This Philadelphia Eagles Exec Is Helping Get Girls into Flag Football with One Secret Weapon: A Sports Bra

Jen Kavanagh never envisioned a career in sports, even though it always sounded like fun. “I never really thought it was a possibility,” she says. “I believed you had to be in sports, or you were supposed to be a sports management major and get a great internship.”

But in 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles organization was looking for a new head of marketing, “they wanted someone with media DNA,” she says, someone who understood content development, community development and how to most effectively leverage technology platforms. Kavanagh, who spent a decade and a half working in digital media and brand building, primarily in reality television, ended up being the right choice: “It was less important that the person in the role came from sports, and more important that he understood the nature of the environment in which we are does it work.” Because of her own non-traditional career path in the world of sports, Kavanagh encourages women hoping to find a similar role to remain open and flexible. “Not all career paths are linear! There are all kinds of doors and paths to your dream job,” she says, adding that more and more she’s seeing first-hand the benefits of staff with diverse work experience: “Because their backgrounds are different, they’re really able to make interesting contributions right away.”

Jen Kavanagh at the NFL Honors.

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Eagles

As senior vice president of marketing and media, Kavanagh leads, among other things, the development of the Eagles brand; monitors original content (such as streaming series and podcasts); and leads the team’s digital platforms. She also oversees Community Relations, the department responsible for launching Eagles Girls Flag Football — a league organized around the mission of lowering the barriers to entry for girls in soccer.

In the spring of 2022, the Eagles started the league with 16 teams, and just two years later, they return this season with 92 teams. As part of the successful league, Kavanagh and her team are also helping remove another barrier to girls’ entry into the sport. According to research, girls who didn’t have access to sports bras were more likely to drop out of the sport or not join a team to begin with, so the organization provides free sports bras to all female athletes.

Below, Kavanagh talks to PEOPLE about the growing soccer league, as well as her advice for young women looking to join the industry, and how the sport is actually similar to reality TV.

What exactly does your job entail? Sounds like a lot of moving parts. That’s right, but everyone works together and that’s a good thing. Several groups that I oversee work together to achieve the ultimate end goal, which is to grow our fan base and deepen our engagement with our fan base — not just here in Philadelphia, not just on game day, but around the world. One is the Eagles entertainment team — they consist of all of our content, production and social media. So they’re the ones who create the original series that you see on YouTube that people fall in love with, because we deliver [fans] within the team and within the locker room and in meetings, and give them all the access they’re looking for to feel as connected as possible.

I think sometimes people tend to look at sports and see one dimension of it, which is that sports teams are focused on winning championships. But beyond that, you have to stand for something beyond the bottom line. So your values, along with your commitment to winning championships, matter almost as much. And so, whether it’s supporting girls and their aspirations in sports or taking care of the environment with our Go Green program, or dedicating our efforts to the autism community, all of these things matter because people are not one-dimensional. We are sports fans and we’re “fill in the blank” fans. So we take the opportunity to connect with people around their values ​​and other shared interests as much as we do football; we really like to be as multi-dimensional about it as possible. And speaking of that [my background in] reality shows, let’s face it, sports is a reality show in many ways, right? It’s about competition. It’s about passion. It’s about creating memories, it’s about creating generational connections. It’s a party. It’s about relationships, music, fashion and food. And Taylor Swift. I love that you brought that up because, look at the Kelce documentary, Jason Kelce and Kylie Kelce. If I had $1 for every person who wasn’t a sports fan, wasn’t an Eagles fan, and in most cases was a woman, who came up to me to tell me how much they loved that documentary and now, they love Jason and follow Jason and Kylie . And that’s really because there’s so much connection in their stories. It’s not that different [from reality TV] at the end of the day.

I believe that Eagles fans are among the most passionate of all fans. How to use that passion for good? I’m moving here [from New York City], one of my earliest memories was walking around Center City, and I was blown away by the fact that the Eagles were all around me. It was in every market I went into, it was in every restaurant window, it was in every Wawa.

And that wasn’t the case in my previous world — the shows that I worked on, I didn’t see the presence of those shows everywhere I went in my day-to-day life. Therefore, I immediately understood the importance of the team to the community and that it really is part of the city’s DNA.

So the first thing you feel is this deep sense of responsibility: this really means something to a lot of people and it means to many, many generations, so I can’t mess this up. Second, I felt this was a marketer’s dream come true. You come to a place and a circumstance where there is a base of people who are so incredibly passionate about what you do; it’s kind of yours to lose.

And then over time you learn that you have this responsibility to always take care of the fans who are the lifeblood of what you do, but be willing to ride with them through the peaks and valleys. Win or lose, there will be some feelings that our fans will actively express. The enemy is actually apathy, not those who are upset.

These are all things I learned to accept early on; even when they’re mad at us, it’s still passion expressed differently, and the lack of it would be much, much worse.

Fly:FWD panel event.

Philadelphia Eagles

At a high level, how do you approach keeping fans engaged throughout the year? Is there a big difference between season and off season? The story around the team is a constant activity that never stops. It’s just a matter of what we’re telling stories about. In the season, things are more focused on match day and things related to the season itself. The offseason presents an opportunity for us to dig deeper into who the players are when they take their helmets off. Where do they go in the off season? What are they doing? What opportunities do we have to show their personalities, to tell more stories about things happening in our community? People are surprised to learn that in many ways the offseason can be busier for our teams than the season itself, because that’s when we do all of our thinking about the previous season: What really worked, what do we want to change? What did we learn? Then you have to start building and planning it. So when we get to the season, it’s kind of turnkey, because all the work and planning has been done beforehand.

Tell me about the Eagles Girls Flag Football League — how did the league come about and why is it important to you?

I give a lot of credit to the community relations team, who have been leading our youth football initiatives for a long time. They looked at what was happening in women’s sports here in the community and talked to local athletic directors.

What we realized is that there was a need and there was an opportunity. We had the ability to provide more opportunities for girls to play this sport, to create this opportunity for girls to play flag football, and we will help to be the organizers of that with the goal of finally sanctioning the sport.

The interest was such that we found ourselves in a situation where, in terms of the number of registered teams, we were almost two years ahead of schedule.

As part of the initiative, the organization is distributing 30,000 sports bras to girls in need in the Philly area. Why?

During the process of launching the league, we realized that there was this barrier to entry. We’ve created all these opportunities for girls to play, but those opportunities don’t really exist if there’s a barrier between the girl and the opportunity. And we learned specifically, the barrier was access to sports bras, and that was really an amazing moment.

It is very easy to assume that the equipment needed for children to play is abundant and available, but when you look at the equipment, in the case of a boy versus a girl, it is different. Sports bras were not considered or regarded as essential equipment; therefore, when you go to start the season and pick up the uniform, it does not include what you need to play confidently and competitively.

In addition to being a need that existed in the community, it was also a need that was not easy to talk about. There was not a high level of comfort in discussing this as a need, so we realized that we had to help destigmatize this problem as well.

To make the FLY:FWD sports bras, we work with an existing partner called Operation Warm, an amazing non-profit organization that also makes coats and gloves for children in need.

Fly:Fwd sports bras.

Philadelphia Eagles

What impact did he leave?

The feedback has been amazing. I could see first hand the effect this had. When we do our Jamboree in the spring and all the girls come to pick up their uniforms, you can really see the confidence level rise dramatically.

Once we knew we had a good model for this and were creating some impact in the community, we thought, how do we take this beyond Philadelphia? Because the goal is that 100% of girls who want to play sports in the country, but also in the world, have access to them.

So the conversations started with other professional sports teams, now that we had a model to say, if you want to do this, we’ve done it for you on a turnkey basis. So join in and do this in your community. Are there any aspects of your job that you particularly like?

So many, but I’d say the best part of my job is giving people access to experiences that money can’t buy. We as an organization regularly have the opportunity to make experiences for people that are easy for us, but in the end were the best day of that person’s life or a day that they will never forget.

It’s amazing to me that at a game I can bring a family to the field to experience the warm-up before the game, and they’ll write to me and say it was the best time we’ve had as a family. And that delights me.

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Source: HIS Education