By Emma Folts
Hundreds of thousands of football fans will soon descend on Pittsburgh for the National Football League (NFL) Draft, eager to watch the league’s 32 professional teams add new players to their rosters from a pool of talented collegiate athletes.
The event, which comes to a different U.S. city annually, will take place April 23-25. Several Heinz College alumni have been involved in the preparations, from researching fan behavior for the NFL to coordinating logistics for draft-eligible athletes. Learn more about their careers, and the ways Heinz College has supported them, below.
This year’s draft is not the first rodeo for Olivia Green, who graduated from Heinz College’s Master of Entertainment Industry Management (MEIM) Program in 2019. She has supported draft-eligible athletes for roughly five years through her work at Athletes First, a premiere, full-service agency representing players, coaches, executives and broadcasters in the NFL.
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Green is the agency’s director of client relations, and she works behind-the-scenes with several up-and-coming athletes to ensure their draft experience runs smoothly. Depending on the client’s needs, she may coordinate their travel, transportation and lodging, manage their schedule, help prepare them for interviews with coaches or make reservations for family members.
“We handle a lot of the athletes’ questions about logistics,” Green said. “And then, of course, we're dealing with 20, 21-year-olds, so we're also getting questions like, ‘How do I check into my flight?’ We want to provide a safe space for them to ask questions, to be curious, to be a little nervous. It's a lot to handle, especially at that young of an age.”
Typically, the NFL will invite the athletes believed to be first-round picks to a green room for television filming. The selected athletes will travel to Pittsburgh and spend two days before the draft taking meetings and speaking with the media. Eight clients of Athletes First have received invites, including two players Green works closely with, so she will be in Pittsburgh for the draft.
Following the draft, Green and the agency aim to support the athletes throughout their subsequent NFL careers. She helps the drafted athletes connect with realtors and acclimate to their new team’s city, whether by providing a guide to the area’s best restaurants and attractions or assisting them in getting discounted furniture.
“It’s such a busy process –– they barely get a break between when they get drafted and the end of their first year. We want to take as much off of their plates as possible,” she said.
Green is managing seven draft-eligible athletes this year, with the agency overall working with about 40. Each draft cycle, she values seeing her clients grow as they transition from the collegiate to professional level.
“No matter when they’re picked in the draft, we always remind them that this is such a blessing. They are one of a very, very small percentage of people who get this opportunity. We remind them that it's not where you go, it's the opportunity and what you do with it,” she said.
Heinz College has given Green essential industry connections that can benefit her clients, she said. Recently, Green was able to help an athlete deliver a panel at the South by Southwest film festival by contacting Dan Green, director of the MEIM program.
Beyond the industry connections, Heinz College helped Green feed her curiosity, meet people of diverse backgrounds and gain hands-on experience in the entertainment industry.
“You can only learn so much in the classroom –– Being in that world, and seeing your coursework applied in real life, made this program so worthwhile,” Green said. “It really helps you hit the ground running after graduation, rather than being like, ‘I learned all these things, but I don't know what to do with it.’”
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Football fans are frequently top-of-mind for Jennifer Schaefer, a 2008 graduate of Heinz College’s Master of Public Policy and Management program. She leads the NFL’s global insights and research department, which serves as the voice of fans helping to drive league priorities. The department’s insights are particularly valuable as the NFL prepares for the draft, a marquee event for the league.
Ahead of the draft, Schaefer and her team track people’s awareness of and interest in the event. “With this monitoring, my team is able to say, ‘Hey, excitement is looking high. This messaging is clicking. People are finding this content and latching on to it,” she said.
Schaefer and her team will attend the draft to interview fans about their experience. After the event, they will disseminate a survey to people who attended, watched or followed news of the draft to inform how the league shapes future draft experiences and engagement strategies.
“That first night is the one that really gets people excited. So we work to understand what keeps fans engaged after that initial surge,” she said. “We look at, ‘What were people drawn to, and how can the league further pull those levers so we can drive engagement throughout the experience?"
Watching momentum build for the draft is one of Schaefer’s favorite parts of her job. She enjoys seeing the energy of the broadcasters, the optimism of the fans, and the dreams that come true for the drafted athletes.
“Every team truly has a chance this season. Everybody has the same opportunity. The draft is really that first step for fans to say, ‘Ooh, did my team make the right step? Are they putting themselves in the best position to have a great season?,’” Schaefer said. “As you can imagine, fans are very opinionated about that.”
Schaefer particularly values the analytical and problem-solving skills she gained from Heinz College. Her professors taught her to use data for decision-making and problem-solving, which is a skill she uses often at the NFL.
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