you can label us with are really true.”
Molly Higgins
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| Photo by: LA Rams |
Higgins estimates she has heard from 3,500 of L.A.’s roughly 5,000 nonprofit organizations, all eager to get a piece from the new star in town. Higgins, an Iowa native who always dreamed of living in California, joined the Rams in St. Louis in 2002. She is now the team’s point person in the community, whether that means bringing players, coaches and cheerleaders out, or deciding to what charities the team contributes.
“The enthusiasm from the community has been just so invigorating,” she said. “I get hugs in the street when they find out I work for the Rams. They are like, ‘Welcome home.’”
How do you weed through thousands of queries? First by identifying local leaders, like the head of L.A.’s United Way, who has served as a sort of mentor for Higgins. And then identifying a cause. In the Rams’ case, it will be homelessness.
“It is such a complex issue, and we are really trying to find the best way to go about it,” she said.
