TAYLOR GEAS LOS ANGELES LAKERS ARTICLES
Written by Kaley Brown '23
- ECGulls.com Contributor
BEVERLY, Mass. — Taylor Geas '15 never envisioned herself working in sports despite having played soccer from kindergarten all the way to her senior year of college at Endicott.
Just four years removed from graduation, Geas now finds herself employed by one of the most successful professional sports franchises in the world: the Los Angeles Lakers.
Geas' journey to the National Basketball Association (NBA) was not an easy one, though. As a psychology major at Endicott, she originally planned on becoming either a child or prison psychologist.
However, as a student-athlete, Geas admittedly focused more so on soccer than thinking about her future and the career path she truly wanted to take after graduation.
A three-year member of Endicott's women's soccer team as a center midfielder, Geas played in 47 total matches and registered 10 points (five goals) in those games, including three game-winning goals (GWG) in her senior season alone. She had a strong, physical presence on the field and was known as an attacker.
Geas was also part of the Gulls' Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) championship-winning season as a junior in 2013, which culminated in Endicott reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament that year.
"It was so cool being a part of that team because we just had everything," Geas said. "We had it all figured out."
Earlier that season, Geas scored the overtime GWG against Babson College, an experience that Geas called "a pretty cool moment."
"I've never since seen a bigger smile on an athlete and pure elation than that goal," Endicott's women's soccer head coach, Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator, Jodi Kenyon said about Geas' GWG.
That win in late September was Endicott's fifth straight, a winning streak that ended up lasting seven matches and eventually helped propel the Gulls to their 10th conference title in program history.
MANEUVERING THE PROFESSIONAL WORLD
Off the field the following year, Geas completed her semester-long internship with the Jimmy Fund Clinic at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as a child life specialist intern, an experience that Geas called "one of the more difficult summers of my life."
"I went into psychology and into Endicott thinking I was super tough, so strong, and I could shut off my emotions," Geas said. "I went into [the Jimmy Fund Clinic] and it was hard. I left crying every day."
Working with young children battling cancer and their families on a daily basis naturally took an emotional toll on Geas. Nevertheless, the internship helped her realize that psychology was not the path she was meant to take.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in 2015, Geas decided to enroll in a graduate marketing program at Emerson College in hopes of finding the right career for her.
Around the same time, she had also taken a position as a marketing coordinator with a technology consulting company, but Geas was not passionate about the work she was doing.
One of her courses in the marketing program at Emerson focused on writing, a skill Geas soon found that she was talented at, but not before receiving Bs on all of her assignments.
"I hate Bs," Geas said with a smile.
Her professor in this particular class told Geas that her writing had a unique voice and style, but she was not following the assignment. The professor suggested that she look into copywriting.
After some more discussion with her professor, he further suggested that Geas look into the University of Cape Town's writing program, the school that he had graduated from, and was confident that copywriting was her calling.
Geas packed her bags for South Africa and enrolled in the University's Media Theory and Practice, Creative Writing graduate program. She committed to becoming a copywriter once she realized what the discipline consisted of.
A copywriter's job is to reach a brand's audience and draw in new members through engaging forms of copy such as telling stories, either short or long-form, through the brand's social media channels, billboards, videos, etc. In short, this means that a copywriter is responsible for portraying that brand's voice.
While in Cape Town, Geas secured a copywriter position with the advertising agency Ogilvy at their location in the city and got her first experience in the field.
After spending a few months at Ogilvy, Geas attempted to secure a visa in hopes of living in Cape Town for the foreseeable future, but that did not go as planned, forcing her to come up with a different plan back in the United States.
Shortly after returning to America, a creative recruiter in California reached out to Geas offering her a position to work as a copywriter for Petco in San Diego.
Geas was hesitant to accept, but when she was younger she dreamt of going to college in California. One of the reasons Geas chose to attend Endicott in the first place was because the campus' location on the ocean gave her that "West Coast feel" that she was searching for on the East Coast.
By the time she was multiple years removed from graduating from Endicott Geas' dream of living in California was practically dead; nonetheless, she took the leap and moved to Southern California to continue copywriting.
While working for Petco, Geas created a billboard that was displayed on Interstate 93 in Boston prior to the 2018 National Football League (NFL) Draft.
The billboard read: "GOODELL SHOPS AT PETSMART" featuring a smiling dog on the left side and the "Petco" logo in the bottom right corner. Little did Geas know that this would only be the beginning of her immersion into the intersection of copywriting and sports.
ALONG CAME THE LAKERS
After her stint at Petco came to an end, Geas found herself freelance copywriting for two Los Angeles companies for some time and decided to start a personal blog detailing her experience in California as a non-native struggling to find her place in the area.
At the same time, she applied to countless jobs looking for her next role and rarely heard back from recruiters.
Geas soon got in contact with a recruiter who was extremely interested in bringing her on to a Los Angeles brand, but only mentioned the fact that the brand was the Lakers after a few phone calls between the two.
Growing up in New England and a fan of the Boston Celtics, Geas certainly never saw herself working for a team that she cheered against.
"During my first interview I told them, 'I'm from the East Coast, but I have the same respect for Kobe Bryant as I have for Paul Pierce,'" Geas said, hoping to ensure that they still wanted to hire her despite her New England roots.
Despite Geas cheering against Kobe and the Lakers when she was younger, his sudden passing in January 2020 hit her hard. Geas admired his cultural impact, especially that of which he had on the city she was working in, and began to immerse herself in it once employed by Los Angeles.
Geas said that understanding Bryant's influence over the city of Los Angeles is one of her greatest personal accomplishments to date. She understood his impact from a young age, but it was not always easy to embrace it as a Celtics fan.
"I'm really into Kobe and his whole ethos and who he was," Geas said. "My first season with the team is when he passed away, so I got even more into it. I'll go through something hard or I'll do something hard and I'll be like, 'Well, Kobe would run that extra mile.'"
Geas was hired by the Lakers in September 2019 and has lived through everything and then some since then – the death of Bryant, the COVID-19 pandemic, and experiencing the team's championship-winning season all in the year 2020 alone.
At the start of the pandemic, however, sports were put on hold until the month of July at the earliest, specifically, the NBA did not resume play until the very end of the month.
Many might assume that because sports were not being played that those working behind the scenes in the field did not have anything to do.
Geas would be one of the first people to correct anyone who said that.
"We had to supplement for the lack of sports while they were gone," she said. "I was working crazy hours. It was really stressful and a really unknown time."
Play ultimately resumed in mid-summer and in her first season with the team the Lakers won the NBA championship in the league's COVID-safe "bubble" located in DisneyWorld in October.
LOS ANGELES STATE OF MIND
After Los Angeles became NBA champs for the 17th time in franchise history, Geas was assigned to write a letter to Lakers fans considering how much the city had been through in 2020.
The letter was shared on all of the team's social media platforms and even on one full page in the Los Angeles Times just a couple of days after the Lakers clinched the title. Geas called the letter "the greatest thing I've gotten to do" in her professional career.
"I remember thinking, 'What am I going to say? Or what am I not going to say? What are WE going to say,'" Geas said. "It was 11 o'clock at night and I got into that mode where it just comes out of you and you're not even thinking. That's my favorite feeling as a writer. It's all truly coming out and it's flowing out of you. It was infinite flow."
As anyone would, Geas bought one hundred dollars worth of newspapers that featured her letter to cherish and preserve one of her most important pieces of work to date.
Over the last year, Geas has been able to experience some normalcy in her career in sports – for example, on game days, she is able to go to the Lakers' arena, attend the game and take notes in order to write a recap of the event for NBA.com.
Every day is different, though; Geas rarely has a consistent routine as there are always a variety of unique tasks that need to be completed.
Geas' work consists of developing campaigns and conveying the Lakers' voice to its audience. Right now she is focused on Los Angeles' seasonal campaign and potential playoffs campaign. Geas also played an integral role in the Lakers' All-Star Game promotional efforts.
Campaigns refer to the way in which Geas and the rest of the creative teamwork to pitch the Lakers' brand to their audience.
Geas also works on curating scripts for players and Laker legends to read for videos, her favorite thing to do as a copywriter, and writing feature stories for the website.
ON-THE-FIELD LESSONS TO PROFESSIONAL NORMS
One of Geas' rules of thumb in life is to say 'yes' to things. She could easily not have tried to become more familiar with the sport in fear of not living up to her counterparts, but that is not how Geas operates.
As a former soccer player, Geas has taken a lot of the lessons learned on the field and made connections with them to the professional world. One of the biggest takeaways she has carried with her from her days as a collegiate athlete to her career can be summed up in one word: toughness.
"Before and even during my time playing soccer in college I was pretty sensitive and I felt like I was fragile," Geas said. "In soccer, my coaches and my teammates made me get it together."
Geas had to continue to build up her thick skin amidst her job search prior to getting hired by the Lakers. She recalls being rejected by countless recruiters and businesses, but, nevertheless, had to keep pushing on and refused to give up.
Landing with the Lakers helped reaffirm Geas' belief in herself and "filled me back up" with confidence.
Kenyon also emphasized the fact that playing a collegiate sport can be extremely beneficial to an individual when they enter the workforce.
"Playing a sport, working with coaches and teammates, and being a member of a team is helping prepare them for the game of life," Kenyon said. "We talk about values like confidence, trust, commitment, self-care, respect, and how critical they are for a team and an individual. When you are able to learn these skills through being a part of a team, it's automatic as a professional to be a better coworker, employee, and supervisor. You've been there – you know how to confront, lead, delegate, organize, and balance a schedule."
Similarly, Geas has recognized the importance of collaboration and understanding that others are relying on her at her job, something she has also taken from her experience as an athlete.
"Sometimes you're going to be playing and sometimes you're not going to be playing and no matter what role you have on the team, you have a role and you have to show up for that role," Geas said. "You have to operate under grace and dignity at all times. Put yourself second, put the team first. That's how it is like in the professional world, too... It's taught me that communication is huge.
Geas continued.
"I think my favorite thing to always say is, 'act with grace'. In any situation, whether it's a good situation or a bad situation, you have to do that. You have to do that as an athlete and you have to do that as a professional."
Geas' dedication to acting with grace is a major part of what got her to her current position despite not studying her field in college and never considering working in the sports industry until she was offered such a role.
She plans to stick to copywriting for the foreseeable future and even plans on writing a book about what being a copywriter entails as well as detailing her journey of how she got to this point in her career.
Though her copywriting career is still young, Geas has hopes of one day becoming a feature sports writer.
That's pretty good for someone who never saw herself working in sports.
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(Photo Credit - Abigal Keenan, Los Angeles Lakers)
