Each year, the month of March commemorates and celebrates Women's History Month and for the past few seasons during this month, we've featured special episodes of Playmakers highlighting women who are making an impact in and around the game of football.
This March, we kept it in-house and spoke with one of the newest members of the Chargers, Katie Sylvan.
Sylvan, who grew up a Chargers fan, joins the Bolts as the team's director of football administration after nine years spent in the NFL league office where a random Google search led her to her start in the league's Junior Rotational Program.
Highlights from the conversation are below:
On getting her start in the NFL's Junior Rotational Program and her full-time role at the NFL
"The Junior Rotational Program is a two-year rotational program for recent college graduates to come in out of school and experience different sides of the NFL and its business in order to really understand the innerworkings of a sport league. I came in and rotated through broadcasting where they dealt with network partnerships and schedule making and then ended up in labor finance where they set the salary cap each year.
"Ultimately, for my full-time role, I ended up in the management council in the NFL where we're responsible once the salary cap is set, for administering that on a day-to-day basis and managing that. I was dealing with teams on a day-to-day basis with contracts and the salary cap.
"It was an invaluable experience to me. I know I would not be where I am today without that experience. Certainly, my time at the management council and having had the opportunity to work on the Collective Bargaining Agreement that we signed in 2020 to really understand the innerworkings of that document, [as well as] to be able to form relationships with club personnel all round the league and really understand what their player contracts look like and understand how the salary cap operates. It was an amazing experience."
On her current role with the Bolts
"I am working with Ed McGuire who's our EVP of football administration and player finance. I'm working with him on all things player contracts and salary cap and all things football. It's been a good few weeks! It's going to be a really exciting season and I'm happy to be here."
On her favorite part about working in football operations
"Being part of a team and feeling like the work that you do has an effect on the team and impacts the team in a positive way. I think everybody grew up playing team sports and having that be something they love. To me, being able to come into the club side of things and feel like I'm part of a team again in a real way as an adult is pretty cool."
