Somewhere on my vision board, there’s a Los Angeles cutout from a magazine.

I added it last minute — one of those impulsive decisions you make without overthinking it. I didn’t have a specific plan for Los Angeles. I just knew I wanted it to be part of my story somehow.

I didn’t expect it to manifest quite so quickly.

A few months after Gold Cup, Concacaf called. They wanted me in Los Angeles — as Media Officer, CMO — for Match 21 of the Champions Cup between L.A. Galaxy and Panama’s Sporting San Miguelito at Dignity Health Sports Park.

Vision boards, it turns out, are not something to take lightly.

How I got here

The Gold Cup changed things.

Serving as Venue Press Officer for four group-stage matches at AT&T Stadium in June 2025 was the biggest assignment of my sports career to date. I had prepared for months, managed 179 credentialed media members across two matchdays, led a bilingual team of 25 volunteers, and delivered. When it was over, I knew something had shifted — not just in my confidence, but in how I was seen within the Concacaf family.

Being included in their ranks as a CMO for Champions Cup was the confirmation of that. It meant they had seen what I could do — and they wanted me back, in a bigger role, on a bigger stage.

I don’t take that lightly.

The role

As CMO for Match 21 of the Concacaf Champions Cup, I directed all on-site media operations in coordination with the Concacaf delegation, the host club, and the host broadcaster. That meant taking full ownership of the operation from the moment I arrived:

— Pre-match logistics and media setup — Full media accreditation workflow — Photographer field access and tournament protocol enforcement — Multilateral flash interview coordination in real time — Post-match press conference execution — Leading the Match Organization Meeting — aligning broadcast, digital, security, and stadium stakeholders on matchday media flow before a ball was kicked

Every one of those moving parts had to work. In a live international match environment, there is no pause button and no second chance at first impressions.

What the assignment taught me

This role required something specific: the ability to adapt constantly across multiple stakeholder groups simultaneously. Operations, digital, commercial, broadcast, the clubs, the delegation — every one of those relationships had to be managed clearly, quickly, and in some cases across language barriers.

What I found is that the skills I’ve built over fifteen years — across nonprofit communications, live events, and tournament press operations — don’t exist in separate compartments. They talk to each other. The precision I bring to institutional communications sharpens the way I coordinate in a press box. The bilingual fluency I use in mixed zones informs how I write a stakeholder brief. The operational systems I’ve built from scratch in a boardroom translate directly to the ones I execute in a stadium.

Los Angeles sharpened all of it.

What it felt like

I’ve spent fifteen years working my way through tournaments, venues, and events. Assistant roles, support positions, learning everything I could from the people ahead of me in the operation. The CMO role at Champions Cup was different. There was no one ahead of me. There was just the operation — and me responsible for it.

That’s a feeling you can’t manufacture. You earn it.

In the days after, I heard through the grapevine that the Concacaf team had been happy to get to know me during the assignment. That meant more than I can properly express. I pour everything I have into this work — the preparation, the attention to detail, the relationships, the execution — and there is nothing quite like knowing that it was seen. That’s not ego. That’s the confirmation that the standard you hold yourself to is the right one.

Huge thanks to the Concacaf team and both clubs — L.A. Galaxy and Sporting San Miguelito — for the opportunity and the collaboration. Working alongside people from all over the world, united by the same commitment to getting the operation right, is one of the great privileges of this work.

Like I always say — it was a fantastic week for soccer.

And that Los Angeles cutout on my vision board? It stays. There’s more to manifest.