The Eagles front office has become an "outlier" in the NFL, as more than half of Owner Jeffrey Lurie's "top advisers are women -- and that makes them a leading exception," according to Andrew Beaton of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Women make up nearly half of NFL fans, but only 35% of jobs in the league office are held by women and that number drops "even lower at the team level." NFL franchise employees were "only 28% women last year, and 18% at the VP-level and higher." Lurie said that he "didn't set out to hire women to make a point." However, to "create the best football team possible, he wanted to hire the best candidates possible." While Lurie was not focused on diversity or gender, he said that the Eagles were "looking for something else: diversity of thought." That vision "dovetails inside an Eagles organization that thinks differently and more progressively than many of its NFL peers in other respects." Part of executing Lurie's vision "involved doing something radical in the insular world of football: hiring people from outside football." The Eagles "realized that if they wanted to hire the most well-rounded candidates, it was foolish to look within the same industry that has been dominated by backward hiring practices for its century of existence." Eagles Senior VP & General Counsel Aileen Dagrosa said, "There's an effort to bring in people with different viewpoints. We definitely don't need someone that (says), 'I've worked in sports all my life'" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/26).
