ISSUE 030: Meghan Cameron of Inter Miami CF

IN THIS ISSUE

• 🤝 Introduction: A Pathway first

• 👨‍🎓 Soccer Thought Leaders: Meghan Cameron of Inter Miami CF

• ⚽️ Soccer Jobs: New soccer jobs in North America

• 🫵 Do This Now: Prepare and execute a presentation

INTRODUCTION

Today we have a Pathway first - we’re sharing our first-ever guest author for Do This Now. It has been our pleasure to collaborate with Sarah Brown, founder of Brighton Media.

Below, she offers a guide for how you can prepare and execute a highly effective presentation.

Additionally, we share our conversation with Meghan Cameron of Inter Miami CF. Yes, of course we ask her about the club pre-Messi and post-Messi, but we also dive into her unique role at the club to provide a behind-the-scenes look at her day-to-day in a role that not many know a lot about.

Meghan gives some very personal advice on managing the demands of career and family, too.

Enjoy!

-Kyle Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO

SOCCER THOUGHT LEADER: MEGHAN CAMERON OF INTER MIAMI CF

“Why I can't be the best mom and be a GM of an MLS team?”

Meghan Cameron and I first met at the earliest stage of our respective careers. I started at D.C. United in February of 2005 as an entry-level communications coordinator and Meghan joined the Black-and-Red a few months later as an inside sales rep.

We hit it off. We were so pumped to be working in soccer and we bonded over the sport we loved.

For both of us, it was our first real job out of school. Meghan was a very good DI player at Rutgers University and I was a very mediocre DIII bench warmer at St. Olaf College, but we had some fierce “staff soccer” battles on the old turf field in the shadow of the crumbling colosseum that was RFK Stadium.

We only worked together for two years in total before Meghan moved on but we stayed in touch, periodically checking in on each other with a text message. We hadn’t been in contact in a while before connecting last week for the conversation we’re sharing today, but I’ve admired from afar the career Meghan has built for herself. It was great to reconnect.

In our conversation below, Meghan shares how she went from a couple of roles she wasn’t passionate about to building a career on the sporting side of the business - first at at MLS HQ and then at Sporting Kansas City and Inter Miami.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Meghan knows the roster rules and mechanisms of MLS better than just about anyone else in the league - she has built her career on it and has done it at the very highest level for the past 10+ years.

-Kyle Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO

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

PATHWAY: To kick us off, will you tell us about your role at Inter Miami and some of what you do on a day-to-day basis as the club’s Director of Player Personnel and Compliance?

MEGHAN: My roles and responsibilities within the club have definitely evolved since I got here but, primarily, I'm working with Chris Henderson (Sporting Director), Niki Budalic (VP of Soccer Operations) and Mark Prizant (Director of Recruitment) within the Sporting Operations team. My primary focus is on roster configuration, as it relates to the guidelines and rules of MLS -specifically, how we work within the confines of FIFA, TMS [Transfer Matching System], and the transfer windows.

And what does all of that mean? You have scouting and player identification and Chris Henderson will do the negotiations. But, where I come in is I do a lot of the backend work of the roster mechanisms - we have a lot of eyes on our roster, right? And people say, how are they doing that? How are they signing that player?

It's looking at the rules and guidelines of MLS and being able to say, ‘Okay, this is what we have to work with.’ We do all the legwork, working within the league roster and budget guidelines to determine how a player would fit into our roster and then present it to the league. And it's more about projecting and strategizing for the future. Everything, I can assure you, is above board.

PATHWAY: What are the two or three qualities that are paramount to success in a role like yours?

MEGHAN: One is communication - both internally and externally. And what I mean by that is what I'm taking in and what I'm expressing to others because there's so many different ways to view the rules and the budget guidelines online. There are certain ways that the interpretation has to be done. And so one of the key things that's paramount for me is being very clear and concise in my communication, so I'm able to communicate the world of roster and budget guidelines into more clear black and white silos.

The other one is a huge attention to detail because there's so many and minute changes that can happen - you have to be fluid in what we're doing every single day.

And that is the benefit of sitting in both seats [in my career] - in the league office and in the club - from a player personnel perspective. When I was in the League office and clubs would come to me at four o 'clock on a Friday with a roster adjustment, I would be like, ‘what are you doing? Why didn't you think about this before?' How are you coming to me now last minute?’ But, now I know, that it actually happens that fast. For instance, something could have happened at training today and all of a sudden we need a short-term call-up. And you know, these things happen very, very quickly. It's not as simple as notifying the league by Wednesday for a Saturday game.

PATHWAY: What was the most valuable aspect of your time at the League and how did it prepare you for your role at the club level?

MEGHAN: The connections I made for sure. I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't met Chris Henderson in 2010. I wouldn't have had my time at Sporting Kansas City had I not spent time with Peter Vermes.

I was in league office for close to nine years. For a very long time, I was the only female in any meeting room, technical director meetings and other meetings like that. I didn't realize it at the time, but the respect and experience I garnered there changed everything for me. To be able to be seen as somebody that was knowledgeable and knew their shit, for lack of a better word. That's what got me here, my experience and being in the trenches there. And, quite honestly, I worked my way up from a coordinator position to get to Miami.

To provide a practical example, Todd Durbin is probably one of the most brilliant minds I've witnessed in terms of being able to speak to boards, board of governors, and stuff like that - one of the things that Todd said to me that really resonated with me early on in my career was “you have to be willing to do the little things that nobody wants to do and you have to do them very well.” At the time I was frustrated that I was processing memos to make player payments and I was like, ‘this is stupid.’ [laughs]

There are things I'm doing in my role right now that I've taken ownership of because it's the kind of things that nobody else wants to do. And to be able to say, ‘you know what, I'll do this one and I'm gonna be the best at it. And you're not gonna be able to survive without me.’

PATHWAY: What was the moment you decided to pivot from what you were doing in DC [inside sales and community relations] to pursuing a different path?

MEGHAN: I was leaving a game at D.C. United and I was working within the club’s foundation at the time. And Andy Smith (Then the Ticket Sales Director) said that his father-in-law gave him the best advice he ever had, which was, “if you don't like what you're doing, don't spend another day doing it.” A week later, I broke down in tears to my dad leaving the stadium after a game. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I gave my two weeks notice the next morning because I didn't have joy in it. It wasn't joyful for me.

And I think that's what's been so fulfilling. I literally wake up excited to go to work every day now. And I've had the luxury and the benefit of being able to say that my entire career has been in Major League Soccer.

PATHWAY: You've got two adorable kiddos. And there are a lot of parents who work in sports - how have you found balance with your career and your family and what works for you?

MEGHAN: I could probably talk about this for two hours - anytime you're able to talk about your family. I'm so proud of what we've been able to accomplish - and when I say we, I mean me and my husband Ryan [Miller] and as a family, as a unit - I'm very fortunate, first of all, that Ryan is in the industry, so he gets it. But, also he stepped away from one of his passions to take on another one of his passions that left him in a remote position. So, we have flexibility - we never wanted to be tied somewhere because of one our jobs.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently, she has three young children, and we were talking about the fact that I don't know why I can't have it all. Why I can't be the best mom and be a GM of an MLS team? Why can't I have it? Who says I can't? And to be able to show that to my children - and not just my daughter, it's important my son sees it too. He needs to see that.

And to be able to find a balance, It's definitely hard, especially as a female, a lot of the family stuff falls on your plate, whether you ask for it or not. And again, Ryan and I have a very cohesive unit, but the doctor's appointments - 90% of them are on me.

Having such a supportive group here and even at Sporting Kansas City because I had [daughter] Ivy when I was in Kansas City - they have families, so they get it but there's also that weird balance of nobody really knows how to treat me. I was the first female in Miami, because it was such a new club, to have a baby. They literally wrote the maternity leave policy for me. And so it's a really interesting world of, you know, ‘hey guys, I'm going to be in at 10 because I have Mother's Day tea with Ivy.’ [laughs] and nobody says anything about that [because they’re supportive].

But, on the other side of it - and I want to make sure I express this in the right way - I don't want anybody to ever make the decision for me - that they shouldn't call me or include me in stuff that matters to my role or to the club because they don't want to bother me. You know, if it's working from home that day or whatever the case may be.

And I had a really interesting conversation with Chris when I told him I was expecting [son] Kai. And I said to him “I will tell you if it's too much. I will tell you if I can't - do not make that decision for me. Because that's where we're gonna have issues.”

So, it's a really, really interesting world to balance. And what I would say to other females is you're never ready to be a parent, in my opinion. You're never ready, you just do it. And you'll figure it out as you go.

And that's the luxury of other people kind of walking in these shoes. But again, from a female perspective, it's really difficult because there's not many of us [at Inter Miami]. A lot of the females aren't moms yet. But, it's fun getting to watch your kids run around on the soccer field in their little jerseys. Ivy comes to training and she sits in my office. She says “mom, can we go play, can we go play? The boys are done, can we go play?” [laughs]

PATHWAY: I have to ask about pre-Messi and post-Messi and the influx of high-profile players - how has that impacted your specific role and what has been most surprising, if anything?

MEGHAN: I'd say I'm probably one of the least impacted people in terms of my day-to-day operation because they’re, you know, ‘hey we've got our DPs [Designated Players], we've got our team guys, everybody fits in’ and here we go.

One of the surprising things is that they're really, really humble guys, they're great guys and they're competitors and they are in the League to compete and to win. You know the old adage of the retirement league and stuff like that, I think you can actually see from the product on the field, even without me saying this, is they're not here to collect a paycheck and to just hang out in Miami. They're here to win. And it's really fun to watch the training sessions. What’s a bit more surprising is how easy it's been.

PATHWAY: For someone who's just out of college or early in their career, and they want to pursue a role similar to yours, what is the one thing you tell them to do?

MEGHAN: Get an internship. Get your foot in the door. It doesn't have to be in soccer. Within a sports organization, get an internship and get work experience because I think that's the hardest part. I believe what most kids coming out of college are experiencing is not getting a look because they don't have the experience. For me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have my internship. I interned with the MetroStars when I was still in college and that opened the door to a lot of other opportunities.

The reality is that internships in a player relations role probably aren’t vastly available. So, I would say, get into a club, whether it be on a business side or as a data analyst. Getting in and making those connections within the sports world, I think is what actually makes the difference. I interned as a communications and marketing intern [at the MetroStars].

The background in my area is now mostly legal. If you look at MLS player relations staff now, the majority of them have law degrees.

PATHWAY: What's your favorite thing about working in soccer?

The people that I’ve met and the experiences. I wouldn't have met my husband without soccer. I've been lucky enough to travel the world. You know, I was managing the relationship between the FFF [French Football Federation] and MLS. I literally got to travel the world and was paid to do it. And I met phenomenal people and made my family throughout that, you know, and how many people can say that? That's pretty cool.

Ed. Note: You can connect with or follow Meghan on LinkedIn.

JOBS AT INTER MIAMI

Go work alongside Meghan at Inter Miami - the club has some cool gigs currently open. We’ve included a few below, but you can see the full list here.

• Manager, Partnership Development

• Director, Licensing and Merchandising

• Senior Director, Partnership Development

SOCCER JOBS: THE MOST INTERESTING NEW JOBS IN SOCCER

New week, new jobs! Here are a handful of the most interesting - and most recent - jobs that have been posted.

• Chief of Staff - FC Cincinnati

• Manager, Ticket Sales - Tampa Bay Rowdies

• Head Academy Coach - Philadelphia Union

• Manager, Special Projects - Portland Thorns

• Assistant Women’s Coach - Monmouth University

• Senior Manager, Business Intelligence - Red Bull New York

DO THIS NOW: PREPARE FOR YOUR NEXT PRESENTATION

Does public speaking, or even the thought of it, make you nervous?

You're not alone! Regardless of your role within the industry, avoiding presentations entirely can be quite a challenge. Whether it's addressing a large crowd (which might be what comes to mind first) or expressing your opinion in a team meeting, every opportunity to present your ideas is a chance to add value. The good news is there's a simple roadmap to follow for preparation, helping you make the most of any upcoming or impromptu public speaking opportunity.

Today’s Pathway Resource was written and developed by our good friend, Sarah Brown. Founder of Brighton Media, Sarah is a communications expert with a deep understanding of media and presentation training, having worked with a diverse range of spokespersons throughout her career across multiple industries. No matter the scale, she helps people get the most out of every public-facing opportunity.

• PATHWAY RESOURCE: How to prepare for a presentation

If you’re interested in working with Sarah, connect with her here.

-John Bello, Founder & COO

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^{See you next week, soccer friends!} 

• John Bello

• Kyle Sheldon

• Nolan Sheldon