This story is brought to you by the INTIX Women in Entertainment Technology Program.
“Everyone in sports and live entertainment will say that ‘No two days are the same,’ and that’s what I love about my work. Every show is different, every game is different. Even with 81 home games a year, no two games are going to be the same. You’ll have different things going on, different fans, and different activities for every game. You have your standard things that you do, but you never know what’s going to pop up. That’s exciting to me.”
Jessica Lee
So says Jessica Lee, Director of Ticket Operations for the Atlanta Braves and Truist Park. Lee has been with the ballclub and landmark venue for over seven years now, having previously served as Senior Manager of Ticket and Financial Operations and Manager of Ticket and Financial Operations. Prior to that, she was the Houston Astros’ Coordinator of Ticket Operations.
Both teams have been among the most successful in Major League Baseball over the past decade. Lee says, “One of my favorite moments that will always stand out is [the Braves] winning the World Series in 2021. I am a born-and-raised Atlanta girl. I left for 10 years and then came back to work for the Braves. But I grew up in Atlanta in the ‘90s and watched those great Braves teams. So, to be here with the team and win it in ‘21 was surreal. I had left the Astros one season before they won the World Series. And, of course, it was like, ‘Aw man!’ But to win the one in Atlanta meant so much more than if I had been in Houston when they won theirs in 2017, because this is the team I grew up with.”
Lee has spent nearly 13 years total working the ticketing side of America’s pastime. Her first gig was as a ticket operations assistant for the The Gwinnett Braves (now the Gwinnett Stripers since 2017), a Minor League team in Georgia. As her workload has increased, so too have the demands on her time. Finding that balance has been a challenge.
“The longer I’ve been in the industry, the more responsibility I have taken on,” she says. “I still find time management to be a little bit difficult. Time management earlier in my career looked quite different than what it looks like now! I’m involved in more meetings than ever, and I still have a lot of work to do. I have multiple projects going on that all have roughly the same timeline. This time of year, of course, we’re gearing up for the season to start.”
With this being our Women in Ticketing series of feature interviews, Lee was quick to offer some counsel to young women in the business who may be reading this article: “Someone once told me, ‘No is a full sentence.’ And I needed to hear that! As women, I think we have grown accustomed to needing to justify ourselves. For some reason, ‘No’ almost always has to proceed an explanation. We find ourselves apologizing for a lot of stuff while our male counterparts go about life and work without too much explanation needed. That’s not to say, ‘Be lazy and say no if you don’t want to do something.’ But evaluate your bandwidth and your mental health and be empowered to say ‘No’ when you truly don’t have it.”
She continues, “The worst piece of advice I ever got was when I was an intern and was told, ‘Say yes to everything!’ I was 22 or 23 years old and saying ‘yes’ to everything to the point where I had no time to myself. The projects I had weren’t [getting done] to the best of my ability, and I was being reprimanded for the quality of work. I was stretched too thin to the point where, if I got to eat, I would have maybe a yogurt in a day! That takes a toll.”
But then there are those moments that Lee can look back on, smile and delight in re-telling the tale whether at a cocktail party, an industry gathering or with this journalist over the phone.
One memory stands out from when she worked marketing and group sales for Consul Energy Center (which has since been renamed PPG Paints Arena) in Pittsburgh very early in her career: “There was a month between hockey and concerts and family shows that we really didn’t have much of a life,” she says. “It was the heaviest month in terms of work since I had been there. There was maybe one day where we worked a normal 9-to-5. All of that culminated in an Elton John concert. Now, I love Elton John. But at that point, we were all kind of delirious. And I remember I, along with a few of the other ladies who were there, just happened to pop out to watch the crowd and take in a moment of the show. It was when he played ‘Crocodile Rock.’ The next thing you know, the three of us were dancing and laughing and singing and just deliriously having a moment of great release! I’ll never forget that.”
And she is feeling some of that same excitement and energy now that pitchers and catchers have reported, and the Braves are starting to play Spring Training games. “There is certainly a buzz in the office,” she says. “It indeed starts right around when pitchers and catchers report. Even before that, it’s a big deal when the trucks load up to go down to Spring Training. Truck Day is always a big day! Then, you start getting reports and videos from Spring Training. We’re not in crunch mode quite yet, but we’re getting there and trying to get everything ready for the season.”
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