Longtime ESPN Executive Rosa Gatti Reflects on Trailblazing Career
Gatti one of two distinguished sports PR leaders presented with Lifetime Achievement Award at 2022 Sports PR Summit in NYC
Longtime ESPN executive Rossa Gatti joined Newhouse Sports Media Center ’22 graduate students Logan Garvey and Matt Edwards for a virtual conversation ahead of the 2022 Sports PR Summit East in New York City.
Gatti, one of two recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Awards presented by the Newhouse Sports Media Center alongide former Nike executive Vada Manager, stressed the importances of demonstrating honesty, communicating upwardly and taking initiative in sports public relations. She says she learned these lessons early in her career but carried them with her throughout her subsequent endeavors.
A trailblazer to women in sports and television executives alike, Gatti was one of ESPN’s first female executives in addition to being the first female sports information director at a major university with Division IA football. After graduating from Villanova University in 1972, Gatti served in a secretarial position to Wildcats’ sports information director Bob Ellis. She then stepped into the athletic department’s vacant sports information director position despite administrative concerns over a woman serving in the SID role when Ellis resigned midway through the football season.
Following her two years overseeing the Wildcats sports information department, Gatti assumed the same role at Brown University. Gatti’s leading efforts hosting the 1980 NCAA Frozen Four while at Brown impressed Bill Rasmussen, who urged Chet Simmons — president of ESPN at the time — to hire Gatti as the network’s first director of communications.
Gatti joined ESPN during its initial year of operation in 1980, working in a trailer for a fledgling network whose first televised sporting event was an American Professional Slowpitch Softball League World Series game between the Milwaukee Schlitzes and the Kentucky Bourbons — a far cry from the unmatched coverage the worldwide leader in sports brings today to its audiences across various media platforms.
Yet as ESPN grew, so did Gatti’s responsibilities. Within a year, she was promoted to vice president and in total spent 33 years at ESPN until her retirement in 2013. Gatti’s role expanded from communications as she oversaw ESPN’s human resources department beginning in the mid 1980s. Gatti developed ESPN’s diversity initiatives by setting up policies and best practices, which ultimately shaped ESPN into one of the most diverse workplaces in the industry today. Notably, Gatti founded ESPN’s Diversity Committee in 1991.
At the time of her retirement, Gatti held the title of Senior Vice President of Communications Counsel and Corporate Outreach. In this role, she oversaw ESPN’s corporate outreach initiatives, including The V Foundation for Cancer Research, corporate giving, cause-marketing and volunteerism. Gatti is also credited with establishing ESPN’s relationship with the Collegiate Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Though Gatti opened doors for countless women to follow her, she faced hurdles while immersing herself in the sports industry and often felt intimidated in corporate meetings dominated by men. “It was very difficult for me as a woman trying to prove myself and that I knew what I was doing,” Gatti says. “I was afraid of admitting to making mistakes and people thinking, ‘See, she can’t do it. She can’t handle it.’”
After proving doubters wrong during her esteemed career and learning many lessons about the industry, Gatti offers valuable advice for the next generation of sports public relations professionals.
“I learned mostly from my mistakes,” Gatti says. “I think when everything is going really well, you think ‘That was easy, that was good’. It’s when you make mistakes, you truly learn from something.”
