Back in 2017, Sam Rapoport, the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the NFL, and the NFL created the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, a multi-day program giving qualified women access to NFL front office members, coaches, and executives in hopes of cultivating connections and transforming those networking opportunities into jobs.
Fast forward to 2021, and the league wrapped its fifth-annual forum at the end of February. Coming off a season that saw two female coaches win a Super Bowl and a woman, Sarah Thomas, officiate the game for the first time in NFL history, it’s no surprise that in this short time, progress is being made.
118 women have been hired in a multitude of roles in the game of football since the forum’s inception.
This year, the NFL shifted to a virtual format and invited 40 women to attend the two-day forum which featured panels with team owners, general managers, and head coaches, and smaller breakout sessions. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his wife, Jane Skinner Goodell, joined as well.
“It’s a way for us to get rid of the excuse for clubs that they cannot find qualified women,” said Venessa Hutchinson, Senior Manager of Football Development at the NFL, who works on the forum with Rapoport. “The biggest-known factor around the league is that men have these inner circles that they run in and that’s how people get jobs and women are not a part of that. So the forum is an attempt to add those women into the circles so they can end up on the short lists for jobs just like men.”