Eastern Michigan AD Heather Lyke today at 1:00pm ET will be introduced today as Pitt’s new AD, making her the fourth female AD out of the 65 schools in the Power Five conferences. The others are N.C. State's Debbie Yow, Penn State's Sandy Barbour and Washington's Jennifer Cohen. In the last 15 months, there have been 52 D-I AD jobs filled, and eight of them have been women, according to SBJ research. There are now 33 women sitting in D-I AD chairs out of 351 schools, not counting outgoing UNLV AD Tina Kunzer-Murphy, and eight have been hired in the last year. William & Mary hired Samantha Huge last week. Lyke had been Eastern Michigan AD since '13.
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WOMEN HIRED FOR D-I AD JOBS SINCE MARCH '16
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SCHOOL
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HIRE
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Manhattan
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Marianne Reilly
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St. Francis (Pa.)
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Susan Robinson Fruchtl
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Washington
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Jennifer Cohen
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Delaware
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Chrissi Rawak
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Seattle
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Shaney Fink
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Portland State
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Valerie Cleary
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William & Mary
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Samantha Huge
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Pitt
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Heather Lyke
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TWITTER REAX: Rivals.com's
Chris Peak: "Lyke in November to ESPN: 'Whether we want to believe it or not, football drives the attention, viewership, enrollment, fundraising.'" Sports writer
Chris Dokish: "Eastern Michigan had worst football program and nobody donated. Heather Lyke comes in, they go to a bowl and donations went up 40%." PittsburghSportsNow.com's
Harry Psaros: "A pair of things I like about #Pitt's new AD Heather Lyke: (1) spent over a decade learning at OSU & (2) set records for fundraising at EMU." Detroit News'
Tony Paul writes, "EMU's next AD needs to be part business person/part marketing savant. Would be surprise if Oakland's Jeff Konya doesn't get a good look."
