Lindsay Lara

I would say probably just growing up, I had a lot of support from my parents, and I think they always understood that I was passionate and wanted to work in sports, and they supported me there and gave me that mentality of don't give up and just keep on pushing and try to do your best in whatever role you're in. I've just naturally always been a competitive person. I've always been a leader, was a captain in sports, and so I think just part of my growing up, my parents helped develop some of those traits in myself. That's probably what I would attribute my success to, just how I was raised with my parents. And then having a big family too, it makes it easy to be competitive when you've got 5 other siblings.

I would just tell a younger female to really go for what you're passionate in, regardless of if there are several other females in that industry or whether you might be one of four. The sports industry especially has become and is continuing to evolve, and we've got a lot of really great women as well as male leaders in this industry. For a young girl trying to figure out what to do, I think it's don't lose sight of what they're passionate about. You might get thrown a couple curveballs along the way when it comes to trying to navigate your career, but I think just don't lose sight and just try to keep pushing forward with whatever you're passionate about. Even if, like me, no two paths are going to be the same, and you don't have to have the same path in your career as the person next to you, but if you don't lose sight of what you really want to achieve, I think that's what's most important. That kind of helped me when I was either trying to figure out if I was going to move on in the hotel industry and try to become a GM, or if I really needed to give myself an actual shot at what I enjoyed. Don't be discouraged, and find people in your network, both professionally and personally, that you can lean on, that can be a mentor to you, and that will really help young individuals navigate through some more difficult times as they are early on in their career.

One major challenge, which is true no matter what team you work for, is that there are so many things that are out of your control. You cannot control how well a team is performing on the field, on the ice, in the arena, whatever team or industry you're in. But you still have to do your job, whether you're in ticket sales, and do everything that you can to make sure that you are representing the club in the best way and trying to drive revenue. It can be difficult when there are some things out of your control, but if you understand that you need to be adaptable and you have to be able to pivot, that's important. Things can change very, very quickly in sports, whether that's something within the team, whether that's internally with ownership, or whether that's anything under the sun, and you just have to be able to adjust and move forward and try to do what's best for the club and drive areas of your focus. Those are challenging, but it also helps you grow as an individual in this industry once you can understand that you just need to be adaptable and you've got to be able to pivot. Sometimes with a couple days' notice, it could be something you weren't anticipating to happen, and you just have to be able to accept it and move forward.

For both work and personal, I think accountability is super important, whether that's your day-to-day in work or whether that's in your personal life. I think being accountable is something that I value very much, and just taking accountability whether that's for the success of an idea or whether, hey, maybe that idea didn't work too well, but at least we tried it. Just being able to be accountable, no matter if it's a positive or a negative, I think as a leader you have to be. You have to have compassion. I care about all of the individuals on my team, not just for what they're doing here each day at work, but them as individuals, as humans, about their personal life as well. So I think anytime you're a leader, no matter what team you're overseeing, you have to have compassion. Kind of like salespeople, if people feel like they can trust you as a leader, that's ultimately the most important thing. So just valuing trust and accountability and being super communicative, I think those are all very important in both work as well as personal. There's always going to be things that come your way in life, and so you just have to be able to lean on some of those values in order to move on and to get through whatever might get thrown your way.