Company: U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee
Position: Digital and Social Strategy Director
Hannah’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-miller-49a06aa9/
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Instagram (Team USA): https://www.instagram.com/teamusa/?hl=en
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has been around since 1894. Since then the committee has grown and expanded. The committee has done a very good job of making sure that the athletes who represent the United States at the game are prepped and know what to expect ahead of the games. Hannah Miller has been working for the committee since 2017 where she started out as the Social Media Strategy Manager. Since then she has managed to work her way up to her current position which is the Director of Digital and Social Strategy. Hannah has opened the door for women who may not want to compete in the Olympics but have a dream of working for the Olympics. I chose Hannah because I have watched the Olympics every year from a young age. In addition, I was drawn to her because I have always wanted to compete in the Olympics, and later on when I learned how much grit that was going to take I switched gears and decided that if I couldn’t compete then I would work for the games in a different way. Hence why I choose Hannah for this project as she is one example of a woman making headway in the sports world.
In addition, Hannah is responsible for reviewing the social media posts about the athletes before they go out to the public on the Team USA Instagram and Twitter. Hannah does a good job of reviewing the posts and making sure that the player’s privacy is not compromised in the post. This is an example of the same privacy dynamics noted by Pulido (2014), who found that “control of privacy on twitter and boundary rules of information on twitter predicted the athlete’s twitter usage amount” (p. 62). The above quote is very prevalent regarding what athletes as well as Hannah can post on the team USA social media pages. Hannah is also very organized in the sports world. She keeps each of the players’ posts, highlights from the game, and personal information in the highlights section on the Team USA Instagram page which she runs. In addition, she posts about important days throughout the year that are important to athletes. An example of this on the Team USA Instagram page is when she posted about mental health. In her post she uses a quote from Noah Lyles who is a track and field athlete to emphasize the importance of putting your mental health first.
Additionally, there are quite a few ideas that I am able to learn from Hannah that I plan on applying in my own future career. The first one being that I should understand what information each athlete wants out of the media’s eye. Another concept that I have learned is the importance of posting about days of the year that could have an influence on the athletes. Furthermore, I have also learned from her the concern for keeping athletes’ information private. The final concept that she has taught me to keep up my ability to be organized as that will come in handy especially in the sports world.
In the future, Hannah hopes to continue working in her current position at the Olympic and Paralympic committee here in the U.S. By staying in her current role Hannah has the power to open the door for women who aspire to one day work in the sports world. Hannah hopes that she will be able to leave her mark and be remembered in the Olympic world once she retires later on. Hannah is optimistic about the possibility of having more women enter her profession in the future. Lastly, she has confidence that the number of sports positions for women will continue to grow.
Citations:
Article: Pulido, A.J. (2014). Factors Affecting Student-Athletes’ Perceptions of Online Privacy Issues on Twitter: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas-El Paso]. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1331
