Where Are They Now: Elizabeth O'Brien, Women's Basketball/Women's Soccer

A three-sport athlete at Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, New York, Elizabeth O’Brien represented the Hofstra women’s basketball team and the Hofstra women’s soccer team from 1992-97.

After graduating from Hofstra, O’Brien cut her teeth in collegiate coaching at Dowling College before joining the staff at the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 1998, where she was the recruiting coordinator. She soon found her way back to Hempstead in 2000 when she was named an assistant coach on the staff of Leslie Schlegel-Danowski, who coached her during her playing days at Hofstra, from 2000-02. At Hofstra, O’Brien was responsible for recruiting, scouting and positional coaching with the team. She would later return to coach the Hofstra women’s basketball team again for the 2003-04 season under Felisha Legette-Jack.

O’Brien also served two stints with the women’s basketball program at the United States Military Academy from 2002-03 and again in 2004-05. With the Black Knights, O’Brien was responsible for overseeing recruiting, scouting, and development of point guards.

Following stays in Hawaii, California, Kansas, Kentucky and Germany, O’Brien began work with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2014, where she was eventually named the senior director of the Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program, a nationwide effort to connect veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses with employment opportunities. She also became the first military spouse to be named the chairwoman of the U.S. Small Business Administration's Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs, where she was responsible for advisement for the federal government regarding small business employment opportunities for members of the military community. In April 2020, O’Brien was named CEO of Freedom Learning Group, a for-profit organization that specializes in providing educational content, job placement, and training services for veterans and military spouses.

This past November, O’Brien made a matching gift donation to the Hofstra women’s soccer program, pledging to match any donation to the program. The women’s soccer program wound up surpassing its stated goal thanks to the efforts of O’Brien and the supporters of Hofstra women’s soccer.

What made you decide to attend Hofstra?

I grew up in Hempstead, and originally I looked at every other school in the country that was far away. I really had my heart set on playing two sports and, at the time I wanted to major in broadcast journalism. It turned out that the solution was right down Hempstead Turnpike at Hofstra.

I wanted to play two sports at the Division I collegiate level because I was challenged by both sports and I wanted to continue to grow and be challenged in both of the sports that I loved. Hofstra was the right place to do that.

What is your favorite memory from your time at Hofstra?

Oh gosh, there are so many favorite memories, although it was probably our road trips. I believe that’s where the foundation of teams are built, on the experiences where your team comes together while traveling on the road.

The road trip that sticks with me the most was in my freshman year with women’s basketball when we went down to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech. That’s where our team had the opportunity to come together and get to know each other. We didn’t have the greatest game that day, unfortunately, but it was the experience of that road trip with my teammates that really stands out in my mind.

You were a member of the first Hofstra women’s soccer team. What was it like to play for a brand new program, and how did it feel to lay the foundation for the women’s soccer program?

I think any time you can be the first of anything, in any capacity, it allows you to lay a foundation for the future success of generations to come. I think we’re watching across the country, over the last five or ten years, women making tremendous strides, whether they’re becoming Army Rangers or the first female Vice President.

We were surrounded by a lot of great student-athletes who felt committed to ensuring the success of the women’s soccer program at Hofstra. To look back and know you’re a part of the beginning of something that has seen tremendous success is very special to me.

You recently showed your strong support for Hofstra Athletics with a matching gift campaign. What drove you to be a leader in philanthropy among the Hofstra athletic community?

Going back to my days as a student-athlete and later as a coach, I know how hard it is to bring resources to the table. Our student-athletes work hard,  they deserve every opportunity to have a great student-athlete experience. During my time with the Chamber of Commerce, I spent a lot of time fundraising money to put Americans back to work through workforce development programs. What I discovered through that program was that if you can build a network of cohesiveness, folks are more likely to rise to the challenge. So if I put x amount of dollars up and I could hypothetically find ten corporations to match that, it makes things easier for those companies to come to the table.

Naturally I thought this ‘has to apply to our community at Hofstra’, and Simon has done such a wonderful job. Hofstra women’s soccer isn’t a hard product for me to support; he has created a culture of outstanding student-athletes, contributing members to society, and they win. When I decided to make the contribution, I wanted to see if we could turn this into something more, and I waited because I wanted to see how people were faring during the pandemic, to make sure that people were in a good place economically to make contributions. When you set that number and you rally folks around that number, it’s much easier for other people to match it than it is and asking for individual contributions.

What was it like to be named captain of the women’s basketball team for your senior season?

We were coming off a rough season, so we knew we had our work cut out for us. I think the best part about it was seeing the incoming freshmen as being more athletic, more skilled, and more talented, so we got to see the evolution of the program before our very eyes. It was also an opportunity to formalize what I think I had done during my time on the team, even without the title of team captain, and that was to continue to coach, teach, mentor, and guide the women that were on the team. We were cognizant of needing to bring leadership to practice every day; we were fifth-year seniors, so those newcomers needed that mentorship as they transitioned to the college game. It was definitely a good test of being able to lead through adversity and difficult situations.

I think it was also the culmination of a long-standing friendship and relationship with my co-captain, Meg O’Brien; we were teammates going back to high school and playing AAU basketball together, so to see that through many years culminate in this point for the both of us was very rewarding.

What made you want to get into coaching?

There’s two parts to that. The first part, at a young age, was a love of the strategy and the development of an offense and creating defensive schemes. I just found things like that intriguing when I was in high school; being a part of this massive puzzle of breaking down an opposing team that I wanted to solve. The second part really developed when I was at Hofstra. We would go out and coach clinics and developmental camps during the summer. I really loved the idea of coaching and mentoring student-athletes as they worked towards improving themselves as athletes and as people.

I can tell you, when Jay Wright and his coaching staff came in and I was a student-athlete, they provided me with additional opportunities to learn. When I would ask if I could sit in on a practice, the door was always open. I learned during my time as a student-athlete that if you put your hand up and ask for an opportunity, you’ll often get the help you need. I believe that was what opened my door to go into college coaching.

You had two stints at Hofstra as an assistant women’s basketball coach. What was it like to return to coach at your alma mater?

I think any time you can return not only to your alma mater, but also your hometown, it’s going to be impactful. It was great to come back and coach for the woman that coached me, Leslie Schlegel-Danowski, and see how she managed behind the scenes, during the day-to-day operations and all the pieces that she was putting together. 

When I came back the second time under Felisha Legette-Jack, she was and is a very high-energy person that set out to change the culture of the program. There was a lot of enthusiasm and passion coupled with a belief that the tide was turning towards creating a winning program, which she certainly did. 

It was an exciting time to be back at Hofstra; we were moving into the Mack Sports Complex, and the team and community were buying into Felisha’s vision. It allowed Hofstra women’s basketball to really arrive on the national map, and I took a lot of great learning lessons from her, as well.

You also coached at the United States Military Academy for a number of years. How do you feel your experience at the United States Military Academy shaped you into the person you are today?

For me, I’d say it was definitely a life-changing event. Any time you’re going into a 16 or 17-year-old’s house to recruit them on behalf of a military academy, there are so many more pieces layered in there besides coming to play college basketball and receive an education. It was a great glimpse into the philosophy of service before self, and it’s something that has stayed with me since I left there. The accessibility there was second to none; You could ask anybody from a three-star general on down if they had time for a discussion, and there wasn’t a single person who said no. So the opportunity to grow in terms of leadership, alternative ways of thinking about leadership and empowering small groups were my biggest takeaways from there.

I loved the day-to-day culture that was there from top to bottom, where everyone at the school was invested in the success of the student-athlete, no matter what sport they were a part of.

After working in college athletics, you’ve moved into an advocacy role for the military community. What has your involvement with the military community through this field been like?

So I would say I’ve been in work-force development for about seven-and-a-half years with a primary focus on military spouses, who are 92% female. Military spouses come with all of the challenges any other woman in America would have while working, except that we are 10 times more likely to move across state lines. Additionally, there is a tremendous lack of safe, affordable, accessible childcare, which leads to unemployment rates that are six times higher than our civilian counterparts. That advocacy work has been unbelievable journey; it’s taken me all over the world, and ultimately provided a voice at the table for an underserved population. It has set me on a path to take all the lessons I’ve learned as a student-athlete and as a coach of young women, and merging all those pieces over decades of experience. It’s been an eye-opening experience to witness the challenges underserved populations face in this country.

You are currently the CEO of Freedom Learning Group. Tell us about your role with that organization and what you hope to accomplish in that position.

We are a for-profit learning company, and we serve publishers, corporate America, and universities creating content for them. However, we were founded with a social mission of putting military spouses and veterans to work through re-skilling and last-mile training programs. So ultimately, my job is to grow our revenue base in parallel to ensuring the expansion of serving military spouses and veterans. We really have two sides of the business, certainly serving our customers, but also building training programs that put Americans back to work.

How do you feel coaching at the collegiate level prepared you for your current professional career?

I always come back to the pieces of ‘coach, teach, mentor, guide’, and that’s something you do in college coaching and it’s something, in theory, you should do when you’re in leadership positions in corporate America; If someone asked me, it’s something that should be occurring in any phase of your life. So I always come back to that philosophy, and I believe that’s the most powerful piece I took from my coaching days.

How important is it for you to be a role model to young women?

I think that’s something I’ve been cognizant of every step of the way, going back to when I was at Hofstra and we would go into the local community to volunteer. If you think about the fact that, when you go into the local community, you place young, female student-athletes in a room, you’re modeling for all those young kids in the room that what you can do is possible. My role now is a CEO, even though I’m behind the driving of revenue and expansion, in parallel to that I’m doing a tremendous amount of work in advocacy in work-force development, making sure I’m in a room sharing the stories and the path forward. In parallel to that, we’re building out opportunities within the organization to make sure that we are building a more diverse workforce and giving people of different backgrounds a seat at the table. When you look at Freedom Learning Group, women probably make up 85% of our workforce, including leadership positions.

It’s been a wild ride during the pandemic. The fact that we’ve been able to grow, when so many small businesses have been shut down, makes the will to ensure small businesses have a seat at the table and expansion for growth that much greater because we’re projected to put over 3,000 people to work.

How did competing as a student-athlete at Hofstra prepare you for life after college as a coach and as a CEO?

I think probably the Hofstra network has been the most powerful tool that I’ve been able to leverage coming out of Hofstra. And those are relationships that, looking back on them, have been built and fostered and taken to the next level over 30 years; I about fell out of my chair after realizing that I started school about 30 years ago.

Honestly, it’s that network that any city I would visit to meet with mayors or governors, I was almost always able to find a thread to a Hofstra alum. Relationships going back to announcing on the radio with Michael Smith, who’s now over at CV Starr, for example. Being able to grow and utilize those relationships that have existed for decades are probably the most powerful tool coming out of Hofstra.

What does it mean to you to be a part of the Hofstra family?

For me, I’d say being part of the Hofstra family means that, after 30 years, I still have a tight-knit group of some wonderful people. I’m on a text chain with some of my teammates from Hofstra where we talk on a daily basis. Three are from Hofstra basketball, and another one was a teammate of mine from the basketball and soccer teams, and we touch on everything from family events to current events across the country and how we’re impacted by them. Those are the pieces that I really wrap my arms around, the lifelong friendships. After you walk off the court or the field for the last time, the enduring friendships will always remain.

The part that I’m also seeing now, and is incredibly rewarding, is seeing the women that I went to school with and competed with moving into leadership roles across the country in various organizations. Whether it’s Maura O’Connell, who runs Lucky Electric out in California and has built a fantastic small business, or Erin McDermott, who is the athletic director at Harvard, or Deneé Barracato (nee Rivera), who is in a leadership position at Northwestern University… we now have people in positions who can help facilitate that transition for other female student-athletes who are moving on from their playing days and into the post-college world.

What is one piece of advice you would give to a current Hofstra student-athlete?

It’s ok to leverage your network and ask people for help and introductions. Really, just be focused on doing good in your piece of the world, wherever that is.