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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — It’s been a fascinating career journey for the new Kansas City Current President Allison Howard.

A graduate of Dayton, Howard began her professional career in civil engineering working with Shell plc and a smaller construction company that went bankrupt while Howard was on her honeymoon.

After interviews in fashion and banking, Howard ultimately landed with Premier Partnerships as a director of sales working mostly with teams in the NBA and MLS in naming rights sponsorships and valuations.

“I made the most of all of those opportunities and that’s actually what ended up getting me a job then with the Lakers.”

An NBA executive called Howard to run sales for the Los Angeles Lakers. Howard spent ten years with the Lakers with the last five as Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, where she helped close the Lakers’ most successful partnerships and led the organization’s corporate partnership strategy that surpassed $250 million in revenue. Now, she looks to do even more with the Current.

“Every sports league, men’s and women’s, are gonna be able and gonna want to come and talk to us and say How did you do this? How did you get to be so successful? How did you privately finance your own training center and your own stadium?”

Howard said she examined how Jerry Buss built the Lakers and the NBA and sees Current owners Angie and Chris Long and Brittany Mahomes doing the same thing with the Current and the NWSL.

“That’s where I see Angie and Chris and Brittany really being extremely formative with this league.”

As the first president of the Current, Howard said she will let head coach Matt Potter and general manager Camille Ashton handle the playing side of the operation and she will focus on her “sweet spot”: revenue generation.

“I love building partnerships that work for everybody and that are new and that are different. My main focus right now… sitting down with everybody in the department and trying to learn from them and hear from them.”

“We wanna be out into the marketplace very, very quickly.”