Zaileen Janmohamed, President and CEO of the Bay Area Host committee, speaks with KCBS Business Reporter Jason Brooks on this edition of CEO Spotlight.
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00:00KCBS presents CEO Spotlight, a weekly conversation with Bay Area's business leaders in discussion
00:07with KCBS Business Reporter Jason Brooks.
00:13Thanks for listening to the CEO Spotlight. I'm Jason Brooks and today we're joined by
00:18Zalene Janmohamed, the President and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee.
00:23Zalene has a long history in the sports and entertainment industries,
00:28everything from working with Major League Soccer to major brands such as Visa, Intel, and Google,
00:34and also working on the Olympics in Los Angeles for 2028 and working in bringing
00:41Visa's sponsorships to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Zalene, thanks for joining us
00:48here today. And before we get deeper into your personal history and your career, first off,
00:54tell us about the Bay Area Host Committee. What is your mission?
00:59Jason, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here today to talk about the Bay Area Host
01:03Committee and just a lot of things that I've had going on in my life and what we're doing here.
01:09Good first question, because we are out and about as the Bay Area Host Committee. We are a 501c6,
01:16we're a not-for-profit organization, essentially the sports commission for the Bay Area. So our job
01:22is to bid for, compete to bring major sporting events to the Bay Area, and when we win, not if
01:29we win, when we win, to execute those events in the Bay and across the Bay Area. And so that's the
01:36true essence of our role. We are relatively new, we've existed before, but the organizations have
01:43never kind of sustained themselves. And so we're a relatively new startup, but with great visions to
01:50maintain ourselves and sustain ourselves as a sustainable sports commission in the
01:54Bay Area for the long term. You've got three massive sporting
01:57events coming to the Bay Area in just the next couple of years. Everything from the
02:02NBA All-Star Game in 2025, then the Super Bowl in 2026, Super Bowl 60, and of course,
02:08the FIFA World Cup. We have several matches coming also to the Bay Area in 2026. These are three
02:14titanic events in a way. Tell us more about that, what that means for the Bay Area.
02:19Yeah, first I would say that the Bay Area should be extremely proud. To your point,
02:25these are three just incredible, globally recognized, huge fandom-followed sporting
02:34events that a lot of cities don't get access to and the Bay Area has. And I think that we need to
02:44understand that there are reasons that these events are coming to the Bay. The Bay Area is a
02:51beautiful, beautiful region. It has a very diverse population that leagues and governing bodies
02:58really want to get access to. It's the center of sport and innovation, or at least tech and
03:03innovation and how that impacts sport. And so as much as we deal with the day-to-day of living in
03:10the Bay and working through some of the issues that we have in this market, others see things
03:17differently here. We have won these events. These are competitive processes. So that's kind of point
03:22number one that I want all of us to really think about and be proud of. The second is, man oh man,
03:28we're going to be the epicenter of sport for a couple years. This region, every big sporting
03:33event that you can think of, the NBA All-Star Game, a Super Bowl, a FIFA World Cup, is going to be in
03:38this market. And there is no other region that is going to experience that in an 18-month period,
03:45and actually no city ever that has hosted a Super Bowl and a World Cup in one year, and unlikely
03:51that it will ever happen again. And so are there nights that I kind of am up in the middle of the
03:57night trying to think about how to do these three things? Sure. But am I excited? Absolutely.
04:02Yeah, the NBA All-Star Game is in Chase Center, but of course the FIFA World Cup matches and the
04:07Super Bowl in Levi's Stadium in the same year. What kind of logistical challenges does that present?
04:14Yeah, it's interesting. The reason we actually bid, so we won, bid and won for the World Cup
04:20before we bid and won for Super Bowl 60. And we did that actually purposefully, because while
04:27there might, it might feel like there are challenges in hosting both events at the same
04:31place in the same year, there's actually also efficiencies, right? And so we felt that the
04:35efficiencies in doing both events in one year, you know, how you lay out a transportation plan,
04:41how you lay out mobility with transit, how you kind of set up the stadium from a pitch perspective,
04:48those are all efficiencies that can be done and planned for in the same year versus trying to
04:52do them year over year. We thought that was actually advantageous to us. You know, it is
04:57different. The two events will be really different, i.e., you know, the World Cup is going to bring in
05:02a foreign fan base over a longer period of time than Super Bowl will. And so how we plan for the
05:09World Cup, you know, making sure our public transit system is up to speed, making sure that we can take
05:14in foreign visitors and make their experience really not even just turnkey operationally, but
05:20really cool, something that the Bay Area would be known for. We'll do that a little bit differently
05:25than we would do for a Super Bowl with fans who are used to traveling in and around the United
05:28States, maybe have come to the Bay Area before, maybe already live here. They're just different
05:33different fan journeys that we have to think through. But the base level operations, there's
05:38actually efficiencies across both that even the NFL and FIFA are starting to realize and ask us to
05:44facilitate. The Bay Area host committee came out with a forecast, an economic forecast, on these
05:49three events combined. I believe it's a $1.4 billion impact for the Bay Area. The FIFA Cup,
05:55because of so many matches, having the biggest impact out of all. How key is that? Where does
06:00this money spread to in the Bay Area? Yeah, I think, listen, $1.4 billion, and that's a pre-event
06:06calculation. We'll actualize that when those events are over. And I, my assumption is that it's going
06:10to be larger because we were really conservative in putting those numbers together. It's a huge
06:14number. It's a huge number in a time where I would argue that the Bay Area really needs
06:19events to be in the market to promote spending and tourism, etc. So, you know, we are excited to be,
06:30you know, the organization or one of the organizations that's helping basically
06:34reignite the Bay through different spending, through labor, through jobs and workforce that
06:42will increase because of these events that will come here. The impact is spread throughout the
06:47Bay. And that's for a couple of reasons. One is the events are in different places, right? So
06:53the NBA All-Star Game is in the city with extensions out into Oakland.
06:58The Super Bowl will be out at Levi's Stadium with extensions out in the city.
07:02And the FIFA World Cup will be out in Santa Clara, but also extensions all around the Bay.
07:06And because of that, right, our anticipation is that fans will be in a variety of different places
07:12within the Bay Area and therefore the economic impact will be spread and actually spread on
07:17purpose. You know, one of the ideas that we have that we are actually talking to different cities
07:22about now around the World Cup is, you know, let's not actually force everyone to come into one place
07:30for a watch party. That's not really how the Bay Area works. You know, you're not going to get
07:35somebody who lives in San Jose to drive to San Francisco because of other reasons that we all
07:41know about. But it's also not how people engage in the sport, right? You know, if you live in
07:45Oakland, you're going to engage with soccer in a really different way than somebody who lives
07:49out in Marin, than somebody who lives in the South Bay. And so let people in the Bay actually
07:53engage with the sport in a way that's meaningful for them. Now, by doing that, right, the economic
07:58impact actually automatically spreads. And if you put a watch party in San Pedro Square in San Jose
08:05and another one in downtown Oakland and you put it over the bars and restaurants that already sit
08:10there, the economic impact goes right back into that city. And so we're trying to think really
08:14carefully of, you know, what are we celebrating in the Bay? How does the Bay actually work? Let's use
08:20that as an advantage. And then let's leverage it to actually put spending back into the communities
08:25and the markets versus trying to force something that actually is not natural to the environment
08:30that we live in. I've read that one of the Bay Area host committee's missions is unity, building
08:35community through sport. Do you see these three events as a catalyst for doing that in the Bay
08:41Area? Because as you mentioned, we have very diverse communities here in the Bay Area, whether
08:46where you live, the teams you pull for, all sorts of things like that. Yeah, that is our mission is
08:51to unite the Bay Area through sport. And the unity can still allow for the diversity to exist. In
08:57fact, I think that we can celebrate that somehow and allow for that to happen. Our job is to make
09:04sure that an event that comes into the Bay, one that we bid for, large major sporting event,
09:09actually leverages and goes to the different parts of the Bay versus just kind of sticking
09:15in one location. That is sometimes challenging to do. So it's the coordination across to the East
09:21Bay, across to the South Bay, across with the city and into the North Bay. That's our job. I
09:26spend a lot of my time going to different, you know, city halls and counties and saying, OK,
09:31how do we coordinate, you know, a game happening out at Levi's Stadium, but fan events happening
09:36in San Francisco? How do we make sure that experience is really seamless? And so, you know,
09:40that's one of our roles is to make sure the events are as geographically diverse as possible. But we
09:48also want to make sure I say the story all the time is, you know, when someone engages in an event
09:54in the Bay, I want my son, who's a huge sports fan, to be able to engage in a way that's meaningful
09:59for him, which is probably going to be like, I want to go to the game or I want to play the game
10:03somehow. At the same time, I want my mom, who has no idea what's happening, to be able to engage in
10:10the food and the culture and the music. And so when we think about sport here, we think about
10:16obviously what's happening on the pitch and on the field. But like, how do people actually
10:19participate, what's meaningful for them and building that experience out fully.
10:24We've all seen the doom loop scenarios that have been the narrative for the Bay Area for the past
10:29couple of years from certain sectors of the political spectrum. Has that been an issue at
10:34all for your committee in attracting sponsorships for these events and getting the interest in
10:40coming to the Bay Area?
10:42No, I would say like a hard no in attracting sponsors. I think that the events, to the point
10:48I made earlier too, right, Jason, the events are providing people something to be proud of and to
10:54engage in. And so the companies I talk to, most of them, EA is a great example. We announced EA a
11:00couple of weeks ago. You know, their talk track and the reason they wanted to actually invest in
11:05us is like, if something like this happens in the Bay, we have to be a part of it. This is our
11:11backyard. It's our region. We're proud of these events. There's a really great combination of
11:16culture and sport coming together and we have to be a part of it. So I get more of the,
11:21I need to be a part of it because this is my backyard. How do I do that? What is the most
11:26meaningful way for me to be a part of it versus should I? Which is great. You know, we are, again,
11:33a really small organization. You know, we'll maybe get to 20 people total max. There is no way that
11:41we're going to be able to do this by ourselves. And so we need collaboration across the private
11:46sector, across companies like EA who really understand what this, you know, bringing three
11:52major sporting events like this, you know, what that can do to this market. We need our government
11:56partners. We need all of our community partners, right? We need all of us to come together to
12:00actually make this happen. I'm going to rewind the calendar back just a little bit. You were
12:06born and raised in Canada. Your family immigrated from India via the way of East Africa and you
12:13played ice hockey growing up. Bit of a surprise to your family that you took to the ice and the
12:19skates and had a slap shot? Yeah. You know, when you say it out loud that way, it does seem really
12:24unreasonable, doesn't it? That actually that's how it played out. But that's exactly how it played
12:29out. Yes, it was a surprise for my parents, neither of whom really even understood winter
12:37versus, you know, a winter sport. You know, I think my background, if you've watched the movie
12:43Bend It Like Beckham, is pretty much on par, just different sport. I think that I,
12:51for some reason, maybe just culturally what you do in Canada, what you talk about and what you see,
12:55like had an affinity towards that sport, loved it, loved the speed of it, loved the game,
13:00loved the strategy part of it and was not allowed to play it, actually. In fact, my mom would kill
13:08me. But, you know, now she's going to hear the story again. I got a I got a, you know, one of
13:12those flyers at school, brought it home was for minor hockey and gave it to my mom. Like, I want
13:16to play the sport. And she said, no, girls don't play hockey and gave it to my brother and signed
13:21him up. And I was I was just it was not good. I was not happy and basically would just sneak out
13:28and play wherever I could kind of find a way to do it. And at some point, I think she found out
13:34that I was doing it and realized I loved it. And so then, you know, everything was fine. But yeah,
13:39it's a it's a sport that's stuck with me for a really long time. My husband and I still play in
13:44the Bay. You know, we play on the same line, which is either really good or really bad for our
13:49marriage, depending on how you how you look at it. But we're, you know, really good sports family
13:54and have kind of convinced my parents to also be one now because that's what that's what we do.
13:58Hopefully he's doing the job of setting you up to score every single time. That's
14:02no, it's the other way around. We yell at each other all the time. But yes,
14:06one day, I hope. Well, where there's a will, there's a way. And you got into sports management.
14:10You studied it in college. And then your first job was with major league soccer. What was that
14:17like? That's such a big opportunity for someone just getting into the business world.
14:21Yeah, I credit a lot of getting that as my first job, just where I went to grad school at UMass.
14:27They have an amazing, you know, master's program and a really great alumni network. And so
14:33because of that alumni network, the guy who hired me at major league soccer was an alum of the
14:38program who understood what type of rigor I had gone through to be able to work in that as my
14:44first job. Major League Soccer was super young when I joined. It was 10 years old. And that was
14:49actually a really great thing for me as I started. Because when you start in an organization that
14:54young, ironically, kind of where we are today, you get to do a lot of different things. And so while
15:00I was officially in kind of the partnerships group, I worked special events, I worked operations,
15:06I worked licensing, like whatever the company needed at that time, I got a little bit of
15:11experience in it. And, you know, I think that lets you do a couple things when you're young.
15:16And I tell this to a lot of young people who come and talk to me now is when you're young in your
15:21career, breadth of experience is more important than depth of experience. And because you are
15:27still kind of formulating the things that you are good at, you're getting reps and you want to then,
15:33you know, understand what is it that I really love and what is it that I'm really good at.
15:37And at some point in time, those two things hopefully marry and then you go deep. Right. So
15:42that that was the best place for me to start because I was able to get a lot of breadth
15:47of experience. League was still young. And, you know, coincidentally, at that point in time,
15:55you know, it allowed me to get experience in a sport that was also growing in this country
15:59and and then gave me, you know, kind of an entry point into the next phase of my career. So
16:04I owe a lot of a lot of gratitude to Major League Soccer, you know, for for taking me on as I was
16:10just basically entering entering the career. Women have been smashing glass ceilings in all
16:15industries, especially sports of late. How important is that for your career and how
16:21important is inclusion in sports in general? Yeah, so important. And, you know, I have to
16:30be honest, like I've been in the industry for a couple of decades now and it has changed.
16:35There has been a lot of movement in terms of inclusion of women along along those two decades.
16:43You know, when I started, I was probably the only female in the room in most situations,
16:47and now I'm not the only one. And there's many, you know, females within sport who believe that
16:53they can they can succeed and excel. I think the the push that now needs to happen, especially in
16:59the area of sport business, is women at leadership positions and that and that's not too dissimilar
17:06to other industries that we talk about. This one still feels like it's very far away from what I
17:12want to see. And it's why, Jason, like, you know, when I was given this job and I was given it by
17:19a board of directors who are mostly male. Right. So good for them, first of all, for making that
17:23decision. But I got the job and realized that I was in a position now that I could actually
17:31be the change I wanted to see. And so what was I going to do now as a CEO to start making the
17:37decisions to see more women in leadership positions? And it's what my entire C-suite is
17:42female. And I've done that very, very purposefully, because until you get women in that position to
17:49hire women underneath them to hire, like you won't see that change. You need you need someone
17:53needs to or a number of people need to start to facilitate it before it starts to normalize
17:58on its own. So I've I it is so important to me. I want to see as much equity at the leadership
18:07level as possible. And I will do everything I can to try to make that happen in the positions that
18:13I have. You've also worked with Google and Intel and Brand Awareness. Those are also very
18:19male centric industries in the tech community. Is that another industry that you could see
18:24this moving towards where there will be more female leadership in those roles?
18:29Yeah, I hope so. I think, listen, we live in an area in California where if it's going to happen
18:33anywhere, it's going to happen here. Right. There's already law and regulation that talk
18:36about board composition, what that has to look like. And so and you just have innovative thinking,
18:44you know, in this area. And so I expect that this is number one, it's not a problem that's
18:49just specific to the sport industry. But number two, I think that the change will happen across
18:54it'll be across industry change. It will take time. Right. I think we have to be patient.
19:00These are historical things that are, you know, just take time to kind of move past.
19:06And I would say you can't just sit here and wait for it to happen. What I mean by that is,
19:11is, you know, yes, I need to make decisions because of the role I'm in. But I also need
19:17the women who are coming up to develop the skill set that's required to be in those positions. Like
19:22this still isn't something that needs that can be handed to you. You can't just be in the C-suite
19:27because we want to have gender equity. That doesn't work. Right. So, you know, I started
19:34this program at UMass a couple of years ago, which was around women in sport business. And
19:39what I asked them to do is start to build the skill sets that executive leaders need to have,
19:46regardless of gender, analytical skill sets, the ability to present the ability to think in the
19:50gray. How do you solve problems where there's no black and white answer? Right. You that's
19:55what a CEO needs. That's what a C-suite individual needs. Right. So it has to be all of those things.
20:00Right. Like, I want to make sure it's really clear that women and people can't just get
20:07positions when they're not qualified. You have to build that skill set. When you do have that
20:11skill set, someone needs to give you a shot. And I am ready and willing to do that. And the industry
20:16has to be ready for it. Society has to be ready for it. So it's almost those three things that
20:20have to come together for for this to happen. You must have been tremendously proud when the
20:24first graduates came through the program that you instituted at UMass. Yeah. So, so proud. And now
20:30I get, you know, now it's not just me. You know, I teach one class. I have a number of peers that
20:35help me teach that class and that program. And I see them now in the workforce. So not only
20:41graduating, but I see them in the workforce now. And, you know, they'll come back to me and say,
20:45oh, my God, that class about the case study of whatever it was just helped me in the problem
20:50that I had to solve. And I was like, OK, this is great. Right. So, you know, I think that program
20:56is actually now expanded. I think other women have now jumped in at our leaders in the industry
21:00saying, hey, we need to actually grow the grow the scope of what this teaches. And so people are
21:06now like trying to make it even even better than what I had made it a few years ago. Z, as president
21:12and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee, you've got a full plate with three major world sporting
21:18events in the next couple of years. Where do you want to see all of this lead the Bay Area in,
21:24say, the next five years or 10 years? Yeah, let's talk about this in in two different ways. The
21:29first is we need to have a sustainable sports commission in the Bay Area. I think it would
21:34probably shock a lot of people that we don't have one. You know, many cities in the U.S. have one.
21:40My counterparts in L.A. have had a sustainable sports commission for a long time. And so this
21:46is not for me a one and done or a three and done job or, you know, an organization. Right. I don't
21:54want to be I don't want to be I don't want what happened in Super Bowl around Super Bowl 50 and
22:00then the college football playoffs to happen again, where we do a great job executing an event and then
22:05the organization falls and we go away. So that's that's vision number one for long term is to
22:10to build a sustainable sports commission in the base so that this becomes a regular occurrence
22:15of great sporting events coming to the region. Part two of that is
22:20we should be seen as the leaders in how to do those events. Right. So, you know, when a fan
22:28comes to the Bay Area, I want a fan to get off, you know, their flight at SFO or Oakland or wherever
22:35and say and have an experience that not only is like innovative and different and cool, but almost
22:42innovative and different and cool, but almost expected because they are in they are in the Bay.
22:49You know, I want our operational systems to be in a place where you can
22:53get from the North Bay to the city to the Santa Clara really, really easily. Like there are
22:57systems and processes that we need to build, not just for the sporting events, but the sporting
23:02events actually are leveraged to do them just for the region because it's the right thing to do.
23:06That's the vision of what the Bay Area host committee should do is like,
23:10how do you use the events to build something in the region that is actually really needed,
23:15but the sport event is the is the is the turnkey is the linchpin is the is the turning point for
23:21it to actually happen and occur. That's the long term vision is is is not just the event itself,
23:28but it's what's happening outside and around the event that actually stays and is legacy and as
23:32part of the Bay. Zee, I want to thank you very much for joining us here on the CEO Spotlight
23:37today. It has been an illuminating conversation. Absolutely. So happy to be here. I hope we get
23:41to do it again. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to the CEO Spotlight. We've been joined by Zalene
23:47Jan Mohamed, the president and CEO of the Bay Area host committee. I'm Jason Brooks. Till next time.
23:54CEO Spotlight is every Wednesday evening at six fifty three p.m. and Saturdays at seven fifty a.m.
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