Heather Schiraldi

I would say adaptability. For the past couple of companies that I worked for, and even before moving into the tech and betting and gaming space, I was working in college athletics, and working for teams, and every position I've been in has required me to be very adaptable, very flexible in my job. We're very fast moving, there's a lot of changing of roles, you know, I've probably even under Fanatics have had 5 or 6 different job titles in the past few years just because of how fast it's moving.

An old manager told me this piece of advice when I was much younger and first starting my career. She said to me, like, Heather, everyone is replaceable at a company, everyone is replaceable. The CEO is replaceable. Every single person's replaceable. So stop stressing so much about the small things, stop pushing so much pressure on yourself. It has really stuck with me because I'm like, you know what? It is. Everyone is truly replaceable. And again, that might sound kind of in a negative way, but I think it's also a positive just to kind of remind us to stay grounded and keep your work-life balance, don't stress about your job too much. Like, it's gonna work out.

The sports industry itself is a very male-dominated field. My advice to women is ignore that. It doesn't matter what your gender is. You work hard, you put your head down, don't feel intimidated by anyone else, stand your ground. I think I'm a pretty outspoken person, and that has been something else that honestly has driven my success, is being very open and honest with executive leadership. When I see something that is wrong, or I think that we can do something better, I would encourage all women across all fields to have that confidence if you see something wrong, or you think that you can do an improvement for the business as a whole.

The fast-moving pace is 100% a challenge, and trying to keep up with that is totally difficult to do. Probably one not super difficult but I think it's new for all of us is learning AI and bringing AI into the workplace in a beneficial way that's not totally replacing what we do, because you still need people to control it, but creating operational efficiencies through AI, it's just a very new concept for most of us and trying to successfully adapt that has been a little bit of a challenge, a little bit of a learning curve.

At work, keep your mental health and your work-life balance as your priority number one. Also a value with working in between different groups and with different people is just being respectful. You don't know what everyone is going through in their workday. And teamwork. You're all working for the same team, right? You all want to be successful for the company. Personally, definitely putting family first. That's a big one for me. It kind of crosses over with the professional one of work-life balance too, like do the important things, see the family and friends, go to the event, make the extra effort, take the flight to go see that person.