⚽️ 25+ New Jobs in Women's Soccer

Plus, our conversation with KC Current's Head of Marketing

 

IN THIS ISSUE

  • 🤝 Introduction: Luck and opportunity

  • ⚽️ Soccer Jobs: Lots of new roles in women’s soccer

  • 👨‍🎓 Soccer Thought Leader: Alexandra Levin, KC Current

  • 📰 In The News: Do you want to buy the Earthquakes?

INTRODUCTION

Hey there, Pathwayers! 👋

Being prepared never hurts – but being extra prepared? Even better. We're talking about having that perfectly polished résumé, a portfolio that showcases your best work, and a clean cover letter (pssst, do this now if you haven't already).

All these pieces can definitely set you up for success when you're job hunting. But here's the thing: sometimes it really does come down to luck and opportunity. You can have everything lined up perfectly, but being in the right place at the right time can make all the difference.

Just ask today’s Soccer Thought Leader, Alexandra Levin. After leaving agency life and taking a leap of faith into women's soccer, she found her home at KC Current and quickly progressed up the ranks to Executive Director of Marketing. Her story is proof that sometimes the best career moves are the ones that feel a little scary.

Scroll down to read about her journey and get her advice for anyone looking to help grow women's soccer. Plus, we’ve got the latest jobs from around the NWSL and Gainbridge Super League as we roll into the second half of 2025.

Good luck and happy reading!

-Kyle Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO

HEY YOU! WE TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU…

…to share Pathway with your friends and colleagues!

You wouldn’t turn down a triple dog dare, would you?

NEW NWSL JOBS

Here are two great opportunities for you to join the current NWSL leaders as we head into the second half of the 2025 season:

Newcomers Denver NWSL will ramp up hiring before too long as the front office prepares for its 2026 debut. Be sure to watch this space for more:

There are plenty of other open opportunities around the NWSL landscape that are searching for qualified candidates:

Coming off the heels of a successful inaugural campaign, Gainbridge Super League (formerly known as the USL Super League) clubs are getting an early jump on hiring ahead of the start of the 25/26 season:

📣 ICYMI: We spoke to USL Super League President Amanda Vandevort in Issue 018.

SOCCER THOUGHT LEADER: ALEXANDRA LEVIN, KC CURRENT

via Alexandra Levin

“I’M REALLY GRATEFUL FOR THOSE OPPORTUNITIES WHERE I HAD TO PUNCH ABOVE MY WEIGHT…”

Over the last few years, I’ve become a real admirer of the work I’ve seen from the KC Current in the brand, marketing, and content space:

It’s a club that seems to just “get it.” They’ve got committed ownership, a purpose-built stadium and training complex, a robust front office staff - oh, and they may be putting together one of the best seasons in NWSL history at the moment (11 wins in 13 matches!).

While today’s Soccer Thought Leader won’t take any credit for the club’s on-field performance, she absolutely can - and should! - take some credit for the club’s impressive work off the field.

I didn’t know Alex Levin previously, but I greatly enjoyed getting to know more about her background and how she sees the world of soccer during our wide-ranging conversation. I know Pathway readers will get a ton of value out of her experience - and she also shares some really helpful, tactical tips for how you can progress your career more quickly just as she has.

We went long on this one, so you’ll have to click through to read the full interview, but trust me when I say - it’s well worth it.

-Kyle Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity (and any emphasis below is ours)

PATHWAY: Can you explain how you got connected to sport originally and how that connection has developed over your life and career?

ALEXANDRA: I started playing when I was five years old. My older sister started playing and of course I wanted to do whatever she did. I grew up outside of Chicago in a town called Glen Ellyn, and around second grade I was ready to try to join a club team. Unfortunately, when my parents looked for a local club at my age group in Glen Ellyn, the only club team was just for boys. Fortunately, the club was open to myself and another girl joining. We played one season on the boys team and while it was overall a good experience, we felt it was best for us to find other girls to play with.

I’m thankful to my dad, who had never played nor really watched soccer, for his work to help us recruit a squad of girls. There was a lot of interest and were able to roster a full team that very next season. While I don’t think we won a single game, it was just the beginning of so much more to come. This laid the foundation for even more age-levels for girls at the club and it’s why I think it is so important to establish pathways at the grassroots level for young girls to experience and fall in love with the game. Because of this, opening day at CPKC Stadium, the first purpose-built stadium for a professional women’s soccer team, was a very full-circle moment for me. 

PATHWAY: Thinking about your time joining the front office in August of 2021, before the KC Current name was announced, you really got to build the brand from scratch - what did you enjoy the most about that process? Was there anything around the temporary name that made things particularly challenging?

ALEXANDRA: Yes, there are always challenges that come with a temporary brand. For us, to an average Kansas Citian, KC NWSL just looked like an acronym. So, in our messaging, we leaned heavily into Kansas City’s professional women’s soccer team and We play for KC. The temporary brand required this accompanying messaging to educate the market on who we were and lay the foundation for who we were becoming as KC Current. For that reason, the brand colors remained similar, highlighted by the iconic teal, and elements of the KC NWSL logo like the two stars representing Kansas and Missouri are prominent features on the KC Current crest.  

While there were challenges of a temporary brand, there was also something beautiful that came out of it which has since become a cornerstone of our brand. At the first training session of KC NWSL, the team came together at the end to break down the huddle. They didn’t have a name to chant so Lo'eau LaBonta and Desiree Scott came together to create "KC BABY!" We noted that it was how they continued to break down team huddles, even after we became KC Current. This player-led rally cry became the inspiration for our 2023 KC BABY marketing campaign and has since become synonymous with our club and fanbase. 

Coming into my role, the KC Current branding was already complete, but there was still a lot of work to do around how we were going to reveal that to the fanbase and public. The vision of the brand was so clear but there wasn't a blueprint that we followed for unveiling it, which meant we were able to be creative and think outside the box. 

We decided we wanted to launch the name and crest in front of our fans. We did not make the playoffs that first season, so we wanted to end the regular season on a high note. We decided that we would use halftime of our last game to launch the announcement. This included a highly-produced video featuring our players. Following the video we had a drone show that showed the crest and even had kits with the new crest the players wore in the second half. Everything flipped inside the stadium at halftime. Digitally, all our socials and website became live and inside the stadium even the merch stands reopened with the first KC Current merchandise.

PATHWAY: The stadium is obviously massively significant for what it represents, but it’s also a home for your team. How does the team market it? If you had to pick one thing that had the biggest impact on your success, what would it be?

ALEXANDRA: I think there were two different phases of marketing the stadium. The first was during 2023 when the stadium was still just a plot of dirt and we needed to sell season ticket deposits. We couldn't bring people there, we couldn't show them anything other than the amazing renderings that gave them a sense of what the atmosphere was going to be like. We saw a great response with that, sold out of our season ticket inventory, and started a wait list, as well. 

Phase two was when we had a date. We knew March 16th, 2024 was the date we needed to be ready by. We wanted everyone to be a part of it. Our campaign shifted to "Turn the Town Teal," which meant we wanted teal everywhere in the city. We immediately started putting KC Current assets all over the airport and Union Station, and we did streetcar wraps, billboards, and so on.

Honestly, one of the major keys to our success is that our ownership is willing to invest in what they think can drive value for the brand. If we can put something together and show that we think that this will help us generate views and fans, then they have always been willing to support that financially. It’s so important and unique in women's sports in general that you do need to invest in order to see that return.

We had so much to announce. We wanted to do it in a succinct way where people could understand it and also be excited about what that next announcement was. So, we created Teal Tuesdays, where every Tuesday from Q3 of 2023 until the stadium opening, we had an announcement related to the stadium. I think fans really started looking forward to every Tuesday and what we were going to announce. It really helped create this demand. 

PATHWAY: Those first couple seasons on the field weren't all that you wanted, but now you're in a position where on-field performance is about as good as it can be. Are you doing things now that you wouldn't otherwise do if they weren't performing as well?

ALEXANDRA: We have a phrase that's on the wall in the stadium for everyone to see that says "relentless attacking soccer," and that is KC Current. We are going to score goals, we're going to apply pressure. We're not building a stadium to sit back and win 1-0, you know what I mean? We want to entertain the crowd.

But on the marketing side, we have never planned around whether we're having a winning or losing season. Our budget is built around what we think that we might need. Fortunately for us, when you're winning this much and the team is this great, the demand is really high.

For example, we might have dollars we allocated towards a ticketing promotion that we can now be flexible with and use for something else. That flexibility and adaptability has been important and it has created opportunities for how we capture that demand in other ways. 

Last year, we created Current Club, which is our fan club and a wait list for season tickets, and members get free away match tickets. I think we had over 200 Current Club members who live in Chicago or were close to Chicago who went to our game in May. 

So how do we expose those people to other ways that they can engage? Or, we have a whole network of local bars who show all of our matches, how can we bring them out to those in different ways? We always want to sell out every single game as a requirement for us. 

PATHWAY: I want to talk about your trajectory and career a little bit, Alex. You started in the agency world working across a variety of clients. What enticed you to leave agency life? Did you always think you'd go work in soccer or was it something that fell into your lap?

via Alexandra Levin

ICYMI: MUST-READ ARTICLES

📰 HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS?! Just in case you haven’t, here’s a peek at what’s been going on:

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