Leading with Impact: How Joanne Pasternack Uses Sport to Change Lives #legacybuilding

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who.

Dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

Welcome back to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we celebrate extraordinary individuals who use their platforms to make a positive difference. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. Our guest today is a nationally respected leader in sports based social impact, Joanne Pasternak. And my friend, by the way. Joanne currently serves as the Executive Director of Lauria's Sport for Good foundation usa, a global movement that uses the power of sport to end violence, discrimination and disadvantage. She previously led the social impact and community engagement efforts for two of the most iconic franchises in professional sports, The San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors. Throughout her career, Joanne has been a catalyst helping athletes, executives and organizations harness the power of sport to drive lasting change in communities around the world. In today's conversation, we'll explore her journey, her leadership philosophy, and the deep sense of purpose that fuels her mission. And I must say that you've always had your why in the right place.

From a very, very young age.

Yeah. Welcome to the show, Joanne. It's good to see you.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Your career has been dedicated to leveraging sport as a force for good. What first drew you to the space?

You know, I can't remember a time when it wasn't front and center for me. I was a competitive figure skater growing up, but I had been through a pretty devastating car accident when I was quite little, and I'd been told all these things I couldn't do. But skating found me and I found it, and I was drawn into the sport. And it helped me to develop a sense of purpose, confidence, and also all of the characteristics we know are embedded within any sport, which is just resiliency and dedication. But when I was 14, I had the opportunity to start volunteering as a coach for a Special Olympics figure skating program that my coach was running. And that changed everything for me because the young woman I was paired up with became my best friend almost immediately. And we had everything in common. The only thing we had that was different was she had a bonus chromosome. But that didn't hinder our sense of connectivity because we both shared a love for figure skating, and that's what brought us together. So it started very young. Very young.

Yeah. I mean, that must have been such a touching experience. And I've had similar experiences in my life. So I know firsthand that having some neurodivergence or something in your. In your chromosome does not take away from your why or your impact that you can make on the world. So that. That just really resonates with me. Thank you for sharing that.

I mean, we both really like the music of Tiffany because It was the 80s and sparkly things, so, you know, there was that, but certainly the skates and she. She could do a mean two foot spin, so.

Nice.

We. Off we went.

Yeah. That's great. Can you share a defining moment from your early days with the 49ers or the warriors that solidified your belief in sport as a vehicle for social change?

I. I'd actually like to go a little farther back.

Please do.

Why I ended up at the 49ers was because I was working in city government for a city called Mountain View, which is next to Palo Alto in Northern California. And I had been brought on as a senior analyst looking at various community based initiatives and helping to build the community. And I was working for the police chief. And he recognized a challenge that we had in our community with some gang activity and that many of the young people were running as fast as they could away from the cops when the cops were trying to come in to help them. And so he really wanted to create a police activities league to help bridge that gap and came to me and asked me to pull that together. I'd never done anything like that, but I've never been afraid to say yes to things and learn as I go. But through serving the police officers and learning where they had areas of passion, we created a model race car program, a boxing program, tennis, soccer, soccer, really an art program even. And about six months into it, one of our officers had a call out at a 711 where there had been.

An incident. And he came to my office afterwards because he said, joanne, it's working. These three kids came running towards me when I got to the 7:11 to tell me that they had seen what had happened and they wanted to help.

Wow.

And it was just like he was, like, emotional about it. That officer and I are still very good friends, and it's kept him in the profession for 30 years. But because of that, I knew that I wanted to be able to do that type of work connecting people through the power of sport full time. And that's how I landed at the 49ers.

Yeah.

Whoo. It was some great people at that organization, too, that supported that. And I know I had some background with some of the athletes on that team, so they all were on board. It was really, really amazing to see.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting because people often come and I have a lot of memorabilia behind me, but everything behind me means something because it's connected to and a lot of it. The 49ers, these incredible athletes who led with their heart and would show up every Tuesday or every Monday, depending on the day off with the head coach to do community based activities to give back. But they had no contractual obligation to do any of it. And yet for six years running, we had 100% participation from the players. They would come to the event, they would dig in deep. We weren't there to just have them smile for photos and sign autographs. We encourage them to bring their own look, feel, flavor, passion to the events. And I can remember, I mean, there's so many moments, but you know, Patrick Willis cradling a newborn baby who had a genetic condition, like just in the crook of his arm. And this baby was so, so tiny. And I remember just looking over and captured, I actually have a picture of it because the way that he was looking at this baby was like, was trying to channel some of his energy. And when I asked him later, he was like, I felt like I needed to give him some of my strength. Like, I had it, you know, in spades. We did, we did make a wishes where, you know, families would tell us the last time your child smiled. But we also did the first father daughter football clinic of any NFL team. And we had all these coaches with their daughters, like NFL coaches daughters. One of them, he had five sons and one daughter. And he came to me afterwards and he said, this is the first time I've ever played football with my daughter. And it was awesome.

That's great.

That's so cool. You know, I just make the assumption that my boys want to play but that she wouldn't. So, you know, so cool. Fun, fun things.

Yeah. Did you have some natural progression from when you were with the 49ers to when you went to the warriors to do similar work? Was there a learning experience that you took from that situation to bring to the Warriors?

Yeah, it's interesting because the, the area of social responsibility has evolved so substantially over time. When I first got to the 49ers, it was 2008, and corporate partnerships would create sponsorship deals and then knock on my door and say, hey, can you activate Heroes in the Classroom initiative? We want you to bring a player and a mascot to a classroom every week.

They were often hard to execute as they had been written into contracts and so started to become a little more bullish in going and Saying, if you're starting to develop this contract, I'd love to weigh in on it so that we can create something that's meaningful for the sponsor and also meaningful for our beneficiaries and then where we can get the players involved as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And they were very amenable to it. And by the time I left the Niners, those conversations were happening as a group. Like, I would be brought into some of the conversations with potential sponsors about how they wanted to activate. The other thing that changed was early on in my time, you would see the signs, the field boards, whatever, like at the stadium. Sponsors were coming in, wanting to just get visibility and suites and seats and things like that. By the time I was moving over to the warriors and we were starting to build Chase center, it was completely different. We had a deal that we did with Kaiser Permanente to create Thrive City Generation Thrive that was almost exclusively focused on the philanthropic give back components of a corporate partnership deal and not on the suites, the seats and the signs.

Yeah.

So that was big.

Yeah.

Chevron did a $4 million deal with the 49ers to create a STEM leadership institute and had very little interest in any in stadium. Actually no interest in stadium signage. They just wanted to underwrite field trips for 15,000 kids a year. And they're still doing it. So the philosophically, I feel like from a corporate perspective perspective, it changed from, isn't it nice if you do something good in addition to. To let's lead with the something good. And we know that that resonates with our consumers. So it's if it's good for the world, it's good for business.

Yeah. Well, let's dovetail right into your time now with Laurius. Tell me, you know your current role as executive director of Laurus Sport for Good foundation usa. What are some of the initiatives you're most proud of right now?

So I've been a fan of Laureus for a while. I had the opportunity to be a judge for the awards program like 10 years ago and had always been really in awe of the way that they went about doing their work. Laurius is focused on building coalitions and leveraging the power of sport to create unity and to create courageous conversation spaces. So we were originally founded as a foundation following up on the awards. But when Nelson Mandela in the year 2000 spoke at the Laureus Global Awards and he shared his always famous line about sport having the power to change the world and connect people and break down barriers, we still, 25 years later, live that ethos every single day. So at Sport for Good throughout the world, we have Sport for Good cities. The US we have four cities that we've identified as being hubs of innovation, connection and amplifying the impact out into the communities. Using sport as a way to bring kids, communities, community leaders, everybody together around the table. So right now we are in Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago and New York. We will hopefully be expanding into another city this year and really bringing our coalition model to the table there as well.

Yeah. What is it about those particular cities that made them good pilot programs for this program?

That's a great question. So a couple things. First of all, they are urban environments where there is a tremendous disparity among populations. We've also found that in more recent years, people tend to go out of the cities to find places to play.

Practice sport. We need to make more of those resources available within cities. So that's another reason why we look at these urban areas and places where there isn't as much green space.

We also know that we have concentrated population and they are areas where there are sports, pro sports teams that are looking for ways to activate in the community in collaboration with organizations that do the vetting for them so that the right nonprofit is being brought to the table. So, so those are some of the characteristics we look for. We want there to be both funders and people who need funding and we'd like to get them talking to each other.

Yeah. Do you have a roadmap of how you want to expand that out to other markets, what the timeline is for that to build it out to most of the urban centers around the country?

Yeah, I mean, it's a smart growth model. We're not trying to set a goal and say we want to be in 50 states by the year 2050 or something like that. It's a very pragmatic approach. Let's look at where the opportunity is, where the interest is. Right now we are about to launch a six month feasibility study in a city in the Southwest where we believe there's great opportunity and that it has all of the components that we would look for in a coalition city. But we don't just want to jump in and say we're going to make a difference. We want to actually go in beforehand and really take our time and meet with the stakeholders and, and determine whether we're needed there or whether we can provide a grant that can help somebody who's already there continue to do the great work. So while we have our support for good cities, we also do outreach and give grants in almost every state in the US as well as Canada and Mexico and, you know, other localities where it's needed. But the full coalition is something that we take our time to really examine before we jump into it.

I mean, knowing you, you've had these conversations privately, but knowing you and your why and why you're in this business, it seems like almost kismet or. Or serendipitous that you ended up at Laureate's because the perfect fit. Almost. Right.

It's. I mean, I like to think it is. It does feel like it. It's. You know, I like the word besher, which means, you know, meant to be. And. And.

It'S interesting because I was running my own consulting firm for about five years, and I had last summer just taken a deep breath and thought about where do I want to be and what do I want to be doing? And I knew I wanted to be a part of a team that was working together to do great things and having the support of great partners. We work with Richemont, which is luxury brands, conglomerate of 29 different maisons, all looking at ways that they can give back and give back together. So that helps. We have Nike, we have Dove, we have all these partners who want to lean in and are relying on us to help make that happen. So that's fun. I also have a team of 14 people who are in our various cities and also in New York who are so passionate and so dedicated that it's made it feel like.

It'S just fun. It's fun to be able to jump in and do the work and to know that you have the resources behind you to really elevate that. So we're expanding our partnerships, we're expanding our board reach. We have athletes who don't even need last names on our board.

And Marcus Allen and Michael Johnson, and we're fortunate to be able to work with them to help bring more visibility to sport as a unified.

Fantastic. How active are the individual athletes in the process with you?

They're fantastic. In fact, two hours ago, I was on the call with one of our NFL legends who's a part of our board, and he just spent time last week in Albany, New York, helping to advocate around a reallocation of funds to support youth sports in urban environments throughout New York. And great stuff. He took a train up to Albany just like everybody else, and knocked on doors and met with state legislators and had fun doing it. And that's, you know, another component that we always look for with our athlete engagement is not Only what are we asking of them, but what is it that they're hoping to gain from the participation? Because that's how you get people to come back again. So my first question to him was, how was it, you know, what, did you enjoy it? He said, never done anything like it and I would do it again in a minute. And he said, I felt like I was getting better and better with each conversation. And so when we look at athletes who have been in that professional high profile role, sometimes they are.

They find themselves at the crossroads where they're not going to be a professional athlete anymore and they can't figure out what's next. At Laureus, one of the things that we're able to do is to provide them with a forum where they can start to build out some of those skills. So different kind of muscle, but one that can take them well into their old age.

Yeah, I mean, as you know, most of my prior career with athletes really focused on that mentorship aspect of getting them to that next level where they knew how to proceed to the next part of their life. So I totally relate to that. How do you approach. This is along the same subject, but how do you approach guiding athletes who want to give back but didn't yet have the clarity on how to channel their passion into the impact?

Great questions. You know, it's interesting, I mean, you mentioned why. Getting to why. I tend to talk about ikigai, which is a philosophy that's really helping people to find the. The thing that makes them want to get out of bed in the morning, their purpose. With athletes, we talk to them a lot about the thing that they love, the thing that they can get paid to do and what the world needs and what they're good at. Right. And where those all intersect is that that center point where we found something that really means something to the individual and where they can not just do it because they love it, but do it because the world needs it and because there's a market for it. Which is, which is really important because from a pragmatic perspective, I want athletes to be able to figure out what's next in their lives, but to align it with where their skills are. So I might want to be an opera singer, but you don't even want me singing Happy Birthday. Just trust me. So it does not matter how badly I want to be an opera singer. Nobody's ever hiring me to do that. Right. So I can love.

I don't know, because I haven't heard you sing.

Just. No, we're not doing It.

It's just, who am I to judge your singing?

Please don't, because it'll be embarrassing and I will just not have any idea what I've just put onto the film. I'm the lip syncer at the karaoke.

But I don't try to make a living off of it. And I'm aware enough to be able to take a step back and say, what are the things that I'm actually really good at? And how can I meet the people who are good at the things that aren't my strength so that I can bring it all together. So we do the same thing with athletes. We're working with them on that pragmatic approach to figuring out what would come next. Now, the other component and one of the ways that Laureus is very helpful for our athlete ambassadors is we give them a place where they can try on a little bit of philanthropy. They can show up, they can contribute to something with time, with effort, with funds, if they wish. I have spent a lot of years working to convince athletes not to Open their own 501c3 charities have organizations and to not take on that personal liability or that risk or.

That's right.

Or really the specificity of it as they're trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be when they grow up. And instead, they can partner with us and so they can go out and do an event and see if that resonates and lean over and do something else. And, you know, you. You kind of just do the twists and turns and hopefully they find something that resonates. But if what they'd like to do for the rest of their lives is work in wealth management, but on the side, come out and do some soccer clinics, that's fantastic. We'd love to do that. And I, you know, that's. That's a actual thing that I've done with certain athletes where there's a guy played in Major League Soccer for 15 years and just text him and say, hey, there's a clinic happening. The guy's built out an entire career in the software industry, but he loves filling his bucket by coming out and doing a soccer clinic.

Great stuff. You've built programs that span grassroots engagement to global awareness. Do you have metrics or how do you define success when it comes to legacy work?

Well, it's interesting. I think there are two different ways you can define success. What most people want you to do is to provide them with metrics like, I impacted 100,000 kids through this. Da da da da da. I, I don't approach it that way. I may have taken statistics for psychology majors, but I do love data analytics and I do believe that you should only take credit for the things that you have actually done. So if we're going to donate $10,000 to an organization that has a million dollar annual operating budget and we're then going to try to claim some sort of impact on every single child who's gone through that program, I think that's really disingenuous. So instead we want to look at what we do best and how are we increasing capacity. So an example, I was in Chicago visiting our program site there just a few weeks ago, and I went to a boxing gym. It's a place called the Block. It's awesome. It's a converted church, south side of Chicago. And you walk in and you just can feel the energy. And it's just this really cool space with stained glass windows, but a hundred kids all in unison doing boxing practice. Right. But then we went on a tour of the building and I kept seeing chessboards everywhere. And so finally I asked the executive director, I'm like, what's with. All the kids were playing chess. It wasn't just chessboards sitting there, they're playing chess. And he said, oh, I was at this Laureus event, sat next to a guy who runs this chess for kids program in the south side here. And we started talking about how chess and boxing were very similar, that they were about strategy, about being one step ahead of your opponent. You know, all of this. And so we said, well, why don't we do this together? Like, what if we bring chessboards over to the boxing gym and what if I send some of the boxing kids over to your after school program so they can learn how to play chess? And so now the two are linked. Well, what that success metric is is that both organizations have seen an increased.

Traffic into their programs, but they're also seeing kids who are being, are able now to take advantage of two programs that are developing their mind, their body, and their strategic development skills all in one. But they matter around the Laurie's table. And so it's hard to put a number around that because I can't tell you exactly how many kids, but I can tell you that when I walked around the boxing gym, the kids, if they finished their homework and they hadn't yet started boxing practice or the reverse, they get to play chess. It's a reward.

I think that's an amazing story. I love that it's.

But you just, you can imagine Like, I'm walking around like, these kids are still in, like, their boxing T shirts and, like. But concentrating. It's, like, silent, like, moving the chessboard.

Yeah. All right. I'm going to go into what. What I like to call the lightning round.

And for you, you've worked with so many amazing people, but. And I don't want to put you on the spot, but, yes, I do.

Okay.

Can you give me one, two, or even three athletes who deeply inspired you?

Yeah.

Without offending anybody.

No, I know. It's funny. There's so many favorites, right. Patrick Willis is one of the greatest humans I've ever had the chance to know. Patrick leads with humility and.

Also understands to the depth of his soul what it means to have an impact on somebody and to look somebody in the eyes and treat them as they should be treated as a human. And he gives back in a really, really authentic way to a hometown where there were lots of challenges, but where he feels like he can go back and make a difference. He's amazing. Scott Hamilton is probably one of my favorite people in the world as well. I admired Scott from afar for a very long time and then had a chance to meet him when I was working at Special Olympics very early in my career. And I watched him walk around a Special Olympics, making everybody feel like a superstar, like every single person. And again, I think that's a really unique characteristic. And then the other athlete I would mention is Loretta Claiborne, who is the chief inspiration officer for Special Olympics globally. And her story, if you haven't read about it, there's a Disney film that was done about her story. But Special Olympics athlete who has done marathon after marathon after marathon after being told, you know, when she was an infant, her adoptive family was told that she would never speak, she would never walk, she would all these things she would never do, and she just didn't believe it. And I. I love that about her because if you tell her you doubt her, she's like, okay, I'll show you what I can do. So, yeah, there's humility, compassion, and humanity.

Common thread, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. All right. Give me a lesson from pro sports that you use every day.

Actually, it's one of my favorites.

So game time is game time, Right. If you have a 1pm kickoff, you can't say, I'm not quite ready. Can we push it to 1:05? You're gonna start at 1, so you're going to have to figure out a way to make things happen. My daughter's school has A motto which is, I will find a way or make one. It's an all girls school. I love this motto because that is what it feels like in sports. I might not have everything set up exactly as I want, but I still need to get out there with my giant check on the field and be ready when the camera's on. So same thing with the athletes. They could be having a bad day, they could be having a stomachache, like, who knows? But they're still gonna turn it off, go out and get it done. Because game time is game time. So the lesson that comes from that for me is over. Preparation does not necessarily set you up for success. Flexibility and confidence that you're going to be able to get it done. And also the knowledge that if you don't tell people you're going to have three flavors of lemonade at your party and you only have one or you just have iced tea, nobody misses the lemonade they never knew they were going to have. So I look at it as like, let's give them the best production or the best result and we don't need to tell them what we were hoping we could do. So also celebrate what you've accomplished versus turning around and berating yourself for what you could have done.

Wow, Powerful message. Well, as you so eloquently stated, game time is game time. And you shared with me earlier that you just got off a red eye today. You're not 100%, but you seem 100% to me. Joanne, as always, thank you. I just, I really want to thank you for being on the show. I have such gratitude for the work that you do and, and the grace with which you perform that work. So thank you for your leadership and your heart. Your work reminds me that true legacy is not just built on stadiums or boardrooms, but lives the way we touch people along the way. So I really appreciate it. To our listeners, if Joanne's story moved you, which I can't imagine it could not, please share this episode and support the mission of Laurius USA@lureususa.com. is that right? Did I get the address right?

Laurusa.com.

Okay, good. I want to make sure people can reach you. You can also find Joanne on LinkedIn. That's Joanne Pasternak. Until next time, keep showing up, keep giving back, keep building your legacy. I'm Alan Pavloski signing off for Legacy All Stars.