If you were to join a team meeting at Parity on any given day, you might sense something unusual. One colleague may have just returned from a strength session. Another might be joining from an airport between competitions. Someone else might be analyzing sponsor data mere hours before competing in a world-class event.
This is what it looks like to lead a company where a significant portion of the workforce comprises elite women athletes. And I believe it represents a powerful window into the future of work.
At most companies, people point to a visionary founder or a breakthrough product as the thing that makes an organization stand out. At Parity, the differentiator is the people themselves. Our team includes a current WNBA player, a Canadian two-time Olympic runner, a nine-time U.S. waterskiing champion, a former NWSL soccer player, and a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in sitting volleyball. Others have competed professionally in pro tackle football and track and field (including pole vault). Twenty-six percent of our team even have Wikipedia entries (and no, I’m not one of them).
While some team members have retired from sport, many still train and compete at the highest levels while simultaneously shaping our business strategy. They broker partnerships with esteemed brands like Microsoft, M&T Bank, LinkedIn, and AdventHealth. They manage our community of 1,200 pro women athletes while developing smart content and winning creative strategies for clients. And they bring a lived understanding of what it means to operate under pressure, to persevere, to adapt, and to collaborate—the very skills business leaders often spend years trying to cultivate inside corporate environments.
WHY WE HIRE ATHLETES
When I joined Parity, our mission was clear: Close the income and opportunity gap for women athletes. That mission shapes everything, including how we think about talent.
If we’re going to build a company dedicated to advancing women in sports, why wouldn’t we build it with women in sports?
Every athlete who joins our team brings something that leaders often talk about but rarely see themselves: firsthand experience with inequity. Our own research underscores the challenges professional women athletes face.
- 58% earn under $25,000 annually from their sport
- 50% don’t net income after training and competition expenses
- Many juggle full-time jobs while maintaining elite training schedules
These athletes aren’t theoretically aware of the pay gap—they’ve lived it. They’re not generically familiar with underinvestment—they’ve had to fight through it. And them having lived the reality of our mission creates a real workforce advantage.
When a brand asks how to build authentic partnerships with women athletes, our team can speak from experience—sometimes literally from the Olympic Village. When we advise marketers on what resonates with women’s sports fans, our experts understand the community because they are part of it. This model isn’t manufactured through training sessions or leadership offsites. It’s the natural outcome of building a company around people with lived expertise.
THE ATHLETE ADVANTAGE
One of the most important things I’ve learned as a CEO is that skills do not automatically translate across contexts—but values and instincts do.
Elite athletes possess certain foundational strengths that prove invaluable in business:
Resilience. Athletes experience failure and setbacks more frequently—and more publicly—than most professionals ever will. They do not crumble when they lose. They study. They iterate. They try again. This mentality fuels a culture of experimentation and growth at Parity.
Adaptability. When you compete on the world stage, you get used to constant change: Schedules shift, travel goes awry, bodies don’t always cooperate. Adaptability becomes a core
competency. In a fast-moving, early-stage company, that skill is priceless.
Team mindset. Elite women athletes in particular know the experience of achieving something remarkable with scarce resources. They understand the power of collaboration and the importance of elevating others. That ethos is foundational to how we operate.
Pressure performance. Athletes are accustomed to performing with something on the line. In business, pressure often derails people. For our athlete-employees, it sharpens them.
When people ask me how Parity has built deep credibility in the women’s sports ecosystem in such a short time, the answer is simple: Credibility builds when the people driving the strategy are the very people whose lives and livelihoods the strategy touches.
REINVENT WHAT WORK CAN LOOK LIKE
We’re living through a generational shift in how people think about leadership and talent. The rise of multi-hyphenate careers, nonlinear professional paths, and values-driven workforces are reshaping traditional corporate norms. Parity’s model sits at the intersection of these trends.
Our team members don’t have to choose between competing at the highest level and building a career. They can do both, because our flexible model makes part-time work an option for those at the height of their athletic careers, when 40-hour weeks aren’t feasible. When organizations allow flexibility, the outcomes are profound: stronger culture, greater loyalty, and better results.
A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE
Not every company will hire Olympians or Paralympians. But every company can learn from the underlying philosophy: The most powerful innovation occurs when the workforce reflects the mission.
If you’re a healthcare company, hire people who have navigated the healthcare system.
If you’re building products for parents, bring caregivers into leadership roles.
If your mission is environmental sustainability, elevate people who have worked on the front lines of climate impact.
Experience breeds insight. Insight breeds innovation. Innovation breeds impact.
At Parity, integrating athletes into our workforce hasn’t just strengthened our business. It has created a culture defined by resilience, empathy, excellence, and purpose. It has helped us close the opportunity gap in women’s sports—not just through partnerships and research, but through the very structure of our company.
If the future of work is about rethinking who gets to participate, whose experiences shape strategy, and whose voices fuel innovation, then companies everywhere would benefit from following the athlete playbook.
Which, if you ask me, is a winning strategy.
Leela Srinivasan is CEO of Parity.