In our next interview for the Women in Baseball series, we talk to Pam Gardner, President of Business Operations for the Houston Astros.

Houston Astros President of Business Operations Pam Gardner knows a thing or two about the different paths life offers us.  Pam, who is in the midst of her 20th season with the Houston Astros organization, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Stout with a degree in Vocational Rehabilitation.  From there she had her sights set on law school. In order to pay for law school, Pam worked in the mailroom at a PR firm in Chicago.

While working in Chicago, Pam discovered her love for marketing, advertising and public relations and decided to put the law school dream aside. “I just started moving up in the company.  I never left and went back to school. I stayed there; I was there for about 10 years.  When I left I was Vice President of the Entertainment Division and we did mostly PR for sports and entertainment, Broadway theatre that kind of thing.” 

After working in Chicago for more than a decade, Pam made the move to Houston, for personal reasons.  She sent her resume to the Astros on a whim, and was rewarded with a new job in the baseball industry. “They happened to have a job opening in Advertising, so I took a step backwards and started as Director of Advertising.” That was 1989. Pam worked through an organizational shift in the mid-nineties when Drayton McLane bought the club. “When he bought the club in ’93, I was there; he inherited me.  So, luckily, I was one that he decided to keep and I started just moving through the ranks to other jobs.” Since then Pam worked her way steadily through the organization, and was eventually named President of Business Operations, the position she currently holds.   

Since joining the Astros, Pam and the organization have both been successful. In 2006, Pam became the first female executive induced into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame. That followed Pam’s 2005 recognition as one of the 20 most influential women in sports.  In addition, Pam was included in a special exhibit in Cooperstown honoring women in baseball.  There’s no doubt that Pam works hard, but she does so with an understanding that working in baseball is not just any job.

“It’s a tough lifestyle for men as well, in the office side of baseball, because there are very long hours.  I always tell people it’s not a job; it’s a lifestyle. You are in at 7:30 in the morning.  On game days, you’re home at midnight and you’re back at 7:30 in the morning.  Weekends, and it’s all the time.  It’s a time commitment.”

It’s a time commitment that Pam embraces to the fullest.  There is no typical day for her; she juggles just about everything on the business front. “I put out a lot of fires.  It’s a lot of crisis management, day to day.  And I don’t mean huge horrible things, but it’s just day to day issues that you have to deal with.” Through it all though, she understands the importance of the personal side of running a business also.

“One thing I do everyday is try to walk the building, try to see everyone that works there.  We don’t have a big staff; we have one of the smaller staffs.  I like to touch base with people, check in and get the pulse of the place.”

In 2000, Pam spearheaded the advertising and marketing efforts for both the team and the new ballpark in its inaugural season. It was a challenge to convince the city that a new ballpark would be a blessing to Houston. “We had a tough time passing the legislature to get a new stadium, so it went to a pubic vote.  We won the public vote 51% to 49% so it was that close.  And so, I think, when we got there, it was like ‘oh my gosh.’  That was the biggest challenge or hurdle you could possibly deal with.” Once the stadium was built and the inaugural game was played in March of 2000, the challenge was worth it.  Minute Maid Park was a success. During that time, Pam also led the development of the new logo and uniform design and implementation plan.

For Pam working behind the senses is the perfect fit for her personality.  She is happy doing the planning, organizing, all of the leg work really, that makes a baseball team successful because for her the reward is “being affiliated with something really magical.”  Understanding the magic of the sport maybe made the challenge of working to get a new stadium built a little less stressful, because in the end, Pam knew that a new ballpark would really be an asset to the city.

“The beautiful thing about baseball parks anyway is that no two are alike.  There are different dimensions and everything is different.  And that’s the beauty of ballparks.  So I think it has to fit your city.  And if it does, then all the other pieces will come together.”

Pam, a mother who cherishes the memory of teaching her six year old daughter to score at a game, recognizes the importance of reaching out to female fans, especially mothers by preserving the family atmosphere at the ballpark.  The Astros have a strong female fan base, nearly 50%, which is partly a result of a conscious outreach effort. 

“Women are the gatekeepers.  They gate-keep where the family goes and where the family’s money is spent.  And they decide if the family is going to go to a movie that day or a baseball game. It’s Mom that decides that.  And also, we always say that baseball’s an eating sport.  You know it kind of moves along slow.  Not for me, I love every nuance of the game.  But you can visit, you can knit, you can go up and get something to eat, so it’s great for that.”

She credits Major League Baseball for trying to attract more women to the sport, but admits that organizations need to do more work reaching out to women to develop front office talent.  The Astros worked hard to recruit talented women and today women comprise half of their management team.  But across the industry, “there are some days when you feel like there are not a lot of you out there.   It really is still a male dominated industry.”

Challenges, Pam admits, come with the territory, but with maturity and a good work ethic, women can succeed in the baseball world.

“I think the biggest challenges was for me when I was younger, trying to overcome those that didn’t want me in the club, and I just decided one day I was going to stop doing that and just do my own thing, and those things too would sort themselves out.  Those that didn’t have time for me would stay over there anyway and that’s how things worked out.  I think early on, it was a challenge for me personally but as I got older, I realized it’s just a part of maturity and life and you deal with it.”

But make no mistake about it.  For all the challenges of being a woman in the industry, there are “a thousand people waiting for these jobs.”  Because they are widely coveted, Pam offers this importance advice on landing one.   

“Take any job you can to get in the door.  Have a good sense of self.  Be professional.  Dress how you want to be treated.  Don’t do anything to embarrass yourself, your company or your family and you’ll be good to go.  Get an internship if you can.  Then work your tail off.”

More than anything else, Pam appreciates that baseball touches the community in important ways.  “We play everyday, so the players are in the middle of the community.  And they touch the community; they are just a piece of life.”  So too is Gardner, who sits on the Houston Area Women’s Center, a center for abused women victimized by domestic violence and sexual abuse.  “You can be connected with the community in a different way.   So when you get more women into the industry itself, then that follows along too.”

The rewards much outweigh the long hours and hard work required to be successful in the industry.  For Pam, baseball is special.  It touches lives and the greater Houston community.  It brings families together and represents “an average slice of America,” on the field and in the stands.

Many thanks to Pam for taking time out of her busy schedule to meet with us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.