When she first started working in the NFL, Stacy Johns found herself to be one of a handful of women in a room surrounded by men. Johns said there were days she felt like quitting because she wasn’t welcomed into workspaces. Despite this, she continued to face the challenges head on.
Now, after more than 20 years in the field, Johns is bringing her hard-earned lessons to the next generation of students.
Johns, LAFC’s chief business officer, came to speak to CSUN students, alumni, faculty and staff members as part of the Younes Nazarian College of Business and Economics distinguished speakers series on Tuesday. Johns gave advice and told stories from how she got started to where she’s at now, followed by a Q&A from the audience.
A first-generation student from Butler University, Johns secured the largest naming rights deal in Major League Soccer (MLS) history and made LAFC the first billion dollar soccer club. Her work includes overseeing all operations and events at BMO Stadium, home to LAFC, where both she and the venue have collected numerous awards during her tenure.
Johns initially did not plan to work in sports. However, she found herself working for the Indianapolis Colts for 16 years before taking the leap and moving across the country after landing a job with LAFC during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said she learned to involve herself with people in higher positions by making relations through finances, which opened more doors for herself. Johns expressed gratitude towards men who advocated for her in rooms where she wasn’t invited.
However, she was looking for a challenge, and MLS was a young league that needed people who could be innovative in creating change. “I am a mom of daughters, and I wanted them to be able to look at me and say I didn’t give up,” Johns said. “I actually really genuinely wanted to learn more and know more once I got into sports, which is very interesting to me, so it would be hard to imagine I could just walk away from it after I had gone so far.”
Since joining LAFC in 2020, Johns has felt welcomed, respected and wanted, feelings she did not receive working for the Colts. She said soccer is a more inclusive culture with community involvement. Johns noticed herself changing as a person because of how well she’s treated at work.
Despite all the success, she said her biggest challenge was dealing with failure. Johns grew up very driven and didn’t have much difficulty until she got into the work environment, where she figured out she had to fail to be good. She had to learn how to not let failure affect her and how to react to others when they failed under her.
Johns defines success for herself as taking on a new challenge and conquering it. She advised students to never say no to opportunities, be curious, have an open mind, meet new people and take risks.
Financial analysis major Christian Palacios said the key takeaway he got from this event was ambition.
“She even said, ‘Don’t take any opportunity as a bad opportunity.’ Just, you never know who’s gonna take you, and I felt like that was a good thing to take, you know, like one small step can be one big leap forward somewhere else,” Palacios said.
Johns expressed how impactful it is to have a team of women working with her who make it known she is valued to them. The most rewarding thing for her is to see her team be successful and to make her family proud.
She advises young women eager to get into the sports industry to simply go for it.
“It’s a much more open market than what it was before, so I think it’s easier than it ever was in the past to get in. So, just know that you can do it and make the network connections, do the internships, have the conversations with people and go for it,” Johns said.
