Claire Niemann is a freshman here at William and Mary, hoping to major in Marketing. She and I met at a summer camp for the academically excellent just before junior year of high school. She lived in the same suite as me and was absolutely amazing. It was there that she told me of her dream of being the first female NFL commissioner. It was there that the entire camp sat in an auditorium heard her incredible speech on when she found her passion, her family, and home when she entered the Ravens’ Stadium for the first time.
Claire knows what she’s talking about. She ran stats and managed the football team at her high school. She interned as a football assistant for Georgetown before she even graduated. She runs a football blog, and she works as a football assistant for the Tribe team. She reads up on all the history, she works to keep well read on her stats, and basically works her butt off to know everything about the game. But Claire has a lot to contend with, not only because it is a tough field, but because people constantly underestimate her because she’s a woman. Because of this preconceived notion of what a hardcore football fan looks like, she has had to work much harder in order to never give anyone an opportunity to look down on her ambitions. Claire is the kind of girl who refuses to give up on her dream, and will fight to open doors for any woman who wants to go into football, or any male-dominated field.
HerCampus: What made you interested in football to begin with?
Claire Niemann: My interest in football is interesting, because it doesn’t stem from my parents—it ‘s just kind of something I discovered when I was younger. Like, my dad always watched football on TV, but he wasn’t really into it, but he would always sit and watch it. And occasionally I’d go down and watch with him but after about middle school, I went to my first Ravens game—I’m a Ravens fan—and that was a really big deal for me, and having the whole experience really helped me get more interested in it. And then in eighth grade, my advisor was a Steelers fan. Ravens and Steelers are rivals, so I would have to keep up on the Ravens stuff so I could, you know, talk and joke with him, and he really encouraged me to get into it and he was like the first really strong, positive, pro-football influence, I guess, in my life; so a lot of it definitely goes back to him. You know, we talked about everything from the draft, to who’s playing whom, to the Super Bowl—, and he really helped build that interest. My dad is more like a fan of the game—he’ll watch the games, but he’s not crazy crazy into it—not like I am. So Tom, my advisor, was really the first to push me in the right direction.
HC: So, where did the interest in becoming NFL commissioner come from?
CN: Well, it didn’t take me very long to realize I could not play *laughs* I tried to play my sophomore year of high school, but I went to a private school, so they basically told me girls could not play boy’s sports and boys could not play girl’s sports. It’s legal because it’s a private school. Had I gone to a school like [yours] it would have been illegal under Title 9. They would have had to allow me to play. I wanted to play as a field-goal kicker, by the way. So, I tried to play my sophomore year—I just wanted to see if I could give it a shot, just because I knew I’d always kick myself if I didn’t try. So I knew I couldn’t play, and I was pretty sure they’d never let a girl coach—There’s a female head coach in Washington at one of the high schools, and I don’t know her whole story but I know that she’s out there, and female coaches and female players do exist and have throughout recent years—but I knew that on a grand scale, you would never be able to have a female coach or a female player [in the NFL] until there was change in the front office. And I was watching the draft when I was in eighth grade and they had this commercial of Roger Goodell, the current commissioner, and he held up the draft card right before he went on stage, with the little NFL shield, and it was first overall pick. And then he walked out on stage—and I looked at that and saw him up there talking and I said to myself, “That’s what I want to do.” I want to essentially be the face of the NFL. And I realized that was something I could do if I went through the right steps and got there.
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HC: So you want to do this, not just for you, but to show other girls that they can, and make it not an just an exception to the rule that guys know football and girls don’t?
CN: Yeah! Something I run into a lot is people not taking me seriously because I’m a girl. They’ll hear I’m into football and they’ll go “oh, she probably just likes it because the guys wear tight pants and a lot of them a pretty attractive—“ and all this other bullsh*t. And it’s really frustrating, because that was never any part of it for me, and it never will be. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I love it, and it has nothing to do with the appearance of the guys who play it. Like, if there was a girl, who really loves soccer, would you say she just likes it because of the cute guys? Because they take their shirts off all the time? No, you wouldn’t say that, because girls can play soccer professionally, so there’s a stigma there for football, and I hate it. I hate it. But I feel like, if there was a female commissioner, at would A- yeah, show other girls they could do it, but B- it would also open the doors for female coaches, female players, and other high-ranking female executives [in football]. And female referees as well! You know, people say women shouldn’t referee games, and that’s not true at all. A girl is just as capable of making a good call as a guy is, and a guy is just as capable of making a bad call. You can’t tell me that male referees don’t screw up a lot. It’s just really frustrating to run into this stigma. And it’s sexism! And honestly, I have run into it in my career, in my lifetime. Whether it’s just kids at school or people I might try to work for or work with. It’s really tough, and I think that if someone could break through and get up there and start erasing some of these barriers, then there wouldn’t be this stigma around women in football. I think that there are a lot of women who would like to get into it, but feel like they just can’t. And it’s really frustrating to not be taken seriously because of something you can’t control. I can’t control the fact that I was born a girl, and I can’t control the way that I love football. It’s something that is a part of me. That stigma is really frustrating and shouldn’t be there for anyone. It’s not only football. Like why is it seen as a weird thing for a boy to be a cheerleader? We need to stop looking at things in such a gender oriented way. If you’re a boy you do this, this, and this, if you’re a girl, you do this, this, and this, and to have that kind of a line drawn is not such a good thing.
HC: It’s really not. You know, at my high school, our football team wasn’t that great, but our cheerleading squad kicked a**. They were always one of the top teams in the state. And we had male cheerleaders and no one ever gave them any crap about it, because they were awesome at what they did and everybody respected that.
CN: As long as you’re good at what you do, it really shouldn’t matter. Like, people say that women are not good at coaching football. Well, that’s because women are never given the chance to learn. Boys, when they’re young, a lot of them are raised to play football. They play basically from the time they can put on a helmet and pads. They are raised into this culture where it’s just expected of them to do that, and through that, they learn schemes, they learn play-calling, they learn defense, they learn all these things that are important for coaching—and girls are not given the opportunity to learn that, so that’s part of the reason why people say girls can’t coach. But I think that if you let a girl sit in on meetings she can really learn. I’ve sat in on meetings before when I worked at Georgetown. When I worked at Georgetown, I was given many opportunities right off the bat. .They let me sit in on meetings, they let me break down film, and if I didn’t understand a formation or something, I would go to Coach Sgar (Robert Sgarlata, assistant head coach), who was my mentor at Georgetown, , and I’d ask him, “What is this formation? I don’t understand what they’re doing here,” and he’d explain it to me. Given the opportunity to learn, girls have just as much of a capacity to learn as boys—but people see a girl and they’re like, “oh no, go to equipment, go to athletic training—if you want to be involved, don’t go to the football side of things.”. Like, they’re telling me I can’t sit down with a writing pad and take notes like they do? Girls have the same capacity to succeed in this as boys, and in some cases, more—a new perspective can do a lot.
HC: What steps have you taken to make you better qualified to go into the field of football?
CN: First off, as far as the NFL goes, I try to learn as much about the history of the NFL as I possibly can—whether it’s reading Vince Lombardi’s biography, When Pride Still Matters, and learning about he did things—because he was obviously a very successful head coach, a huge NFL icon who came up from nothing—as well as just learning the history like who was the first commissioner, when did it become a league, knowing and being able to talk about that and proving that I know what I’m talking about is really important. People will say “oh, you don’t know anything about football,” and I can say, “oh yeah?” and then I reel off all this information off the top of my head! I watch as much NFL football as I can, because that’s what I want to get into. When we had the lockout this past season, I read all the legal stuff—the huge 50-page settlement contract, which basically became our new collective bargaining agreement, which is how the NFL and the players work out revenue sharing. The NFL is a 9-billion dollar industry so that was a really big deal and I paid really close attention to that this summer. I pay attention to what the different owners and GMs (general managers) are doing with their teams, even though a lot of fans don’t, because I think it’s really important to know how things work in the NFL and these are the things that the Commissioner has to be aware of and in charge of. I want to get my degree in Business, and then possibly a Master’s to give me the academic qualifications—you know, understand the economics, the way the numbers break down, and the legal framework behind it—so I might apply to law school considering that the Commissioner has to deal with players’ pensions, fines, what happens if a player goes to jail… Knowing all the legal stuff is really important. I’ve been working with football teams since high school and I plan on continuing regardless of where I am. I enjoy that experience and seeing how an organization runs is really important as well. I hope to work at Georgetown again this summer, so it’s almost a year-round thing. And the final thing I do that kind of put my self out there is that I run my own football blog, to put my opinions out there, get people to read it, and see that a girl can have a well-researched opinion, and can be knowledgeable about [the game]. I talk about games, I talk about players, I make game picks every week—and they’re pretty good, too, not to be immodest or anything. Sometimes, being a girl in football can be kind of fun, because people don’t expect you to be this good, to be into this, you know? The other day in practice, I fielded a punt, and everyone went wild, and I was like, “Guys. Really?” and when I can throw, they’re like, “Daaang!” “She can throw a spiral!! What!?” It’s kind of cool to get that reaction sometimes.. Sometimes it’s kind of fun to get out there and ‘stick it’ to the guys.. Sometimes it’s fun being a girl in football, and a lot of the time, it’s not fun.
HC: So what are some of the negative reactions you’ve gotten to your football interest and ambition?
CN: I would say 70-75% of the time I get a good reaction, But the other 25-30% of the time, people say, “What? Say that again?” or “hahaha.” A lot of people laugh it off. It makes me really angry. What if I laughed at your hobby, or your life’s dream? Don’t laugh at this. It really frustrates me, especially when people don’t know me. It’s frustrating to come into a program and not be taken seriously because I’m a girl. There have been certain situations, where had I been a boy, trying to do something else, whether it was trying to get into a new program, youth coaching, or playing, I would have been allowed in, no questions, and given a lot more privileges than I had been given as a girl. It’s really tough knowing that, and there are times when people who are in charge—always male, by the way; there are never women in charge of this, ever—they look at me, judge me, and put me in what they think is right without giving me a chance to prove what I can do. They don’t take me seriously, and they don’t give me a chance to be taken seriously. That’s the most frustrating part.
HC: They just write you off?
CN: Yeah. Exactly. “Oh you’re a girl, you want to do football—probably for the wrong reasons—so we’re just going to shove you into a low corner where you can ‘be involved’ but we don’t have to deal with you every day. Goodbye.” It’s frustrating—and it’s happened all over the board! I’ve had people I’ve just met do it to me. I’ve had people in my high school do it to me. I had a guy come up to me and yell at me, saying girls should never do football, or be involved in football, that he thinks it’s horrible that I’m trying—he was really in my face about it, was really rude—and you get that sometimes and the negative reaction is very hard. People laugh at me. When I was assigned an activity to write a memoir-type of piece—you know, reflect on something important to us. My current English teacher, Joe, whom I am still really close to, and I decided I would write about football. And I was talking to him and my former English teacher, and we were joking around, and I said, “Hey, what should I call it?” and my former English teacher said, “you should call it ‘The Impossible Dream’.” I was really taken aback—like, “are you serious, right now?” Stuff like that where people just throw it out as a joke, “hahaha a girl in football,” but I take stuff like that really seriously. Like I used to admire him but after he just let it slip out, and it was definitely a slip on his part, it was then that I really knew what he thought. Every once in a while, I’ll get an underhanded reaction like that where people will try to slight me, or talk down to me. Sometimes people will start talking about football technically around me, thinking I can’t keep up, but then I’ll come back with a reply that’s just as knowledgeable and technical. Underhanded comments are the most common things, but not being taken seriously in an organization is by far the hardest part. The day-to-day guy who just slights me or says I can’t do this or that—they don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t matter, so you can kind of brush that off. But when an organization is like that—and I think the entire NFL is like that—it’s much harder. I’ve been really lucky to have been in programs where I’ve been treated with respect, but when most problems don’t take you seriously, especially at higher levels, it’s really hard to break that stereotype, and the fact that is prevents you from getting certain opportunities—that’s the worst, that’s when it gets in the way. When you’re trying to further a program and your career, and they won’t work with you because you’re a girl—that’s when it makes me the most angry.
HC: So how has the William and Mary team been treating you?
CN: Coach Laycock has always treated me with respect; always remembers my name, always has been nice to me. All the coaches have always given me respect—most of them know my name, if not all of them. The coaches, I think, are more open to the idea of me in football. But they’ve never diminished me because I am a girl and I really appreciate that. Coach Laycock has always been polite and has allowed me to work with the program, which is an enormous privilege—it’s a privilege, not a right—and it’s something I’ve always been grateful for. But at the same time, I’m not going to pretend it hasn’t been a season of ups and downs. People who know me—especially my poor roommate who listens to this all the time—knows that this season hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine. It comes from a lot of things. Right now I’m working in equipment, which is not what I was doing at the start of the season.
HC: Why’d they move you?
CN:. I was just told that they “needed help in equipment” but when I got there—there were moments when they needed help, but there were also moments when there wasn’t any serious need for another person down there. There were three other students besides me. So I worked as a student volunteer while all the other students working beside me got paid. When I originally went down there to work in equipment, I thought, okay, this isn’t exactly what I wanted, but you have to pay your dues in football, you know? You can’t just walk in and be handed the key. So I said, I’ll do equipment for a year, prove to them I’m serious about this program, that this is something I’m going to work hard at, and that working with the William and Mary team is important to me. A big part of the reason I came to this school was the football program, how great it is, how prestigious it is. I kind of got over it and accepted that I couldn’t expect to get everything in life so easily. . However, it was really frustrating, especially knowing that the other student assistants were getting paid.
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HC: Why were they getting paid instead of you?
CN: One of them (the other students) had been there previously, and the same thing happened to him the year before where they told him they’d pay him but he ended up not getting paid and volunteered for a year. But you know, I trust them if they say there’s not money in the budget for it. I wasn’t originally slated to work in equipment, so I understand if they didn’t expect me to come in. Stuff goes down, numbers don’t work out. I originally didn’t expect to get paid at all this season, but being told that I would and then having it not happen was a little frustrating. If they hadn’t said I’d get paid, it wouldn’t have been an issue with me at all. I felt like I had been a little misled. I know it didn’t happen because I’m a girl, but it’s hard knowing that the only girl in the program is the only one who isn’t getting paid. When my boss told me he said, We’d like you to stay and volunteer, but understand if you want to leave the program. More than once I’ve felt like walking out the door, but I always thought about what the greats would have done. What would Lombardi have done? What would Drew Brees have done? What would all these football greats have been if they walked out? So I stayed to volunteer and continued working with the William and Mary Program. I understood that it didn’t work out and I wanted to help the program and pay my dues to the program, and sometimes you need to be humble, and it was a humbling moment for me. Now, I’ve never been paid for my work in football—in high school I got credit for it, at Georgetown it was an internship—so not getting paid didn’t bother me, but the situation it self was a little frustrating, and I think it would be for anyone.
HC: So how about the players?
CN: The players, in general, have always treated me with respect. A few seniors, Alex, Jake and Terrence, would always say hello to me and give me a big smile. Sometimes we’d even joke around, and it meant a lot to me because I felt included and valued. There were countless guys who did the same, but I really wanted to mention those seniors. It’ll be sad to lose them next year. But I think a lot of them don’t take me seriously. I think they see a girl who is working in equipment, and they don’t know why I’m there, they don’t know that I was doing something else at the beginning of this season.
HC: What were you doing at the beginning of the season?
CN: I would come to one practice a week, Monday, late practice, and I would have office hours with Jonathan Small, who is our director of football operations. And I would learn about the way our program runs, things he does like getting travel schedules together, tickets, itineraries, running the day-to-day stuff, talking with the recruits—it was really great learning about the business side of things with him. I’d do that twice a week with him or work with Coach Andrews who is our recruiting coordinator. It was pretty relaxed. I felt like I was hidden behind the scenes, but once again, Jonathan was really nice; he always showed me everything, and say “here’s how I do this.” And I thought it was really interesting and I enjoyed doing that.
HC: When you interview for these things, do you ever have to walk in and basically say, “hey, here are my credentials, because I know you’re not going to take me seriously if I don’t lay it all out right now?”
CN: It’s not that easy. At Georgetown I was extremely fortunate to have one of my high school coaches call over there and give me a recommendation. His name was Coach Stanton and he’s always helped me out in every way. I worked with him a lot because I did statistics at my old school, which was a lot of fun. I’d watch him post it all to the Associated Press, so it was really cool to see my stats printed in the paper every Sunday. He basically got me the Georgetown interview, and I talked to Coach Kelly (Head Coach at Georgetown), and he already knew a little bit about me from the phone call, and he asked me what do you want to do in our program? And I told him, here’s what I’ve done in high school, here’s what I plan to do, and here’s what I’d like to do to help the Georgetown program. Coach Kelly always took me seriously, I think. I don’t know what Coach Stanton said to him, but Coach Kelly knew how much I wanted this and that I wanted it for the right reasons. But you’re right, you do have to sort of come in with an edge. To be fair, I think I was too passive when I came into this program. I was very, “oh, just tell me what you want me to do, I really want to work for this program” and I should have come in with more of an edge. . I realized I had been incredibly lucky, with great programs who had taken me seriously off the bat, and I kind of took that for granted. But showing your credentials isn’t enough. You’ve got to prove yourself. You’ve got to say, “here are my credentials, here’s what I want to do for you, let me show you now.” Football is all about what can you do for me now? Or what have you done for me lately? You’ve got to go in with an edge, and I didn’t do that here because I was scared. William and Mary is a big program, it’s a collegiate program, we came into this season ranked number one, and I was intimidated, and that was my mistake. I was never really given a chance to show more of my skills, so I should have just taken one at the beginning.
HC: Did the players take you seriously?
CN: I met a couple of seniors over the summer and I sort of froze. I should have taken the opportunity to ask questions about the offense, I should have asked all these questions that I know I’m capable of asking but I just froze up so much. I feel like because I’m quiet about football around them — that’s why the players can kind of just brush me off as the girl who works in equipment. They were never rude to me—they were always extremely kind. They never made rude comments to my face—but I worried that it went on behind the scenes—and that really hurts. I know Coach Laycock is really serious about the way they treat women, but even some of my co-workers have teased me about being a girl in such a guy dominated situation.. It’s that locker room mentality, which I was unprepared for. I should have been more assertive but I was afraid of being abrasive. I didn’t want people to see me as this girl who stood up in front of everyone saying, “look at me! I can do this! I know about this! I can talk like this!”—I didn’t want to be an a**. I didn’t want to announce “I worked at Georgetown and did this, this, and this” As a freshman coming into the program I needed to have a degree of humility. But they took that as who I am, not as a temporary thing.
HC: So what prompted the “teasing”?
CN: This one little thing got misconstrued and turned into a much less innocent thing. I trusted people, and I’ve learned you can’t do that in football. You have to be willing to cut throats to stay in the football world. You have to be, not ruthless, but not too trusting. I told my co-worker that I thought this guy was attractive sort of as an offhanded thing, you know, like a joke, not really a big deal, but later on I wondered why a certain group of players was snickering at me, and it turns out that that was why. And it hurt that they couldn’t get past that. Anyone who has seen me working knows that I only talk to them on a very professional level, which sucks, because some of these guys are really great people and I’d love to hang out outside of work, but I’ve learned that I can’t trust people like that, and I think that’s what has hurt me the most. And it’s hard not being taken seriously because of this one little thing because I am so much more than that. It just never occurred to me that something I told them in confidence wouldn’t stay that way. I’m sure they sort of let it get out as a joke, more than anything mean, but it’s not funny to me, especially when it affects how seriously I’m taken in a professional environment. I don’t think they understand how hard it is for women to get into football and stay there. I’m sure they didn’t intend to hurt me, but that’s what happened. It was a hard lesson to learn. I need to be able to call on William and Mary as my home base when I get out into the world and try and make it into the NFL offices or even if I try to work with a team. I need them to be able to tell them, you should take her seriously and here’s why. There are times when I have never been happier than at William and Mary football—it probably sounds like I’ve been miserable all year, but in general I do really like my co-workers. It’s just this one little thing that happened—so close to the end of the season too! I thought I had made some progress but then bam! I got hit with something like this and I felt like I was knocked back to square one. So I don’t know if I want to come back.
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HC: How exactly are you feeling?
CN: I feel excluded, I feel like I’m not taken seriously, I feel like I’m not respected a lot of the time—and not by the coaches or administrative staff—but the prejudice that I experience is not going to go away until I get a chance to prove myself.
HC: That’s got to be an uphill battle.
CN: It is. It’s hard to fight that prejudice. And I’m not that type of person to just lie down, but I feel defeated. This program was a huge reason why I came to this school. I was really impressed with our program and I loved the new building, I met the coaches, really enjoyed meeting them and I thought, here’s a program where I can grow, and I’d love to help this program, and dedicate four years of my life to it. And that kind of got thrown away. There would be nights when I’d come back to my dorm and just cry because work had been so miserable.
HC: So what would you have to say to guys who don’t take women seriously in football, or other male-dominated fields?
CN: When you meet someone and they tell you they’re interested in something, whatever it is, and you look and them and think “that doesn’t really fit” or whatever, and you want to blow it off as a joke, don’t. You don’t know what they’re thinking, you don’t know their past. You don’t know their qualifications. You don’t know how much time and energy they’ve put into it and how much passion they have. If you meet a girl interested in football, even if it’s just a casual interest—honestly, I’ve never met a girl, and few very boys, who are as intense and I am, and that’s fine—ask her what her favorite team is, ask her how they played last weekend, let her show you that she can be taken seriously. I feel like people too often look at someone and assume things. Don’t assume anything. Give them a chance. Don’t assume someone is interested in something for the wrong reasons just because they don’t match your idea of what a fan looks like. You never know. Be open-minded. It might not be a huge thing to some people, but for me, football is basically my life. I wish a player would ask me something football related so that I can show that I know what I’m talking about and that I’m there for the right reasons. I would seriously love that. Men shouldn’t write women off just because they’re women. It’s not fair to us, and honestly, it’s not fair to them, because they never know what they might be missing out on.
HC: What do you have to say for girls who want to pursue fields that are male-dominated?
CN: Don’t give up. Don’t ever throw in the towel. Don’t let the guys tell you you can’t do stuff just because you’re a girl. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Don’t let whatever they do get you down or make you change your goals. You know that you deserve to be there just as much as they do, if not more because you’ve probably worked your a** off, a hell of a lot harder than they have, to get there. So whether it’s a girl who is interested in sports or a girl who wants to be a CEO of a company—anything that is traditionally male-dominated, don’t give up and don’t let them diminish you just because you are a girl. You have just as much right as they do, so just push through and prove yourself. Take it as a challenge. If you meet a guy who says, “oh, you can’t run a business! You’re a girl! Girls can’t do math! Girls can’t do science!”—first of all, that’s not true, second of all be like, “Okay, I’m going to prove it to you.” Take everything that hurts you as a girl in the field and use it to motivate yourself. You may think all the stuff that happened to me this season is not motivation, but I am more motivated than ever to get deeper into the field, because I want to prove them wrong. You’re better than that. Keep going because if enough women stand up and decide to do it—there are more women than men in the world, and they can’t stop us.
HC: And I think definitely in your field, there’s so few women that if you give them a bad impression of what women can do, then it only strengthens their preconceived notions.
CN: That’s totally true. Don’t cave to the stereotype and don’t let them put you in that stereotype. If you give them a bad impression, it reinforces stereotypes and negative cultural aspects that are really hard to change. Give them a good impression, you know? Don’t let them make a judgment on you because you could hurt all women who want to be in that field over one little thing that happened. And if something like that has happened, prove them wrong. Yeah, that happened once to one person, but that’s not going to be me. One woman may not have been able to handle it when the guys put pressure on her, but that’s not going to be me. Change that stereotype. Stereotypes can be changed. It’s tough, but if enough people do it it’ll happen. I think not enough credit is given to women in sports. Not just football—all sports. Do you see Women’s Baseball? No. Do you see Women’s Soccer? Barely. You see women in Women’s Soccer, but do you ever see women working on a Men’s team? Do you ever see women involved with that? No. Not front office. No coaches. Nothing. Men’s Basketball—do you see women coaching that? No. There are great women coaches—especially in college basketball, Tennessee has an incredible women’s coach—but those are women in women’s sports. When do you see women in men’s sports versus the amount of male coaches and administrators you see in women’s sports? It’s tough, but one day there will be women in power position in every sports field. I intend on being on of them. There is no reason why a girl who is passionate about baseball or hockey—hockey’s another big one where women don’t get a lot of respect—shouldn’t go and live her dream of being a high ranking official. There’s definitely a double standard where men can coach women’s sports but women can’t coach men’s sports. I think it’s time for that to change. And I really think it will, but for now, don’t give them a reason to put you down. Kick twice as much a** if you have to. There’s a great line in The Godfather—“Sometimes you gotta kick a**es to make this place run,” and that’s true. And don’t be afraid that as a woman they won’t take you seriously—they’ll respect you a hell of a lot more it you go in guns blazing and say, “Yes. Here I am. I’m a woman, but here’s what I can do.” And just show them. Do it with your actions and don’t shirk away from conflict. That’s a big thing too. Take it on. It’s a challenge but it can be done.