Hannah Gordon, San Francisco 49ers
After five years in-house with the San Francisco 49ers, Hannah Gordon was named general counsel in 2016. She discusses the opportunities apparent to affect broader societal change through sport and the law.
My path here was intentional, although the irony is I really was not a huge sports fan growing up. I really fell in love with it in college, and pretty immediately started working in sport. In a lot of ways, I’ve grown up in the business, so part of what I fell in love with was the business of sport as well as the game of football. I worked in sports media and communications before going to law school, and I entered Stanford with the goal of returning to sports.
My 1L summer, I asked the Raiders, for whom I had been a PR intern in college, if I could come back as a law clerk, which they were very gracious in allowing me to do. I went to law firm Akin Gump for my second summer, because I knew that partner Dan Nash did a lot of work for the National Football League (NFL). I worked at Latham & Watkins after I graduated, and then at the NFL League office in New York. The 49ers’ EVP of football operations, Paraag Marathe, got to know me from my work at the League, and he asked me if I would interview for a position they had just created here – which was director of legal affairs. There were a lot of people, including my own family, who said: ‘Oh that’s so nice to hear you’re going to interview – you’re never going to get that job!’
