Leading the Way

True North Sports + Entertainment recognizes women changing the game for Celebrating Women in Sport month

While the NHL’s March Celebrating Women in Sport campaign is a meaningful opportunity to honour women succeeding in sports, whether on the ice or off, it’s equally important to reflect on the progress of equality for women in sport, and how much work is left to be done.

“We want to make sure that the month is not just about celebrating women in sport, it’s also about creating opportunity,” said Annie Chipman Stockl, Vice President of Marketing for True North Sports + Entertainment.

Chipman Stockl is working on initiatives to grow the game for women playing or working in sports as an advisor on the NHL’s Women’s Hockey Advancement Committee. Since she started working in the industry, she’s seen immense progress for women in hockey, whether it’s Jessica Campbell becoming the first female assistant coach in the NHL, or the creation of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), which will play the first professional women’s hockey game in Winnipeg at Canada Life Centre on March 22.

“It’s a great opportunity to showcase such high calibre women’s hockey in our city,” she said. “For young girls and boys and people who, like me, grew up not really being able to watch women’s hockey on TV unless it was an Olympic year, it’s just really, really cool to see.”

As a former high-level hockey player herself, Chipman Stockl understands the impact that seeing Winnipeg’s PWHL game live will have on young girls and women of all ages. While the creation of the PWHL is a huge step in the right direction, she notes that girls’ grassroots hockey programs continue to be shut down, including programs she has been a part of.

“Those things motivate me to make sure that we’re creating more opportunities because it’s something that you can’t take for granted,” said Chipman Stockl, who helped create the Winnipeg Jets Celebrating Women in Sport Scholarship and the Manitoba Moose Celebrating Women in Sport Job Shadow Program, which marks its fifth anniversary this month.

“We came up with the idea for the job shadow program to give young women who weren’t yet sure what they wanted to do with their career the chance to see just how broad their opportunities are,” said Chipman Stockl. She worked with True North’s Raquel Payne and Colin Peterson to launch the program during the 2021-22 season when she was the Marketing Manager for the Manitoba Moose.

While some roles may be obvious to young women pursuing a career in sport, behind-the-scenes jobs, like Broadcast Liaison Tessa Potter, aren’t as well known. For over a decade, Potter has led the Winnipeg Jets home broadcasting team, which has the most women that Potter has ever worked with on a crew. As broadcast liaison she coordinates between the home and visiting broadcast teams, internal gameday production, venue operations and the NHL to ensure each team has what they need to execute a successful broadcast. Her tasks vary each gameday, from doing technical coordination to problem solving and clarifying camera positions.

“There’s still a huge imbalance,” said Potter. “Often, I’m still the first woman on a crew.”

She has worked on broadcast engineering teams for major sporting events like the Fifa World Cup and the 2022 Beijing and 2024 Paris Olympics, for which she won two Emmy awards, and was the first woman NBC hired to work as a tech for an Olympic ceremony. At the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, Potter covered events at the Livigno Snow Park for NBC.

“It’s really hard when you’re the first of anything,” said Potter. As the first female president of the Western Association of Broadcast Engineers (WABE), she strived toward making the industry more inclusive, especially when it came to the language WABE used.

“If we don’t all see ourselves in the language we use, we need to update it to make organizations poised toward a future where anybody can be a part of it,” said Potter.

She was glad to see progress from the Olympics with a recent mandate that women make up a certain percentage of a broadcasting crew.

“People are really acknowledging that if they do not actively invite people, they won’t see them in those spaces,” said Potter.

Sara Orlesky, Sr. Producer and Host for the Winnipeg Jets, has also witnessed the increase of women working in front of and behind the camera since she entered the sports broadcasting industry in the early 2000s. Before the return of the Jets brought her back to Winnipeg where her coverage focused on the city’s hometown teams, Orlesky started her career in Vancouver with Citytv and The Score and then moved to Toronto to cover the CFL, Toronto sports teams and major national and international sporting events for TSN.

“It’s improved a lot, and not just on air,” said Orlesky. “You now see a number of women behind the scenes, whether it’s as camera operators or managerial roles, women are putting their stamp all over sports organizations.”

While Orlesky has often been the only woman in the room, she doesn’t want that to define her.

“I don’t want to be known as the female broadcaster, I’m just a broadcaster. I think we do a disservice when we start attaching labels to it,” said Orlesky. “From the very start, I think people could tell how serious I was about my work, and because of that I think people have treated me with a lot of respect.”

Chipman Stockl has faced similar situations of being the lone women in a group, but she also prefers to focus on what she brings to the table.

“It’s not something that I’ve ever really been too concerned about. My main concern is just making sure that I know what I’m talking about and that I’m informed and prepared,” she said.

Those are also some of the qualities Chipman Stockl looks for when hiring for True North’s marketing team.

“The best candidate for any position we hire is someone who’s very capable in what their role is,” said Chipman Stockl. “I would focus first on just becoming the best at the skill and area that you want to work in and then find your way into sport from there.”

Potter doesn’t want young women to be discouraged from pursuing a career in an industry that is currently male dominated. She says there’s a strong community of women working behind the scenes of broadcasting that’s very supportive of one another, and thanks to the increase in need for content for social media, the broadcasting space needs women in tech more than ever.

“If you’re interested, come on in. There’s never been a better time as far as opportunity for growth,” said Potter.

When Orlesky reflects on the beginning of her career, her ability to push herself out of her comfort zone is what stands out, and what she encourages young women who are pursuing a career in sports to also do.

“Keep going for it,” said Orlesky. “Read as much as you can, find different writers and styles of reporting that you like, and try to reach out and ask questions of people when the opportunity is there. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to answer.”

Annie Chipman Stockl, Tessa Potter and Sara Orlesky are just a few of the 100-plus women who are part of the True North Sports + Entertainment team and who were honoured at the Winnipeg Jets’ annual Celebrating Women in Sport game on March 5, along with others making an impact in sport.

originally published in Game On Magazine