Be Brave Enough to Pursue Your Mission

Be Brave Enough to Pursue Your Mission

 Guest Blog by Samantha Weber

Over the past year, I've asked friends, family, and strangers this question, "Outside of work, what do you spend the most time thinking about?" It's a great question to pose if you want to understand someone’s time, values, and priorities.

Without realizing it, my priorities have tremendously shifted in my late 20s. Before, the only thing that mattered to me was getting a quality education and pursuing a career in sports technology.  At 19, I founded my first startup, ProfilePasser -- an app that connected high school athletes and college recruiters on the field. In 2014, my startup was named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 College Startups in America. In 2016, I co-founded my second company, Techne Futbol, with professional soccer player Yael Averbuch, and I was most recently in a partnerships role at Whistle Sports, where I managed a roster of professional athletes and produced a series for the Olympic Channel. 

And then everything fell apart. Five months ago I was laid off from my job. Instead of confidently pursuing new opportunities, I found myself stumbling through feelings of doubt, insecurity, and frustration. This job search was different. 

While my career was still extremely important to me, my priorities evolved. For the first time, I was in a serious, long-distance relationship. My mom was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s Disease in Pittsburgh. I had a 3 year-old nephew in San Francisco. I was living in New York City. I was now weighing every opportunity against other equally important things like location, my relationship, and future opportunities that would further my career.

Last month, I flew to Austin for an intense two-day interview for a private equity consulting role. I finished the interview defending my thesis in front of the executive team, and when my flight landed back in New York, I had an offer waiting for me in my inbox.

In the past, I would have picked up my life and moved to Austin without thinking twice, but making decisions is a lot more complicated as you grow up. I've spent a considerable amount of time investing in my relationships and building stability, and I've learned that uprooting my life, leaving others behind, and starting over isn't always the best decision.

For me, navigating my 20s has been more complicated than most. Work is so, so important to me, but I'm trying to build a career while balancing taking care of a terminally ill parent, a complicated family situation, and a long-distance relationship with an international business school student.

Despite having a large network, I couldn't think of a female role model that could offer the type of advice that I needed. How many women do you know who are still establishing their careers, taking care of aging parents, and taking their partner into consideration? I'm part of a young, educated, driven generation of women who need more women in power investing in the next generation.

With that being said, I am so grateful that I don't have to make these big life decisions on my own. When I was younger, I thought being in a serious relationship would limit my ability to chase my individual dreams, but in reality, my partner has offered such a valuable and different perspective. 

So what did I decide to do about this job in Austin? I decided to take a risk, ask for a bump in salary, and pitch working remotely. Guess what? After a few weeks, they said yes. 

While I was waiting for an answer from Austin, I decided to try to expand my network of women in sports and launched a public Slack group called the Global Women’s Football Network. It all started with an email to a few friends and mentors and a single tweet with a link to sign up. In less than a week, I helped connect 400+ women from almost 40 countries and 146 cities around the world through a common goal of elevating women's soccer.

Two weeks after launching, a member of the network reached out to me and asked me to apply for a Sr. Product Manager role at her sports technology company. After a quick interviewing process, I decided to trust my gut and turned down the job in Austin in order to pursue and accept this role at Hudl -- a role that directly aligns with the personal vision and mission statement I wrote for my career two years ago. I'm so thankful to have found a company that is willing to give me a chance to build sports technology at scale -- it truly is a dream come true.

The best part is that I managed to negotiate working remotely for the first few months so that I can spend the summer with my partner in the Bay Area while he completes his MBA internship. We head out to the West Coast Best Coast in a couple of weeks and I start on June 17th before moving to Boston in the fall where I’ll be just two hours away from him as he finishes his program. 

So here’s my takeaway. Life is complicated, and as we get older, priorities shift. Jobs will come and go, but it’s important to fight for the people and relationships in your life. As women, it often feels like we have to sacrifice our ambition to follow or support the men in our lives. But sometimes, I think we’re too afraid to ask our employers to be flexible. I was terrified to ask both companies to let me work remotely, but I did it anyway because I decided location was a priority for me. 

I want to encourage you to be brave enough to live life according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others. If you're lucky, you just might get it all.

Samantha Weber is now the Senior Product Manager at Hudl. She is the co-founder of Techne Futbol, and founder of ProfilePasser. She is an amazing soccer player and full of innovative ideas for advancing the game and women’s equality through sport.