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Carl Reed ’92 comes from a long family line of SHC graduates and brings his unique talents to our alumni community. After college, Carl took an unexpected career path and discovered his passion for sports administration and event management. We sat down with him recently to learn more. Enjoy his story.
Tell us about your time at SHC. I had the best four years at Sacred Heart Cathedral. I was involved with student activities and student government (student body president my senior year, Sports Medicine, LVC, Block Club). I was able to help out and work at the school during the summers by helping with maintenance, the installation of AV equipment on the De Paul Campus, etc. I got involved with as many things as I could to be a contributing member of the SHC community. I had a unique relationship with faculty because some of the them taught my older sister and brother, and a few faculty members even taught my mother, aunts and uncles who that attended Sacred Heart, St. Vincent’s, Cathedral.
What did you study at St. Mary’s College? What led you to a career in event management and athletics? My undergraduate degree is in government and my masters degree is in health, physical education and recreation (HPER) with an emphasis in sport administration. I always want to go into politics and as I learned more about what takes places in politics, it became clear that I didn’t truly want to pursue a career in that field. I began thinking about a career in sports since at the time, I was working in the SMC athletic department. After obtaining my undergraduate degree in 1996, my first job was an internship at the West Coast Conference office. Twenty years later, I have no regrets about my career move. It has been one of the best decisions I ever made.
What do you consider to be your biggest success when you served as director of athletics at California State University Channel Islands? I would say my biggest success was being given the responsibility of putting together a plan to create an entire athletics department from scratch. There were no coaches, staff, facilities, budgets, no policies and procedures. This wasn’t an easy task but with the support of the campus and local community, I held meetings, town hall conversations, conducted numerous presentations on campus and in the community and was able to get people to support a vision of a new athletic department.
What do you enjoy about your position now at the University of Southern California?As the assistant athletics director and general manager of the Galen Center at USC, I enjoy many aspect of my job. I’m in an unique position to work closely with our student-athletes and coaches, and also lead many of the outside events that we host here. Whether it’s a TV or movie filming, concerts and various awards shows including the Kids Choice Awards and Teen Choice Awards; to be able to manage these event successfully is what I enjoy most about this job.
How has collegiate athletics and event management changed over your career? There are new things that we learn year after year, event after event—new technology to help manage staff, social media strategies, to the necessity of being prepared for all type of emergencies. We now conduct full security screenings of all guests that enter the facility, which is just a reality of this day in age.
What would you say to young alumni interested in pursuing event management or sport administration as a career? I would say, contact me if you have any questions about this career! Sports Administration and Event Management have unique levels within them such as marketing, security, mentoring coaches, compliance, development, social media. It’s just not about putting on athletic events; there are many things that are needed to manage events, coaches and facilities.