The ROAR Podcast: Renee Washington

<p>Renee Washington's résumé reads like four careers stacked on top of each other — broadcaster, host, speaker, founder, and soon-to-be author. But the through line traces back to a two-year window at Lehigh in 2014, when she was coaching college soccer, finishing a master's in educational leadership, and deciding whether to return to professional soccer. The NWSL had just completed its first season. The money wasn't a living. A three-time All-American at La Salle and a Hall of Famer, she wasn't asking whether she was good enough to keep playing — she was asking whether she could afford to. In this conversation with Caroline Valvardi, Renee walks through what she found on the other side of that decision: the distinction between Renee the soccer player and Renee the person, and a career built deliberately so that no single job title could take the whole thing down with it.</p><p></p><p>The conversation moves from that transition into what it actually costs to bet on yourself. Renee is candid about launching Renee Washington Media and Consulting with no spouse's salary as a backstop, running a team of roughly a dozen interns while the revenue side is still being built, and rolling out the business in phases rather than all at once. She and Caroline get into the role faith plays when timing is outside your control, how technology and AI let her sustain a genuinely multi-hyphenate operation across time zones, and what broadcasters actually see on the data side — real-time demographics, peak tune-in windows, even ball-tracking data out of this summer's World Cup. And then the counterweight: Renee likes the data but refuses to live and die by it. Impressions are measurable; reaching people who don't already look like your existing audience is the harder thing to chase, and it's the one she's actually chasing.</p><p></p><p>01:54 Welcome to The ROAR Podcast </p><p>02:09 The Summer That Didn't Stop</p><p>04:46 A Path That Was Never Linear</p><p>08:35 What Nobody Prepares You For: Life After the Game </p><p>12:49 Betting on Yourself</p><p>17:55 Faith, Control, and Trusting the Timing </p><p>23:50 Technology, AI, and Running a Team Across Time Zones </p><p>28:05 Social Listening, KPIs, and What Broadcasters Actually See </p><p>31:58 Reach Over Impressions: Why She Won't Live and Die by the Data 35:42 Best Advice Received</p><p>39:16 Closing Thoughts</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>