Title: How Georgetown Opened Doors for this Soccer Alumna to a Thriving Sports Industry Career

Soccer has been a part of Kara Korber’s (B’16) life for as long as she can remember. The love for the world’s game comes from her dad, who grew up moving around the world and playing soccer to make new friends.

“All sports bring people together, but soccer is this international language that you can use to cross different cultural barriers because it’s this shared love that so many people around the world have,” Korber said.

Her dad, who played soccer for Georgetown, taught her to love the game from a young age. When she wasn’t on the pitch, she watched her parents coach her two older brothers’ teams. As a teenager, Korber would sometimes practice three times a day after school, playing for her high school, club and Maryland Olympic Development Program teams.

Now ten years since she earned her Georgetown degree, Korber continues to share her love for the game through her work creating business opportunities for the LA Galaxy men’s professional soccer team and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) — and even working to amplify the fan experience for this year’s World Cup.

“My job is so unique because I get to sit across the top and learn so much about how sports business works, how a team operates, how a stadium operates, how leagues work,” she said. “It’s been such a great learning experience for me.”

How Georgetown Jumpstarted Her Sports Industry Career

Growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, Georgetown had always been a dream school. When she was offered a spot on the women’s soccer team, the decision was easy to make.

“There was no better balance between the level of soccer and the level of academics,” she said. “It’s Georgetown. Who doesn’t want to go to Georgetown?”

As a college student, Korber thought she wanted to pursue a career in sports journalism and worked for Georgetown Athletics.

She was on the sidelines of every home men’s basketball game at Capital One Arena. Her first job was running stats – she would wait by the printer next to the media table, ready to grab sheets stuffed with player statistics to hand off to each team’s coaching staff, media and broadcast.

“Just to be on the court at a Georgetown men’s basketball game and see how a basketball game is put on as a student, it was really cool to see how media and arena operations work,” she said. “To be in the back tunnels of an arena was so exciting as a freshman.”

In time, she picked up new responsibilities like drafting post-game news stories and tracking game statistics in real-time.

During her junior year, she turned a connection from a basketball game with an ESPN staffer into an internship with the sports broadcaster. Growing up around her parents and brothers, who all became physicians or academics, Korber didn’t think that a career in sports would be realistic. 

“That experience made it feel more possible,” she said. “I was so excited to get to work somewhere like ESPN because that was one of the gold standards of sports journalism.”

At ESPN, Korber helped produce and pitch story ideas for “Pardon the Interruption,” a long-running sports talk television show. She later got two internships at NBC. During the summer after her junior year, she interned with NBC in Southern California and helped cover the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

“I remember being so starstruck. It was such a collision of worlds,” she said. “U.S. women were on top. They’ve won the World Cup. I’m there helping cover it, so it was a fun summer.”

The Business of Soccer and the World Cup

After earning her degree in international political economy and business, she worked for Sports Illustrated in New York City. While she loved digital storytelling, she missed exercising the strategic thinking and operations skills she learned at the McDonough School of Business.

She wanted exposure to a wide breadth of the sports business industry and joined United Talent Agency in Los Angeles, helping large multinational brands like Coca-Cola and Google build campaigns related to sports.

Korber also got involved with the Georgetown Entertainment & Media Alliance and connected with Tom Braun (B’05), the current president and chief operating officer of the LA Galaxy.

In 2022, Korber joined the LA Galaxy and AEG, which owns the Major League Soccer (MLS) team and currently serves as the vice president of business development. Her team builds new sports campaigns and business opportunities for AEG and its affiliated sports teams, partners and clients.

Over the last few years, she’s run the Coachella Valley Invitational, which brings together MLS and National Women’s Soccer League teams to the music festival grounds to play pre-season games in February. She led the launch of the College Basketball Crown with Fox Sports, a competition for the top college basketball teams not participating in March Madness.

She’s also worked with teams like Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Manchester United to bring the world’s most famed soccer teams to play games in the U.S. Her team organizes all the business nuts and bolts of the sporting events, from ticket sales to game schedules and stadium agreements.

“I’m literally calling MetLife Stadium and renting their building,” she said. “I still laugh at that. The World Cup final will be played there, and I have rented that stadium and negotiated that contract.”

Korber loves her job because she gets to learn every facet of the sports industry while also building new ventures from scratch.

During this summer’s World Cup, Korber helped lead the Galaxy’s strategy to capitalize on new interest in soccer.

“People who were not soccer fans before are going to watch the World Cup and decide this is a sport they want to keep following. It’s their moment when they’re going to pick a team. Who is the club team that they’re going to latch on to get their soccer fix?” Korber said. “We want to make sure our brand is in front of all those potential new fans as much as possible.”

To create new LA Galaxy fans, Korber and her team have organized massive watch parties in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Over the last month, she’s hosted live game viewings in Long Beach and at Dignity Health Sports Park, home of the LA Galaxy. For the semifinals through the final, Korber organized a viewing in Hermosa Beach, complete with a massive screen on the sand for several thousand fans to enjoy.

While it’s been a decade since she graduated, she credits her Georgetown education with opening doors that otherwise would not have opened for her. 

“I truly think that Georgetown has gotten me everywhere I’ve gone in my career,” Korber said. “I can point to a Georgetown person or a Georgetown program that has gotten me to each step. Genuinely, I feel like Georgetown has opened every door that I’ve walked in.”