In this episode of the Sports Business Classroom Audio Experience: Women in Sports series, host Kate Foley sits down with Vegas Summer League (VSL) Alumni, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, and DSW Candidate Talyah Polee. Talyah completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2010. Her introduction to the sports industry was when she interned at the Las Vegas Summer League from 2012-2017. Soon after, Talyah landed her first role as a Client Services Coordinator at Wasserman.
In this episode, Kate and Talyah discuss the following:
- Talyah’s experiences as a student-athlete
- Talyah’s path into the Las Vegas Summer League internship program & Wasserman
- How Talyah balances her personal & work life
- The progression of normalizing mental health awareness
While a resident of Denver, Talyah Polee was crowned Miss Colorado USA in 2014 and represented Colorado at the Miss USA 2015 pageant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During her years at UNLV, she competed three times at Miss Nevada USA while competing as a Track & Field athlete. Talyah earned her Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from California Baptist University (CBU) and is currently pursuing her Doctoral of Social Work (DSW) at CBU.
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SHOW NOTES
- Who did Talyah admire growing up? (2:00)
- How were Talyah’s experiences as a student-athlete? (3:30)
- Is the sports psychology industry female or male-dominant? (4:35)
- What made Talyah want to make the shift from athlete to psychology (5:23)
- When in Talyah start to see a shift in the league’s approach to sports psychology (6:50)
- How do you assess and build trust with a client that you’ve just met? (7:57)
- What do you do when you want to help someone’s mental health, but the person doesn’t want to help themselves? (9:50)
- As a consumer, how do you explain the limelight and lifestyle of what it takes from a celebrity to live their life in the spotlight? (11:00)
- What was Talyah’s path into the VSL internship and Wasserman (12:29)
- Has Talayah ever been in an experience where she wasn’t given an opportunity due to her gender? (14:15)
- What for Talyah has been something that challenged her to dig in and own herself? (17:30)
- What are three things Talyah shows up to work with? (20:40)
- What advice do you have for young women in today’s world trying to break into the sports industry? (22:20)
- Have you ever experienced a situation at work where you felt discriminated against due to your gender? (23:30)
- Taylah talks about what players experience when they have to separate their personal lives and their professional lives (26:18)
- Tell us about the experience of your first job interview. How did you prepare? (27:50)
- What was Talyah’s first job? (28:40)
- How does Talyah balance her personal life with her work life? (30:10)
- What would Talyah tell her younger self now that she’s learned so much (31:13)
- How can listeners keep a healthy balance in their own lives while trying to pursue a career in sports? (32:00)
- Is there a situation that Talyah experienced where she wishes she could have done things differently? (34:05)
- What are ways Talyah helps her clients/athletes deal with the struggles of living in everyday society (34:45)
- Talyah shares what team experiences when they have a therapist on deck (36:30)
- How has this generation made progress in normalizing mental health awareness (39:00)
- Where does Talyah see women throughout the sports industry in the future? (40:35)
- What was the moment when Tayah knew she wanted to pursue a career in sports? (43:40)
