Hartwick College student-athletes packed into Anderson Theater to hear from Kerry Tatlock, executive vice president for global partnerships and media at the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball on Thursday, April 9.
Tatlock said graduates have to be open-minded, because careers can go in different directions. She was a political science major at Vassar College, who never thought about working at the NBA, but her connections and a little bit of luck changed her career path.
“Every experience will ultimately build some expertise toward your acumen or talent or skillset that you can apply to something else, and that’s kind of what I did. I just continued to raise my hand and have different experiences,” she said.
Tatlock, who just celebrated 20 years working at the NBA, was interviewed on stage by a pair of student-athletes; junior Samaj Barnwell, a member of the men’s basketball team, and junior Ashley Ament, a member of the women’s lacrosse team.
In addition to being open minded, Tatlock emphasized building relationships, not taking shortcuts and learning as much as possible.
When she started her career at a startup sports marketing company, she said that meeting the 1999 United States national women’s soccer team for the Women’s World Cup was a big moment for her.
“It was a bit of an ah ha moment,” she said. “I really was like wow. The impact that sports can have and the intersection of sport and community and society was fascinating to me.”
Tatlock said she works a lot with sponsorships and advertising. These include many global partners that want to associate with the NBA and use the league to enhance their brand and the game of basketball. To go along with that, she works with the NBA and the WNBA’s media relations, which includes social media, the NBA TV streaming platform, and the NBA 2K video game league. She said they also encourage players to enhance their relationships with their followers on social media.
One question was if there ever would be an NBA Europe league. Tatlock said the NBA is working on that plan.
Tatlock said there are still too few women leaders in sports. She also wants to undo some of the characterizations that come with women’s sports, such as women’s sports fans just being called sports fans. She also said it is great that the WNBA has a large influence, because now young girls that want to be basketball players (and likewise for other sports) have stars to look up to.
“Young girls that want to play in the WNBA can have posters of Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese in their room,” she said, noting that the platform these players have will lead to extraordinary growth.
A point she emphasized was embracing and being excited for challenges and pressure.
She still references the legendary Billie Jean King quote “pressure is a privilege,” and she said facing adversity is something that motivates her.
She closed the talk out with some advice.
“I would just encourage everyone to be curious and think about what might work and lean into that,” she said. “Careers in sport are hard to find no matter what, so be a little patient, you want to be ambitious, and you want to be thoughtful, but you will probably have no idea what it will look like in the end.”
“There are no shortcuts, you just have to put in the work,” she said.
The event was part of the Meredith Sport Management Speaker Series at Hartwick. Named after 1973 graduate Thom Meredith, the series “brings prominent leaders to campus to engage with students, faculty and the community, reflecting Hartwick College’s commitment to fostering academic excellence, providing real-world learning opportunities and strengthening its longstanding tradition of athletics” according to a media release.
Hartwick President Jim Mullen spoke on behalf of Meredith, who was not able to be in attendance.
“Nobody loves Hartwick more than Thom Meredith,” said Mullen in the opening statements. Mullen, president-elect Laurel Bongiorno, and executive-in-residence in the Sport Management department Scott Dalrymple spoke to begin the event.
The series will resume in the fall. The speakers have not been announced yet.