Amy Brooks: How to lift women up in our industry 

August 2022 - On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, I have been and will continue to shine a light on 50 women who have been amazing teachers, thereby affecting my sports career as well as the careers of other women and men in sport.

Buffy Fippel, Founder, TeamWorkOnline

Precious few women become team presidents.  Rarer still are women who help nurture their female teammates - women helping women to rise to these top positions.  Amy Brooks is one of those special women who excel while giving others a lift.   

In 2010 Amy recruited Valerie Camillo, another management consultant, into TMBO.  Val recognized the unique opportunity to work with Amy and the NBA.  Side by side, Amy and Val crunched numbers and consulted with the teams.  This laid the foundation for Val’s meteoric rise.  

In 2013, with the movement of Amy’s boss, Chris Granger, to the Sacramento Kings, Amy herself was rewarded. She became one of the top women in the NBA League Office, rising to Executive Vice President and heading the Team Marketing and Business Operations department.  In 2015, Forbes voted her one of the most powerful women in sports. Two years later, Amy was promoted to be the NBA’s Chief Innovation Officer and President of TMBO, the first to hold such a role.     

With four years under Amy’s coaching, Val moved back to DC in 2014 to become Chief Revenue Officer of the Washington Nationals, one of few women to achieve that role in the MLB.  She followed that to her current role as President of Business Operations for Comcast Spectacor, which includes the role of President of Business Operations of the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers and Wells Fargo Center.    

Under Amy’s influence, there are more women, and men, whose careers are blossoming in the sports business.  Amy is a great coach to the many she cultivates for senior sports positions.  She may not receive the similar public acclaim of star athletes or legendary college coaches. But through our work with Amy and the NBA, we have seen her make a positive difference to more than she knows.Amy and I met at one of Jessica Gelman and Daryl Morey’s MIT Sloan Sports Data Analytics Conferences.  She was a graduate of Stanford University where she had played varsity basketball.  Some may credit Amy’s incredible “vision,” “assist,” and subsequent “coaching” skills to her Final Four playing days for Stanford’s legendary coach, Tara VanDerveer.    

After graduation, Amy worked in Product Management for Sun Microsystems; then she got her MBA at Stanford Business School.  Amy moved to Bain & Company, a world-renowned management consulting firm.   

Without any previous work experience in the sports business, in 2005 Amy joined the NBA league office in Global Partnerships.  After she had gotten her feet wet, the NBA moved her into Team Marketing and Business Operations (TMBO), their internal consulting group helping all NBA, WNBA and G-League teams’ business operations.  With Amy’s background in consulting, marketing and analytics, she helped enhance the NBA teams’ revenues through data analytics, making it the model for the other leagues.  TeamWork Online has been a recruiting partner to the NBA since 2000 in part because of Amy.    

In 2010 Amy recruited Valerie Camillo, another management consultant, into TMBO.  Val recognized the unique opportunity to work with Amy and the NBA.  Side by side, Amy and Val crunched numbers and consulted with the teams.  This laid the foundation for Val’s meteoric rise.  

In 2013, with the movement of Amy’s boss, Chris Granger, to the Sacramento Kings, Amy herself was rewarded. She became one of the top women in the NBA League Office, rising to Executive Vice President and heading the Team Marketing and Business Operations department.  In 2015, Forbes voted her one of the most powerful women in sports. Two years later, Amy was promoted to be the NBA’s Chief Innovation Officer and President of TMBO, the first to hold such a role.     

With four years under Amy’s coaching, Val moved back to DC in 2014 to become Chief Revenue Officer of the Washington Nationals, one of few women to achieve that role in the MLB.  She followed that to her current role as President of Business Operations for Comcast Spectacor, which includes the role of President of Business Operations of the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers and Wells Fargo Center.    

Under Amy’s influence, there are more women, and men, whose careers are blossoming in the sports business.  Amy is a great coach to the many she cultivates for senior sports positions.  She may not receive the similar public acclaim of star athletes or legendary college coaches. But through our work with Amy and the NBA, we have seen her make a positive difference to more than she knows.