Beyond the Highlight

Shana Sumers landed a moderator seat at WNBA All-Star Weekend by asking one question and listening for the gap. She turned that week into 60+ new connections and 38 follow-up calls.

Shana is a founder, speaker, and career coach who helps athletes build careers as powerful as their game. In this episode she breaks down how she found out about Chicago Sports Tech Week six weeks out, why moderators are the last thing an event books, and how she used that to time her ask. We get into treating relationship building like a strategy, the calendar reminders and notes that make her follow-up work, and why she says authenticity is preparation.

What we get into:

• How she used what she already knew about booking talent to find the gap she could fill
• Running relationship building and follow-up as an intentional system
• Saying yes to the gigs that built her reps and expanded her toolkit
• Why the ask is fair game once you’ve added value first

(1:07) Who Shana is

(3:07) How the All-Star moderator seat came together

(12:29) Relationship building as a strategy

(21:32) Getting better at the craft

(21:46) What came after the weekend

Read the full case study: https://www.herizonconnect.com/beyond-the-highlight/shana-sumers
Shana on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shana-sumers
Instagram, Threads, and TikTok: @shanabetalking
Her podcast: Bad Queers

Beyond the Highlight is a podcast from HERizon Connect, a professional social networking platform for women working in sports.

You’ve seen the highlight. The post, the launch, the campaign that made the rounds. This podcast is about what it took to get there.

I’m Tori Boykins, founder of HERizon Connect, and after ten years in the sports industry I’m still curious about how this work comes together behind the scenes. Every month I sit down with a woman working in sports and go deep into one thing she built: a campaign, an event, an initiative, a business she started from nothing. Having gone from individual contributor to leading a team, these are the conversations I wish I’d had access to earlier.

What we get into every episode:

• The work: what she set out to build, and what she had to figure out as she went
• The strategy and execution: the calls she made, and the skills she spent years building that made it possible
• The outcome: what it produced, and everything that came up along the way that nobody sees from the outside

New episodes every month, starting now. Follow the show wherever you listen, and find the full written case study for every episode at herizonconnect.com.

Tori on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/toriboykins  
Instagram and Threads: @toriboykins

Beyond the Highlight is a podcast from HERizon Connect, a professional social networking platform for women working in sports.