For decades, women who loved football watched the game from the outside, rarely seeing themselves reflected in the coaching staffs, scouting departments, or front offices that shape the sport.
The NFL Women’s Forum exists to change that — and after ten years, the results speak for themselves.
The NFL Women’s Forum launched as a bold answer to a glaring gap.
Sam Rapoport, the program’s creator, noticed the disparity firsthand while working on the sidelines of the NFL.
She saw a league where women made up nearly half the fan base — 47% — yet held almost none of the operational and coaching roles that drive the game forward.
Rapoport said.
“I knew that 47% of our fan base was made up by women, but that wasn’t being reflected in coaching positions and scouting positions and the roles that contribute to the game,”
So she built something. The Women’s Forum connects women already working in college football directly to the decision-makers in the NFL — the head coaches, general managers, and team owners who do the hiring.
Every one of the league’s 32 clubs participates, giving Forum attendees access to the full breadth of professional football leadership.
The invite-only event runs as a single, comprehensive day packed with panel discussions, presentations, and roundtable conversations.
Participants gain exclusive exposure to the inner workings of NFL organizations — coaching, strength and conditioning, player personnel, team operations, football administration, research and strategy, video, and equipment.
The Forum does more than educate. It creates relationships. In football, personal connections drive hiring decisions in ways that traditional job applications simply cannot replicate.
“In football, you don’t get hired by sending your resumes,” Rapoport explained.
“You get hired because you’re sitting at a bar at the Combine with a guy and he remembers you.”
The Forum puts women in those rooms and at those tables — deliberately and consistently.
In February 2025, the NFL hosted its tenth Women’s Forum in Indianapolis, timed to coincide with the NFL Combine — one of the busiest and most network-rich weeks on the league calendar.
As 319 athletes took the field at Lucas Oil Stadium to audition for NFL rosters, 39 women made the trip to Indianapolis with their own career-defining goal: building a future in professional football.
The ninth annual edition of the Forum had already taken place earlier in February 2025, reinforcing the league’s sustained commitment to diversity and inclusion across football operations.
Troy Vincent, Sr., Executive Vice President of Football Operations at the NFL, framed the mission clearly:
“We are actively expanding opportunities for women by identifying and developing qualified individuals as part of the NFL’s inclusion efforts.”
The Forum’s impact extends well beyond a single day of networking.
Since 2017, over 250 opportunities have emerged for women in NFL roles — a number that continues to climb.
Across the program’s history, 40% of past Forum attendees have gone on to land jobs in football.
The Indianapolis Colts offered a vivid illustration of that pipeline in action.
Kalen Jackson, Co-Owner and Chief Brand Officer for the Colts, highlighted the direct link between Forum participation and employment:
“Eight of the full-time 11 coaches that are women, all were sitting in your seats.”
One of those coaches, Izzy Diaz — now the Harriet P. Irsay Fellow and Special Teams coach for the Colts — returned to the Forum as a success story, sharing her journey with the newest class of candidates.
“It just gave so much hope to me that my dream of coaching football was possible, and now here I am coming back being able to share my advice and my experience,” Diaz said.
Her presence at the Forum as a speaker, rather than an attendee, embodies exactly what the program set out to achieve.
The Forum places particular emphasis on women of color, recognizing that representation gaps run deepest for this group in football operations.
Rapoport articulated the broader purpose when she reflected on the program’s growth:
“Women are vastly underrepresented in operations positions in sports. NFL clubs understand the value of considering the entire talent pool during the hiring process. This program provides the opportunity for teams to meet with driven and experienced women, with a focus on women of color, who have a strong desire to work in football and we’re proud of the progress we’ve seen in four years.”
The NFL echoes that commitment at the organizational level. The league actively works to identify women working in college football and position them as candidates for its next generation of leadership roles.
Ten years in, the NFL Women’s Forum has moved from a novel idea into a proven institution.
It has reshaped how the league thinks about talent acquisition, widened the hiring pipeline, and put women in front of the people with the power to hire them.
The stories accumulate year after year — women who sat in Forum seats and now stand on NFL sidelines.
The number will keep growing. With all 32 teams engaged, a growing cohort of alumni advocating from within the league, and an organizational commitment at the highest levels of the NFL, the Forum continues to do exactly what Rapoport envisioned: open the doors of professional football to the women who have always belonged there.
