From the Ice to Innovation: Hannah’s Journey to PlayMaker
Meet Hannah, Co-Founder and CEO of PlayMaker, the AI-powered operating system for sports sponsorships. Her story isn’t just about building a company — it’s about combining athletic grit, industry expertise, and a vision for transforming how sports partnerships operate.
Growing up in competitive sports and later playing Division 1 Ice Hockey at Princeton University, Hannah learned early what it takes to win as a team: discipline, adaptability, and relentless effort. Those same qualities now drive how she leads PlayMaker — with energy, precision, and a deep belief in collaboration.
A Front-Row Seat to the Power of Partnerships
Before founding PlayMaker, Hannah spent six years at Anheuser-Busch, one of the most active brands in global sports partnerships. She managed partnerships across major leagues including:
- NFL
- MLB
- NHL
- MLS
- NWSL
- The U.S. Soccer Federation
During that time, she led brand activation campaigns that reached millions of fans and delivered measurable value for both teams and partners. Later, she led a team focused on sales intelligence and revenue strategy across the Northeast — helping to drive nearly $2B in commercial performance and data-backed go-to-market decisions.
Those experiences gave Hannah both an opportunity to learn the pain points in the sponsorship industry & an understanding of the power centralized data systems can have.
The Problem: Big Business, Small Systems
Despite the scale and impact of sponsorships, Hannah saw firsthand how fragmented the industry’s workflows were.
“Most teams were still managing multi-million-dollar relationships through spreadsheets, emails, and memory,” she says. “That lack of connected systems meant missed opportunities, slower collaboration, and less transparency.”
That gap — between how impactful sponsorships can be and how hard they are to manage — became the spark for PlayMaker.
Building PlayMaker: The AI-Powered Operating System for Sponsorships
Together with Co-Founder and CTO Sameer Mehra, Hannah built PlayMaker, an AI-powered sponsorship management platform designed to unify every part of the partnership lifecycle — from sales to activation.
PlayMaker connects:
- Sales & inventory management
- Activation & fulfillment tracking
- CRM & partner relationships
- Reporting & insights
all into one source of truth — helping teams spend less time managing the work and more time maximizing the value.
Today, PlayMaker supports organizations across leagues, brands, and geographies, empowering partnership teams with the data, tools, and automation they need to move faster and work smarter.
Leading with Purpose
Beyond building PlayMaker, Hannah is deeply committed to supporting those within the industry. She’s passionate about:
- Creating clearer pathways into sports for emerging professionals
- Building mentorship programs that are real, useful, and reciprocal
- Fostering relationships built on trust and opportunity, not just transactions
Her leadership philosophy blends athlete discipline with startup agility — making PlayMaker not just a product, but a movement toward more intelligent, connected, and collaborative sports partnerships.
A Message from Hannah
“If you work in the sports ecosystem — on the rights-holder, brand, or agency side — I’d love to connect. And if we’ve crossed paths before, consider this your invitation to reconnect.” You can find me on linkedIn, emailing me at hannah@playmaker-software.com, or by submitting an inquiry on our website.
