When the Carolina Panthers take on the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, it will mark a historic first for the National Football League.
The game is the first time two female presidents will go head-to-head in professional football. The two executives represent a small, but growing class of women in the front office at the NFL, and they are the only two female presidents out of the league’s 32 teams.
“I’m really proud of this moment,” Carolina Panthers President Kristi Coleman told CNBC ahead of the game. “It shows you can be anything, as long as you do a good job.”
Coleman, who has a finance background, was named team president of the Panthers in February 2022 after previously serving as vice president and chief financial officer of Tepper Sports & Entertainment. Hedge fund founder David Tepper owns the Panthers.
Sandra Douglass Morgan was named Raiders president by owner Mark Davis in July 2022 after more than two decades in the gaming, legal and corporate sector.
Douglass Morgan said the moment is not lost on her.
“We want to celebrate the fact that these are new groundbreaking moments, but at the same time, we’re doing our job, just like every other president in the league, and making sure that we’re handling the day-to-day business operations,” Douglass Morgan said.
The NFL has made a big push in recent years to increase gender diversity among its ranks.
Last year, women made up 42.5% of employees in the NFL League Office, an all-time high and “a significant improvement from a decade ago when only 29.3 percent of women held these positions,” according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
The league says it has 243 women in front office positions.
On the field, the numbers are also growing.
The NFL says 22 women currently hold full-time coaching positions in the NFL. The league says that is a record for any male professional sports league and an increase of 187% over the past five years.
As part of growing and developing that pipeline of women, the NFL holds an annual Women’s Forum. Since its inception in 2017, more than 400 women have gone through the program with upward of 250 opportunities emerging for women at all levels of football, according to the league.
Douglass Morgan said women’s interest in the NFL has been on the uptick for years and that hiring a more diverse employee base is critical to connecting with those new fans.
“As our fans become more diverse, I think our employee base should be as well,” she said.
As the league looks to flag football as another growth avenue for the sport, Coleman and Douglass Morgan say it is another pipeline for women to get involved in the game.
Today, the NFL’s flag football program has more than 700,000 participants and provides a pathway for women to play in college.
Both Douglass Morgan and Coleman say their teams’ owners have gone above and beyond to make them feel welcome in the league.
“Mark Davis has always said, ‘Sandra, I don’t care if you’re white, Black, whatever, I hired you because you’re the best person for this job. You’re the best person to lead the Raiders,'” Douglass Morgan told CNBC.
To women looking to break into male-dominated sports leagues, both executives say be confident in your ability to learn new things and don’t be afraid to bet on yourself.
“You need to do your job, the job you have, and you need to do it well so people can picture you in the next job. And then I’d say, you need to be kind and also believe in yourself,” said Coleman.
“Don’t let them see you sweat,” Douglass Morgan said. “When you’re only two of 32, you know, we may be under more scrutiny because we are in the minority here. Make sure you have a good group of people around you to support you through any of the guaranteed challenges that are going to be in your way.”