The Haslam Sports Group Diversity and Opportunity Fellowship welcomed the 2024 class of fellows this month, who will embark on a year-long opportunity to build their knowledge of professional sports and gain experience working in the field.
Fellows will have the chance to join both the Browns and the Columbus Crew over the course of the year-long program and will work in one or more disciplines – sales, marketing, operations and administration – each containing several different departments.
The Haslam Sports Group (HSG) began the Diversity and Opportunity Fellowship in 2021 and has seen multiple alumni receive full-time offers with the Browns and Crew or elsewhere in the sports industry. Other program alumni have returned to school in pursuit of MBA or Juris Doctor degrees.
Get to know this year’s four fellows:
Danika Austin
Danika Austin, who finished her undergraduate degree and her master’s degree in sports administration at Northwestern in 2024, is originally from Michigan and was a five-year starter for the Wildcats women’s soccer team. Austin interned in the Northwestern athletic department, which is where she came across the fellowship opportunity.
“I was like, this is a perfect opportunity for me to be in two different sports that are two completely different industries and figure out my niche,” Austin said. “I’m just so excited to learn so many things that I learned in classes, but now I get to actually implement them in everyday life.”
Austin believes that the life lessons she learned while playing collegiate soccer will help her as she transitions to the world of professional sports.
“I feel like it just instilled key values in me,” Austin said. “Teamwork, collaboration, communication – all those things directly translate into the workplace and then just being around sports, you already know the grind. You know you’re going to have to work weekends and do all of those…
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