Leveling the Playing Field for Women in Sports Tech: G4’s Mikaela Handler Shares Her Journey
Comcast: Women in the sports technology industry are vastly underrepresented. Less than 30% of employees in the field are women or people of color. Organizations like Women in Sports Tech (WiST) tackle the diversity gap for both women and employers through fellowship and leadership programs.
“Women make up 50% of the U.S. labor force, sports fans, and athletes – and yet the representation of women working in sports tech is a small fraction of that. I founded Women in Sports Tech (WiST) to connect women at all career stages to meaningful professional opportunities in the sports tech field.”
MARILOU MCFARLANE Founder+CEO of WiST
Comcast partners with WiST to support its Fellowship program, which provides grants for summer internships, networking and career opportunities for women in the industry.
For Mikaela Handler, the WiST Fellowship provided a career-making opportunity. With a background in kinesiology and life-long interest in athletics, the Texas native graduated from North Texas University with an MBA in sport entertainment management. She applied for the WiST Fellowship and was accepted and placed in an 8-week internship with Comcast Spectacor’s gaming entertainment network G4 in June 2021.
Handler’s time as a WiST Fellow and G4 intern “was exactly what I needed to help me understand what I wanted to focus on in my field and get the expert guidance I needed to navigate that question.”
“WiST has done incredible things not only for me but for so many women in this space.”