ESPN Trust co-chairs Melissa Rawlins, Jon McLeod and Anita Barbero are joined by administrative assistant Diana Grabsch at a group event in January.ESPN images
When Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott spoke candidly about anxiety and depression back in September, his comments sparked conversations about mental health that generally had not been seen in the sports pages.
For a lot of ESPNers, though, those conversations mirrored ones they’ve been having on the Bristol campus all year. In January of this year, ESPN set up an employee resource group dedicated to mental health. The group was established to provide resources and support for employees who seek it.
The idea to set up a group devoted to mental health was the brainchild of Jon McLeod, an associate producer at ESPN, and Melissa Rawlins, an associate photographer.
In May 2019, the two worked together on a video for Mental Health Awareness month. They decided to have Rawlins lead off the video by disclosing that she lives with anxiety and depression. The video, which told Rawlins’ mental health story, then was placed on an internal ESPN platform.
The positive response the two received was overwhelming. Many ESPN employees who saw the video reached out with stories of their own. Others stopped Rawlins on the Bristol campus to thank her for telling her story.
Based on those responses, McLeod turned to Rawlins and suggested they start an employee resource group around mental health.
“As soon as I turned and said that, Melissa automatically started spinning ideas,” McLeod said. “We both had the a-ha moment at the same time.”
ESPN officially set it up in January, calling it ESPN Trust, an acronym for Talk, Recognize, Understand, Support and Triumph. It named McLeod, Rawlins and HR executive Anita Barbero co-chairs of the group.
ESPN has nine groups like the one started by McLeod and Rawlins, providing employee support with various other topics, including one that focuses on disabilities.
The mental health group’s first event came a few months after it was formed. McLeod and Rawlins invited Tom Burr, from the public policy staff of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, to speak to ESPN’s staff. Part of his talk focused on ways to get coworkers and managers to feel more comfortable speaking about mental health.
“That has been a huge initiative of ESPN Trust — having people feel comfortable with talking about the fact that it is OK to take a mental health day,” Rawlins said. “It is OK to disclose that you’re taking a mental health day.”
Tom Burr of the National Alliance on Mental Illness speaks to ESPN staffers.ESPN images
In addition to getting speakers to talk to the staff, McLeod and Rawlins also set up what they call the “Mental Health Road Show.” That’s where they talk to different ESPN departments about mental health topics. Recently, for example, they gave a presentation to Burke Magnus’ programming group. Before the presentation, Magnus made it clear that it was important for his team to attend and pay attention.
“I can’t reiterate how important it is to have leaders at a high level buy in to mental health and the focus of it,” McLeod said. “Once they bought in, then everybody else below them buys in.”
ESPN Trust’s main goal is to provide support and resources to ESPN employees who seek it, McLeod and Rawlins said.
“We understand the difficulties of our jobs,” said McLeod. “It’s one thing to know that there is support. There’s another thing to be handed that support. We want to make sure that they can tap into the resources in whichever state that they’re in, whatever they’re dealing with.”
Their influence extends externally, too. ESPN editors and reporters lean on the two to help make sure they use appropriate language when talking or writing about mental health.
For example, Rawlins and McLeod consult ESPN editors to avoid describing someone’s mental heath as an “issue” or a “problem.” When she advises reporters who address the topic, Rawlins tells them to avoid defining people by their mental health. It’s something they have; it’s not who they are, she said.
“We really try not to use the words ‘suffer’ or ‘illness,’” Rawlins said. “We really want to try to use the words ‘live with.’ It’s something that somebody lives with. We want to make sure that it doesn’t have a negative connotation.”
Rawlins has found that when people talk to her about mental health, they make comments like, “I’m so sorry” or “I want to save you.” She called comments like those “micro-aggressions.”
“A lot of that is invalidating the experience of mental health — not understanding that this is something that people wake up with every single day and have to be mindful of all day long,” Rawlins said.
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ and read his twice-weekly newsletter.
