Marilou McFarlane, Sports Tech Leader

“Title IX literally helped to shape my lifelong identity as a competitive athlete and leader.”
Marilou McFarlane

Marilou McFarlane, Founder, CEO and Chair Emeritus of Women in Sports Tech, Inc., shared the story behind her title with us on May 31, 2023.

An experienced founder and C-suite leader in the sports tech industry, and former NCAA athlete, Marilous is dedicated to equitable opportunities and a level playing field for all.

Marlous is the founder+CEO of Women in Sports Tech (WiST) and was CMO/CRO of Mustard, CEO of Edufii (CoachNow) and president of STATSports in North America. She specializes in innovative sports performance technologies, building high performance teams and inclusive cultures and leading expansive startup growth.

With the mission to empower growth opportunities for women and employers in the sports tech business, she founded WiST as a non-profit organization in 2017. WiST develops and delivers innovative programs, original content and a global community that provide tangible value for women and employers alike. Flagship initiative is the WiST Fellowship program, offering grants and mentorship for exciting summer internship projects in the sports tech industry for female-identifying undergrad and grad students. WiST is supported by corporate partners Comcast NBCU, Nike, the NBA, IBM Sports, the USOPC, Catapult, Stats Perform and numerous others.

Her global network includes the most successful NCAA and academy coaches in the U.S. across all sports, professional team and club administrators, the largest sports and tech companies and brands in the world, award-winning creative talent and elite athlete management agencies.

She is a lifelong Tar Heel and graduate of UNC’s Kenan-Flagler business school, she is a 3:06 marathon runner and former UNC varsity cross country runner.

She was a youth volunteer soccer coach for 10 years and served as president of the Mill Valley Soccer Club, serving over 2,000 kids and managing hundreds of volunteers. Most of all, she is passionate about helping people reach for their full potential – and inspired every day by her fire captain/paramedic, ski patroller, river guide husband Craig and their daughters, Kelly and Darcy, who captained their Tar Heel championship soccer teams before playing professionally in the NWSL and in Europe. Kelly has earned her MD/MBA and is a resident in orthopedic surgery at Stanford. Darcy is a Consumer Direct Marketing Manager at Nike, focused on field sports for women.

SUE SAYS

Marilou grew up in Chapel Hill, NC as the oldest of three and the first to go to college. From the start, sports played an important role in her life. Today as the Founder of WiST, Marilou is passionate about helping both women and companies come together to ensure that the sports technology space becomes more inclusive and diverse in order to help society as a whole.