Women's history month: Samantha Hicks

To celebrate Women’s History Month, RenoAces.com is sitting down with some of the women leaders in the organization. The transcribed Q&A is below, and the full video is also available.

Up next is chief revenue officer Samantha Hicks. Hicks oversees the ticket sales team, and is one of the highest ranking women in the front office.

Question: What do you think the value is in being in your position, that people have a female supervisor and that there are so many other female supervisors in the organization?

Answer: I think for our club it’s great, because being in any professional setting you want to have diversity and continue to show that. I just think it’s highly important when it comes to being able to see yourself, and where you want to go and having a vision. So specifically for young women in Northern Nevada, being able to want to work for a professional sports team and seeing that that can actually occur.

Q: What do you think that means to girls to see an organization like this where there are so many women in charge and think “I can do this and rise up too?”

A: I think it’s just being able to see people in those positions and knowing that’s an opportunity. Specifically for anyone who wants to go into business, sales, marketing or the service industry in general, being able to come to a game is where they’re going to look around and observe and see someone doing something and say ‘wow that looks cool.” I know for me and starting off in ticket sales I was able to see people throughout the arena at the time, walking around in suits, talking to customers or assisting people in finding their seats.

Q: What would you say to young women that ask you about working in sports or any male-dominated field?

A: I think luckily for me I’ve always been surrounded by very good leaders and coworkers that were very diverse, whether that was gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation. So being able to start your career and continue to rise in a situation like that makes you think this should be the normal. I’ve always had the mindset that the more diverse the people you work with, there’s going to be different assets that people bring to the table, and that’s what you want in a room. When you make a decision you want people that are diverse and bring different mindsets or experiences to the decisions or you’re going to have a lot of the same.

Q: Can you talk about the benefits for the business, on top of the benefits for the community?

A: I think it really comes to light in the decision making process of ‘what are we trying to do,’ ‘what are we trying to accomplish,’ and again I think the more voices and opinions you have the better result. Specifically in sales, I think there’s a unique thing about being a woman sales leader or selling something to someone because a lot of people can find you very approachable and I think that’s a good thing.

Q: Can you talk about some of the challenges you’ve faced and overcome in your career?

A: One of the best pieces of advice from one of my mentors is any time you’re going into a sales pitch or an important meeting throw a blazer on. As a woman, sometimes you know it’s just how you dress, how you carry yourself and just making sure your voice comes across as heard at that table. So I think just being able to be confident and know that your opinion matters and speaking up. The more you do that the more respect you’re going to gain from the people you’re sitting with at that table. And so I think that that is felt throughout the whole organization.

Q: Do you have any final thoughts, comments?

A: I would say just really create a story for yourself. What is your story going to be, who do you want to interact with and then what’s that vision for what you want to do. And surround yourself with really good people, because that’s what’s going to matter and they’re going to help get you to that next step and get you to that position.