Thursday, April 17, 2025
Six women from different areas of the sports industry athletes, marketers, advertisers, and company founders made up the Women in Sports panel, who sat before a private audience of about 100 guests and discussed their roles in the male-dominated field as UBS Arena kicked off Women’s History Month.
The March 4 event sponsored by Northwell Health welcomed panelists Anastasia Pagonis, a Paralympian gold-medalist, Van Adams, the principal and founder of VanAdams Sports Group, Violeta Ardeljan, the vice president of marketing and branding for Global Industrial, Peg Butler, the vice president of marketing and external relations for Northwell Health and Lenox Hill Hospital, Linda Pan, the senior vice president of new media content partnerships for the NBA, and Deb Patsky, the vice president of global sales effectiveness for Xerox.
Moderator Shannon Hogan, host of the Islanders telecasts on MSG Networks, led the discussion, asking each panelist about their careers and the ways in which they navigate the competitive industry. Centering the conversation around questions of job roles, personal adversity, and the impact of women’s healthcare on the field, Hogan explored their many contributions to both the business and entertainment side of sports.
According to Deb Patsky, a former ice hockey player who received a scholarship to play for Boston University in the early 1980s, the sports industry has come a long way for women.
When she began playing for the Enfield Youth Hockey sports team in middle school, she recalled having what she described as the “worst ice time.”
“The boys did not want us out on the ice,” she said.
Most girls on the team were there because their brothers played, she explained. But, after growing tired of sitting in a cold rink waiting for game action, they finally got to play.
At the time, she pointed out, the pay disparities between men and women in the industry were egregious. This is something that especially stuck with her after she watched a documentary about American tennis player and activist Billie Jean King.
Today, however, the Islanders sponsor a girls’ hockey team, female players can attend Division-1 schools with ice hockey scholarships, and women’s ice hockey has been an Olympic sport since 1992.
During her time playing on the ice, Patsky remembered her family telling her that she was ahead of her time.
“From a business perspective,” Patsky said, “I just always was authentic. I had integrity, and I worked hard I never thought about being a woman.”
Despite the industry’s successes, however, much work is still to be done.
Pay disparities, Anastasia Pagonis explained, are still rampant in the industry. As a two-time Paralympian, she said she has been approached by multiple brands for partnerships.
However, after getting an “inside scoop” of what male Olympic athletes were being paid by those same brands, Pagonis discovered she was offered a deal from one brand that was less than 4% of what the men were offered.
“It’s obviously disgusting, and just ridiculous,” she said of the pay difference.
Women aren’t just overlooked in sports, says Nina Vincoff, the medical director and vice president of the Katz Institute for Women’s Health at Northwell Health. Women are underrepresented in healthcare, as well.
Butler pointed out the strong connection between the two industries during the panel when Hogan asked about the partnership between Northwell and the Islanders.
Vincoff added that women’s healthcare is not limited to a particular area, like reproductive health. It needs to include research in sports medicine, too. “We’re talking about every age and stage, head to toe,” she said.
Women’s healthcare, she continued, includes heart health, brain health and whatever other field of medicine that could biologically impact women differently than men. In order to better understand women’s bodies, she explained, more women need to be encouraged to participate in clinical trials and have a spot in national discussions surrounding healthcare.
Vincoff said the nation tends to look at healthcare through the lens of men. Because research, education and clinical programs have historically excluded women as both researchers and participants, she said it will be a long road before the industry could make up for decades of neglect.
“We need more advocacy on every level,” she asserted.
During the panel, Hogan pointed out how many women become susceptible to “imposter syndrome,” or the belief that they don’t belong in the positions they occupy because they feel inadequate. But for each of the women on the panel, she said, overcoming these feelings began when they started believing that they did belong in the sports industry.
Pagonis said regardless of adversity she’s experienced in sports not only as a woman, but a vision-impaired athlete, she’s learned to love what sets her aside from others.
“My disability makes me different,” she said. “It makes me stand out. It makes me someone that’s not like everyone else.”
She remembered how difficult it was when she first began experiencing vision loss, believing it wasn’t possible for things to get better. But, she said, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. As long as girls keep pushing their way up from the bottom, she continued, they’re sure to make it out on top.
It’s still a challenge for Pagonis to overcome her insecurities some days, she said. But, she laughed, she can always remind herself that she won a gold medal, and no one can ever take that away from her.
“I am learning to be proud of myself,” Pagonis said, “which is really hard. But, as a woman in sports, it’s so empowering.”
