Most people who choose careers in sports grew up as competitive athletes or avid fans. Lauren Johnson Greenfield is neither of those things. For her, sports provide an opportunity to create community.
That sense of community is something she felt the first time she toured the University of South Carolina campus. And it’s something Greenfield, ’12, now builds professionally, as vice president of partnership solutions for the Washington Commanders, overseeing the corporate partnership strategy for the NFL team in the nation’s capital.
“Sports has this incredible way of bringing people together from all walks of life and being such a community driver and a communal force,” Greenfield says. “Playing a role in that was so attractive to me. If I wasn’t going to do something like be a doctor and cure cancer, I wanted to have some impact on the world and on people. It always felt, to me, like sports is this really powerful way of bringing people together.”
That commitment to community is something she has felt her whole life. Greenfield’s father worked in the U.S. Foreign Service. Greenfield was born in Thailand and spent her early years moving around to postings in Honduras in Central America, Mozambique in Southeast Africa and Colombia, South America. She spent her high school years at an all-girls boarding school in northern Virginia. “So, South Carolina was not necessarily on my radar,” she says.
But when it came time to look at colleges, she was drawn to places that offered a traditional university experience. She and her father took a road trip all over the country, visiting schools with reputations for strong school spirit and a loyal, successful alumni base.
“South Carolina was one of those. I remember as soon as I drove on to campus, it was like, ‘This is the one.’ I remember driving through the Greek Village, and I had never seen anything like that. It was almost like a movie. I remember seeing kids in school gear, walking around campus and being like, ‘This really just feels like the type of place where the students are really proud to be.”
It didn’t take long to make her college choice, but when she arrived in fall 2008, she was an undecided major without a career path.
“I had no idea what I wanted to do, but because of my upbringing and moving around a lot, I was interested in a career where I could really interface with people and not be stuck behind the proverbial desk,” she says.
A conversation with her USC advisor steered her to a couple of introductory classes in the sports industry and in hotel, restaurant and tourism management.
“I just fell in love almost right off the bat with the sports industry,” she says. “My colleagues were lifelong athletes or lifelong sports fans. I fell in love with the industry first. I think I have kind of a unique perspective compared to most of my colleagues.”
“I remember as soon as I drove on to (the USC) campus, it was like, ‘This is the one.’ I remember driving through the Greek Village, and I had never seen anything like that. It was almost like a movie. I remember seeing kids in school gear, walking around campus and being like, ‘This really just feels like the type of place where the students are really proud to be.”
She learned those lessons early in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, where she found inspiring professors who had been successful in the sports industry before coming to the classroom. Their stories and anecdotes offered students a real-life look into how the sports and entertainment industry was evolving, while the internships she completed opened doors for her career.
While at USC, she completed two internships, including one with the Washington Redskins, now known as the Commanders.
After earning her degree in sport and entertainment management, she went directly into Georgetown University’s sports industry management master’s program, which she says built on the foundation she received at USC and gave her the chance to do two additional internships and find her way into the sponsorship world.
That’s where she found her passion. With the Commanders, Greenfield focuses on innovative ways to create value for both new and existing sponsors — developing go-to-market strategy, examining industry-wide best practices, building sponsorable platforms across the business and working with internal and external constituents across the NFL.
“Our role is to serve at the crossroads of sales and service, and we wear a lot of hats,” she says. “But at the end of the day, our responsibility is to interpret the needs of a prospective sponsor and what they’re looking to accomplish, translate that visually through a partnership proposal and support the sales team in getting the partnership deal done.”
Once a sponsor is handed over to account management, Greenfield’s team oversees partnership measurement and serves as the internal conduit to marketing, community relations, social media, PR and business intelligence. The goal, she says, is to bring the partnership to life in a customized way.
Her favorite part? Each day brings a new challenge.
“A prospective partner comes to you with what their business goals are. My team supports efforts to customize a partnership that’s aligned with those objectives,” she says. “We actually see it come to life and then measure how we were able to successfully achieve those objectives on the back end. We get to see the full evolution of being this external extension of brands across every industry and sector you can think of.”
Prior to joining the Commanders, Greenfield was vice president of global partnership strategy and development for Monumental Sports and Entertainment, where she oversaw partnership strategy across the full portfolio, which includes the Washington Wizards, Capitals, Mystics, Capital City Go-Go (G-League) and Wizards District Gaming (NBA2K). She began her career at NHL headquarters in New York City. She was chosen for the College of HRSM’s Distinguished Young Alumna Award last year.
“I feel very lucky that I’ve had a kind of straight and narrow career path,” she says. “I think that goes back to the USC program in that it set a very clear picture and expectation for what working in sports would look like. I felt like when I committed to it, I was really able to understand what it would mean. And that’s completely held true all these years later.”
