My First Job in Sports Episode 53- Kristina Southam Townsend

Christina Southam Townsend on reverse engineering a sports career, women’s sports, and building impact-driven events  This episode centers on Christina Southam Townsend’s unconventional path through sports, diplomacy, and social impact. She shares how she moved from a planned foreign service career into women’s sports research, sports philanthropy, and launching her own podcast, with a constant thread of curiosity and purpose.  Neil Schwartz and Dr. G.  frame the conversation around a key idea Christina raises: there is no single route into a career, but you can reverse engineer the one you want by starting with the end in mind. Christina’s story makes that idea concrete through running, entrepreneurship, and learning to treat feedback as data.  Key topics  In this episode: Christina lays out her career themes of people, places, and movement, starting with Latin American studies, a communications minor, and early interest in diplomacy and sport.  She explains how a daily diplomacy practice helped her build the habits, awareness, and mindset she thought a future foreign service officer would need.  Christina shares how hearing an interview with Angela Rogero and learning about Sports Innovation Lab opened her eyes to the business side of women’s sports.  She discusses why women’s sports require different strategies than men’s sports, especially around fan behavior, social media, loyalty, and co-watching.  Christina describes how women’s sports are being reshaped by more thoughtful audience research instead of the old “shrink it and pink it” approach.  She talks about startup energy in women’s sports, including co-ownership models, expansion, and the demand for better, more stylish merchandise.  Christina shares the story of co-founding the Saints and Sinners half marathon with her sister, including the event’s theme, operations, and community-first mindset.  She explains how the race evolved through adaptation: moving dates because of heat, managing course risk, adjusting shirt sizes, and creating race insurance.  She emphasizes that negative feedback can be useful data if you listen without reacting emotionally.  She gives students a framework for reverse engineering careers by working backward from the life they want at 90, then setting decade-based goals.  My First Job in Sports is Presented by SBRnet. Everyone's Career Starts Somewhere.