SAN ANTONIO–One woman who went from knowing absolutely nothing about basketball to becoming an executive with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks has picked up a lot of lessons along the way, and she shared those and her own “guiding principles” with a credit union audience here.
Melissa M. Proctor, chief marketing officer for the Hawks and for State Farm Arena, shared with attendees at the PSCU/Co-op Member Forum how her unlikely story came to be.
From a young age, Proctor said she desired to be an artist, and that would manifest itself in how she was selected from among other candidates from the time her career began to moments at the pinnacle of her career.
Melissa Proctor speaking to PSCU/Co-op Solutions Member Forum.
But throughout her life, it has always been about those “guiding principles,” she said.
An Introduction to Basketball
Proctor, the only child of parents who were from Belize and Jamaica, respectively, grew up in Miami, attending a high school focused on design. Although she knew absolutely nothing about sports, a cousin’s love affair with the NBA’s Miami Heat led her to begin watching the game. At the age of 15, when her mother asked her what her plan was for life, Proctor answered by saying she planned to become an NBA coach (even though she had never played basketball).
Her mother’s response? “Ok, then get a job.”
Proctor said she did what one did at the time: she dialed a 1-800 number for the Heat and then called back every day. She also sent letter after letter looking for an opportunity, often decorated with her artwork to stand out.
Don’t Call Back
Although the team finally told her “we don’t hire kids,” she was eventually connected to the equipment manager, whom she also repeatedly called until he tried to talk her out of any job and told her not to call back.
She took two weeks off and called back—and sent more letters.
The equipment manager relented, praised her persistence, and gave her a job that didn’t pay anything and involved picking up towels, mopping up sweat and other grunt work.
Her first day on the job was her first time inside the Miami arena or at any sports event. The team owner’s daughter helped explain the job to her.
In the position Proctor would go on to meet Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson, even though she had no idea who they were, along with Jimmy Buffett, who she said would become a dear friend.
College’s Motto Becomes a Guide
Proctor would go on to get a scholarship to Wake Forest University in North Carolina, even though she had “no clue” where it was. It was at Wake Forest where Proctor said she learned of the school’s motto, Pro Humanitate, which translates into “For the people.” It would become one of her guiding principles.
Proctor said she remained focused on basketball while in college, returning to the Heat during the summer and volunteering for any job available. While she gave up on the dream of ever coaching, Proctor said she knew she wanted to stay in the game.
What NBA Really Stands For
She applied for a management training program at the NBA’s headquarters in Secaucus, N.J., but even with letters of recommendation from Pat Riley and Alonzo Mourning, she was not selected. While the NBA told her she was a great candidate, she said she came to learn those three letters stand for Nothing But Lawyers, as the league derives much of its income from licensing.
Instead, Proctor would find herself interviewing for a position in Atlanta with Turner Broadcasting, a company she said she had also not heard of.
She got a job as an intern in what was known as the Turner Training Team and was soon working with brands such as CNN, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT and more after she applied with a “talent project” in which she recreated an issue of TV Guide (as a print publication) that featured her. This included making herself Cleopatra by replacing Elizabeth Taylor's face with her own, along with other touches.
“They said, ‘You sold yourself so well to us. We think you will do an amazing job of selling our content to consumers,’ and that's how I got my first marketing job.”
Proctor with Kobe Bryant while she was a young woman working for the Miami Heat.
Great Advice
Through a connection with the Heat, Proctor got a separate internship with the Atlanta Hawks, where she did work on the NBA All Star game hosted by the team that year.
“I remember the president of the network asking every single intern to come and meet with him just to see how their experience is going, and I talked with them I told him how the job was phenomenal and that I learned so much and all the people I got to work with were great, but there was a little challenge: I didn't get invited to all the happy hours or the luncheons or the breakfast meetings,” Proctor said. “I told him I felt like I needed to assimilate to fit more into the culture. He gave me the best advice that a 22-year-old could have ever received. He said ‘Always be authentic and stay true to who you are. We hired you based on that magazine you put together, and with that effort, with your Caribbean background and heritage and all your cool artistic abilities, if you decided to assimilate to be more like everyone else you would not just be doing yourself a disservice, you be doing our company a disservice.”
Proctor said it was advice that has carried her through her career.
“Being authentic to who you are is a really important core value for me,” Proctor said.
Great Job. Now You’re Being Let Go
After a stint in London for post-graduate school—during which she also worked at Turner Broadcasting’s U.K. office—she returned to Atlanta, went back to work for Turner for 11 years, and was then laid off after having risen to become vice president of content and marketing.
While living on severance and “licking her wounds,” Proctor went with a friend to a draft party the Hawks were hosting at the arena. There, she ran into Steve Cohen, who had left Turner to become CEO of the NBA team. Cohen said he still remembered her TV Guide creation.
That would eventually lead to a consulting gig and then full-time employment as the Hawks’
vice president of brand strategy.
An ‘Amazing Ride’
“It has been an amazing ride ever since,” she said, sharing slides of various endeavors related to the team, including a complete rebranding that focused on the next generation of fans, young people who lived in the Atlanta market.
“That's what we've been doing ever since,” Proctor told the meeting.
When Tony Ressler bought the team, he said the Hawks needed to be a “civic asset before we are anything else,” and that has led the Hawks to put a focus on serving the community even before focusing on success on the court.
That manifested itself in a meeting with Nike about new uniforms, which led to the creation of “MLK” jerseys. Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta.
The Pope Calls
“I said, ‘What if we were able to honor his legacy for more than one day? We called up our friends at the King Center and talked about it and they said one of the challenges that they've had is how to educate the next generation of Atlantans on the legacy of Dr. King. This became the first jersey in the history of the NBA that honored a person on the chest. It was the top-selling jersey not just for us but across the league that season. But it launched in the summer of 2020, at a time when no one would have thought about what the world would look like.”
Even the Vatican reached out for a jersey, Proctor said, which the pope blessed.
“That season the Atlanta Hawks went further than they have in the history of the organization in Atlanta, all the way to the Eastern Conference finals,” Proctor shared.
A Jungle Gym of a Career
Looking back over her life, Proctor, the author of the book “From Ball Girl to CMO,” told the credit union audience, “My career has not been a ladder, it’s a jungle gym. Ask me what I want to be when I grow up and I still don’t know.”
What she does know, however, are what she called the “keys to the game,” which are shown in the graphic below.
She also shared the guiding principles of her life, as well as her own personal principles, both shown below.
For credit union leaders, she urged them to define their own guiding principles by asking themselves the questions below.
