Her grandfather bought half of the New York Giants. She grew up asking, “What if I’m just average?”
Emily Tisch Sussman, co-owner of the New York Giants and Gotham FC and founder and host of She Pivots, joins Ian Schwartzman on Built Different to talk about what it really takes to live up to a family legacy, and what happens when the career you built falls apart.
Emily opens up about the pressure of growing up around the best of everything, why she worked harder than anyone in the office so people would know her as a hard worker instead of a last name, and the family story that grounds her: her grandmother Joan volunteering anonymously at Gay Men’s Health Crisis during the early days of the AIDS crisis. She also gets candid about motherhood, including why she didn’t feel connected to her kids at first and how three kids and the COVID lockdown ended her political career.
Then the business: how the Tisch family has approached ownership of the Giants for more than 30 years, why she thinks Gotham FC games should feel as buzzy as Knicks courtside, what’s driving the growth of the NWSL, and how She Pivots grew into sponsoring NASCAR driver Dystany Spurlock and co-producing Broadway shows.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:23 The pressure of the family legacy
02:50 Stop worrying what people say about you
03:39 Growing up with the Giants
05:33 How ownership handles player decisions
07:20 Gotham FC and the Liberty model
08:32 From federal policy to “white space”
10:08 The business of the NWSL
13:28 Her grandmother’s anonymous AIDS activism
15:40 Motherhood and the end of a political career
19:26 Why she started She Pivots
21:41 Being a first mover
22:42 Broadway, NASCAR, and what’s next
24:58 Center Cut Cards
Featuring:
Emily Tisch Sussman, Co-Owner, New York Giants and Gotham FC; Founder and Host, She Pivots
Hosted by Ian Schwartzman
#BuiltDifferent #NYGiants #GothamFC #WomensSports #Entrepreneurship
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