Podcast: Tate Kelly — How To Spot, Interview, and Hire People With an Athlete Mindset

In this episode, we sit down with Tate Kelly, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at the United Soccer League (USL), to discuss the explosive growth of professional soccer in the US. Tate brings a wealth of sports business experience, having previously sold corporate partnerships for the Tennessee Titans in the NFL, driven revenue for Gonzaga Sports Properties at Learfield IMG College, and started his career with a unique role for Nike. Tate discusses his perspective on building a robust corporate partnership foundation for expansion clubs and the highly anticipated introduction of promotion and relegation to the USL. We explore how his background as a Division I runner translates into a relentless sales mentality, his core hiring philosophy centered on the "athlete mindset," and his favorite memories from college basketball.

Mar 25, 2026
# mins
Podcast: Tate Kelly — How To Spot, Interview, and Hire People With an Athlete Mindset

Podcast: Tate Kelly — How To Spot, Interview, and Hire People With an Athlete Mindset

In this episode, we sit down with Tate Kelly, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at the United Soccer League (USL), to discuss the explosive growth of professional soccer in the US. Tate brings a wealth of sports business experience, having previously sold corporate partnerships for the Tennessee Titans in the NFL, driven revenue for Gonzaga Sports Properties at Learfield IMG College, and started his career with a unique role for Nike. Tate discusses his perspective on building a robust corporate partnership foundation for expansion clubs and the highly anticipated introduction of promotion and relegation to the USL. We explore how his background as a Division I runner translates into a relentless sales mentality, his core hiring philosophy centered on the "athlete mindset," and his favorite memories from college basketball.

Podcast: Tate Kelly — How To Spot, Interview, and Hire People With an Athlete Mindset

In this episode, we sit down with Tate Kelly, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at the United Soccer League (USL), to discuss the explosive growth of professional soccer in the US. Tate brings a wealth of sports business experience, having previously sold corporate partnerships for the Tennessee Titans in the NFL, driven revenue for Gonzaga Sports Properties at Learfield IMG College, and started his career with a unique role for Nike. Tate discusses his perspective on building a robust corporate partnership foundation for expansion clubs and the highly anticipated introduction of promotion and relegation to the USL. We explore how his background as a Division I runner translates into a relentless sales mentality, his core hiring philosophy centered on the "athlete mindset," and his favorite memories from college basketball.

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In this episode of "Hire Learning with Oz Rashid," we sit down with Mark Kendall Moore, Chief Security Officer of Dayton Children's Hospital, for one of the most unconventional career stories this show has featured. Before leading security across 32 locations in a pediatric hospital system, Mark spent nearly 11 years in the United States Marine Corps, including leading top-secret missions in support of Presidents Reagan and Bush as part of the Marine One security detachment. What followed was a career that defied easy categorization: executive protection for Henry Kissinger across 220 travel days a year, family security manager for Bill and Melinda Gates, and an NBC Security role that put him inside Centennial Olympic Park the night of the 1996 Atlanta bombing. Mark is also co-founder of the Selie Foundation, a humanitarian organization doing active work in Haiti, the same country where he developed one of the most distinctive pre-screening interview methods we've heard on this show. We explore what a lifetime of high-stakes security work forges in a hiring manager, why Mark developed a 20-statement pre-screen to filter out bad-fit candidates before asking a single question, and how AI is beginning to change the future of physical security — from behavioral analytics to predictive threat detection before an incident occurs.

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