There’s no linear path from being a kindergarten teacher to being a sports marketing leader, but a chance encounter and one event landed Brooke Faw in the center of the latter industry.
“A pit crew member was one of my parents,” Faw recounted. “And he was like, ‘Hey, my driver is doing this charity event. You seem to be fun. You seem to know how to throw a good party. Do you want to help him?’
“That driver happened to be Martin Truex Jr., and that charity event happened to be Catwalk for a Cause, which, at the first one we raised like $100,000 and we thought we’d really done something. Now it’s its 15th year, we’re raising millions.”
Faw’s work in the space caught the attention of Mike Boykin and Greg Busch, then in the midst of spinning off their time at GMR into what became Bespoke Sports & Entertainment. They wanted Faw to join the operation, but she initially balked. That is until she flipped open Instagram.
Faw had posted a photo of Mary Tyler Moore affixed with an inspirational quote two years earlier. The morning after hearing Boykin and Busch’s pitch, a memory of the post popped up. Faw took it as a sign.
“I call Mike, [and] Mike is very confused. He thinks Mary Tyler Moore has died,” Faw said laughing. “I’m like, ‘No, no, no, you’re missing the point’ — and the rest is history. We started Bespoke a month later.”
Faw’s time at Bespoke has included pitching and securing clients such as Duke’s Mayonnaise, Fiserv, American Express and Fox Sports, among others. Her client portfolio represents roughly $310 million in sponsorship spending this year alone, while she’s overseen more than $1 billion in spending during her time at Bespoke.
“I think about when people read profiles and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s great, but that can never be me, because I have too much going on in my personal life,’” said Faw, who is a single mom. “You can have a [crazy] personal life and make a professional life work.”
Why she’s a Game Changer:
With Bespoke since its inception, Faw left teaching to help the boutique agency grow into a major player in sports marketing with clients such as Duke’s, Fiserv and Fox Sports.
Brooke Faw
Vice President
Bespoke Sports & Entertainment
Born: Anderson, Ind.
Education: Ball State University, B.S., elementary and special education, and M.A., educational administration
Family: Child, Griffin (12)
New place I want to travel to next: The Maldives. I want to live in a hut over the water without access to technology for at least a week and just do nothing!
Attribute I look for when hiring: Willingness. I can teach people just about anything, but I can’t teach them how to work hard and be open to learning new things.
Sports business story I’m excited to follow in the next year: The continued evolution of college sports, media and player compensation.
Best tool to keep me organized in work and in life: Notebooks full of to-do lists that give me an enormous amount of satisfaction when I cross something off.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportsbusinessjournal.com ’
