For more than 20 years, Bari Wolfman has been responsible for providing a voice to athletes off the field. At Rosenhaus Sports Representation (RSR), a Florida-based career management and relations agency specializing in NFL and MLB players, she oversees the PR and marketing efforts for athletes at the height of their careers.
Whether it's through post-game interviews, storytelling for philanthropy work or rehabilitation coverage after injuries, Wolfman takes a tailored approach to covering her athlete clients based on what they want to highlight. For her, the best part about the job is the incredible people she works with and that it's always changing, including with the emergence of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for NCAA athletes.
For International Women's Day, we spoke with Wolfman about the shift toward inclusivity in the sports industry. Although she's been lucky enough to have avoided sexism in the workplace, she believes women deserve a seat at the table, not just on the field but in any aspect of the industry they want to pursue.
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The shifting landscape of women in sports
"I definitely work now more with women than ever before, and I even see a lot of agencies that are women-focused," Wolfman says. "I run the internship program. There's definitely a more proportionate number of young women trying to enter the space on this side. Each time we bring on a new class, [it's] even more evenly keeled with women to men."
But even with the growing number of women pursuing jobs in sports, Wolfman wishes we didn't need to have these conversations in the first place. "The fact that we still have to have the conversation about focusing on the quality of women's sports, the number of them, the pay for women, the coverage for it, is still kind of baffling to me — that it's still such a struggle for society to look at women on equal footing as men," she says.
No matter what field you're working in, a diverse and inclusive team has proven — through multiple workplace studies — to be more successful, and that, of course, includes women. Being able to collaborate with people of different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs only pushes businesses forward. For Wolfman, her identity as a parent, specifically a mom, has helped her cultivate relationships and trust with her clients — and with her clients' loved ones.
"I can relate to [clients'] moms," she says. "I mean, it's all new for the parents as well, this whole journey. So I think that helps a lot with my experience and my age and being a female, is like, I can relate to the moms. Listen, they're still your son. I know that when you go to their room, there's still laundry on the floor." Her work, she says, is family oriented.
"Bring your whole crew, [for] any one of our clients as we sign them, whether it's mom, dad, brother, sister, business mentor, best buddy, anyone that you want to be a part of your journey," she adds. "We work with them and incorporate everyone into the process as best we can."
Shaping the industry moving forward
As for her advice for women trying to get into the sports marketing or media field, Wolfman suggests not even thinking about the fact that it might be male-dominated.
"Just pursue the dream that you want," she says. "You know, just by fact, it might be a male-dominated field if you had to look at numbers, but don't even let that enter your equation. Nothing that a woman should do or a young girl should do on her career path should change or be affected by who she's speaking to or what job she's seeking. She should feel as entitled to that role as anybody else and shouldn't have to make any excuses or do anything more to prove herself or her worth."
"There's nothing legal that says that a woman can't be the CEO or can't be the CMO," Wolfman concludes. "There's nothing in our country that stops a woman from having any role or position in corporate America, right?"