Fritz Pollard Alliance Member Spotlight : Catherine Hickman

From a Montreal Law Office to an NFL Front Office

Catherine Hickman did not take the traditional road into professional football. Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, she went to law school, practiced corporate and tax law, and earned a master’s in taxation, and by every conventional measure, her career was already built. But the Montreal Alouettes had been a Canadian Football League dynasty during her childhood, and football was always in her sights. Researching what a career in the game could look like for someone with a background like hers, she found Dawn Aponte, and that example, among others, cemented what she believed was possible. She wrote to all nine CFL clubs offering to help; the Alouettes said yes. She kept practicing law, finished her master’s at night, and spent weekends at the team facility entering data, picking up players, and watching tape with anyone who would let her, until a year later they offered her an entry-level job. That was 2015, and across five teams since (the Alouettes, the Toronto Argonauts, the XFL’s Tampa Bay Vipers, the Philadelphia Eagles, and now the Cleveland Browns), she has never looked back.

“There’s no job too small. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and then you learn and you ascend.”

A Plan B Strong Enough to Chase a Plan A

Hickman did not practice tax law as a detour; she chose it because she loved it, drawn to its difficulty and the puzzle of building the most efficient outcome for a client, and she still speaks about it with genuine affection. But she also understood exactly what it gave her. Football was always the goal, and practicing law first meant that if it did not work out, she knew precisely what the next twenty years would look like. The security was not a hedge against her ambition; it was the thing that made her ambition possible. Twelve years ago the landscape for women in football was narrow, and for a long stretch she was the only woman doing her job in the CFL, and a strong fallback let her walk into that uncertainty with purpose rather than fear.

“I wanted to have a strong Plan B that allowed me to be confident in pursuing Plan A.”

The Best Football School There Is

Ask Hickman what she would change about her path, and the answer is nothing, least of all the years she spent outside the NFL. The CFL was not a startup league; it was an established, successful one managing comparable rosters and more games with a fraction of the resources, and that scarcity was the education. On a staff of fewer than ten people, a single day as assistant general manager of the Alouettes might include negotiating a contract, watching college tape, going to practice, filling in on equipment because the group was a person short, checking the salary cap, and reviewing the operational budget with the team president. She learned every vertical of a football operation and how each
contributes to winning, arriving in the NFL with a breadth of experience difficult to acquire in an organization large enough for everyone to specialize. In Philadelphia, that range allowed Andrew Berry, then vice president of football operations, to pull her into player development and analytics alongside her personnel duties. Her advice to young professionals now sounds counterintuitive: start somewhere with fewer resources, and you will learn more, faster.

“The CFL was the best school of football you can go to, because you learn not just the football side of it; you gain experience working the entire business of football.”

Doors Cracked Open, Doors Kicked Through

Hickman’s career includes several moves that look, on paper, like backward steps: leaving a law partnership track for an entry-level role and entering the NFL at the bottom of the ladder from being an assistant general manager. She has never seen them that way; each was an opportunity for a much larger move forward, and each came because someone believed in her and the work she continued to put in at every stop. That list is one she recites readily: Dawn Aponte, whose career first showed her the door existed; Jim Popp, the longtime Alouettes general manager; Marc Trestman, who hired her in the XFL; Howie Roseman in Philadelphia, whom she calls one of the best decision-makers she has ever been around; and Andrew Berry, her colleague in Philadelphia and now the executive who brought her to Cleveland,credited for an open-door philosophy that gives young staff real exposure to high-level decisions. Her mother belongs on that list too. When Hickman quit her law practice for football, nearly everyone raised an eyebrow, but her mother, not a sports fan, never flinched.

“These people have cracked the door open for me, and it was my job to kick it open.”

Competency Over Category

Hickman became the first woman to serve as an assistant general manager in the CFL, but she is uninterested in treating that as the headline. There was no single moment of arrival, she says, only the accumulation of many small ones built on preparation, curiosity, and a refusal to stop learning; her goal was never simply to earn a seat at the table, but to keep it and make an impact from it. She learned early that energy spent worrying about how she might be perceived is energy taken from the work itself; firsts and onlys are descriptions, not definitions, and she was hired to do a job. That same discipline governs how she enters a new building: arriving in Cleveland, she spent most of her first year listening, learning the culture and the roster-building philosophy, before pushing for change. Hickman believes that understanding the foundation first, and not trying to fix what was never broken, is what gradually reveals the real room for improvement.

“Being the only or the first, those are descriptions, but they were never things that define me. What matters is what you do with the seat when you get it.”

Sending the Elevator Back Down

Away from the facility, Hickman and her husband, a national scout in the NFL, spend their time raising three young children. She long ago stopped chasing true balance and now practices integration instead, working from the belief that you can have it all, just not all at the same time. That same instinct shapes how she approaches the next generation: Hickman frequently takes on mentorship roles with young executives around the league, embracing the chance to support other women who are looking to grow in the business. Asked what she hopes the Fritz Pollard Alliance builds on, her answer follows the same thread: keep growing the community and the networking that lets members find each other across teams, and keep investing in the vertical growth that helps members reach the leadership roles they are aiming for.

“When I think of mentorship, it’s really important for me to send the elevator back down.”

This interview was conducted by Aaron Sanders.