Achieving healthy, sustained engagement of women and girls in squash
The inaugural Women and Girls Summit took place September 24, 2022 at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in Philadelphia. The Summit brought together a diverse group of players, coaches, leaders and parents together from around the country.
The day was split into three sections:
- Playing: Round robins, fun competitions and workouts
- Connecting: Informal social gatherings and a lunch reception
- Learning: Seminars and workshop focused on how to support girls and their well-being, build resilience in the face of challenges, and create an environment for success and happiness
Replays of the Summit’s expert panels and seminars are now available on the US Squash Youtube Channel and below.
Thank you to all attendees, supporters, and partners of the 2022 Women and Girls Summit for making it such a meaningful, collaborative, and fun day!
Panels & Seminars
Women & Girls Summit Expert Panel
The Women & Girls Summit featured a panel of experts moderated by MSNBC’s Erin O’Hearn (far right), and including (l-r): author Dr. Jamie Zuckerman, US Squash’s Linda Elriani, Free People Movement’s Erin Malone, Drexel University Athletic Director Maisha Kelly, and Goldman Sachs’ Christina Minnis.
College Coaches Panel
The Women & Girls Summit featured a panel of college coaches moderated by College Squash Association League Commissioner David Poolman (far right) and including (l-r) Columbia’s Joanne Schickerling, Princeton’s Gail Ramsay, Hobart & William Smith’s Pat Cosquer and Haverford’s Niki Clement. The panel theme was “Making the most out of college squash, from choosing a college to competing on a team.”
College Players Panel
The Women & Girls Summit college players panel featured former collegiate and professional athletes speaking about their experiences, challenges they may have faced, how they were supported and how sports have impacted their lives. The panel included (l-r) Dickinson’s Abbie Wingerd and Drexel’s Eva and Ona Prokes.
Dr. Jaime Zuckerman: Addressing the Impact of Social Media on Sport Engagement and Participation
Dr. Jaime Zuckerman is a Philadelphia based licensed clinical psychologist in private practice. She specializes in the treatment of anxiety, depression, stress management, and is a nationally known expert, and relationship coach, in the area of narcissistic abuse.
Marci Sier: Using Sport to Help Teens Embrace and Learn From Mistakes
Marci comes from a high-performance background as both a player and a coach. She uses her world class doubles and singles experience to knowledgeably guide, mentor, and train individuals and teams of all ages, helping them reach their potential both as athletes and as people. Marci has been the head squash professional at The Badminton and Racquet Club in Toronto since 2008. She is also a Mental Performance Consultant who practices as a professional member of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association.
Dr. Matt Munich: The Well-Attuned Entourage: Enhancing Performance, Strengthening the Family & Forging Resilience
After a junior career playing in local and national tournaments, Matt played his college squash at Cornell, where he earned such honors as the Sportsmanship Award, Most Valuable Player, and Captaincy. After college, Matt continued playing competitive squash, where he enjoyed a lengthy career at the local, state, and national levels, with highlights including 7 Rhode Island State Championships, the 2003 5.5 US National Championship, and representing the United States in the 1997 Maccabiah Games.
In 2011, under the aegis of the Smith College School for Social Work, Matt conducted qualitative research on the experience of elite college squash players (“No Purer Joy: the Developmental, Social, and Motivational Aspects of Elite College Squash”). Combining his social work training, with its person-in-environment perspective, and his life-long interest in the psychology of sport, Matt founded Altius Performance Works to help athletes overcome hurdles to peak performance. Along the way, Matt helps the athlete’s entourage communicate better, strengthen bonds, and ensure longevity in sport by fostering a growth mindset in the athlete and the athlete’s system. His blog, “Floating & Stinging: A Sport Performance Blog” is a repository of some of the fruits of his research and tips on developing resilience on the court and off.
Partners
Speaker Bios
Erin O’Hearn is a freelance Anchor and Reporter for MSNBC and NBC’s Early Today. Her career path took some unexpected twists and turns leading her to the Peacock Network. It all started at MTV back when the channel stopped playing music videos and developed what we now call “reality TV”. Erin worked as a production assistant for the “True Life” series and worked her way up to series Associate Producer, helping to craft a variety of episodes including, True Life: I’m Bipolar, True Life: I’m Coming Out and True Life: I’m a Candidate.
While traveling the country and exploring topics pertinent to young adults was exciting and educational, in the early 2000s, Erin decided to take a shot at on-air reporting at the Time Warner station in her hometown, Albany, NY. Being stationed in the Capital of New York, she had many journalistic opportunities to dive into local, state and national politics—at one point getting an exclusive interview with Governor George Pataki at the scene of a Port disaster.
A couple of years later, she was hired by the ABC station in Raleigh, NC—and was then transferred to Philadelphia’s powerhouse station, 6ABC. One of her first assignments was interviewing the internationally known archeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass on location in Egypt.
Years later, she would be the only on-air reporter to cover Pope Francis saying Mass at Saint Charles Borromeao Seminary.
It was in the city of Brotherly and Sisterly Love where she met her husband during an on-camera interview. They were lucky enough to be blessed with three children. In addition to changing diapers and volunteering as a homeroom mom here and there, Erin took on some various projects including producing a documentary and several reality television shows.
When Erin isn’t watching her kids play lacrosse, basketball, tennis, golf and football, she enjoys friendly competition herself on the tennis court. She is also an avid runner, skier and yoga fanatic.
Dr. Jaime Zuckerman is a Philadelphia based licensed clinical psychologist in private practice. She specializes in the treatment of anxiety, depression, stress management, and is a nationally known expert, and relationship coach, in the area of narcissistic abuse.
Dr. Z is a mental health contributor to various media outlets including Fox29 news, PHL17, NBC10, and CBS3 Philly. She has been featured in several publications including Huffington Post, Business Insider, Vogue, Washington Post, and is the author of Find Your Calm: A Workbook to Manage Anxiety. Her latest book, Find Good Habits: A Workbook for Daily Growth, will be released late August of 2022. Dr. Z is also the host of the “It’s Me, Dr. Z.” podcast.
JAIME ZUCKERMAN
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
233 East Lancaster Avenue | Suite 303 | Ardmore, PA 19003
office (610) 551-1819 | cell (215) 603-2331
Matthew A. Munich LCSW
After a junior career playing in local and national tournaments, Matt played his college squash at Cornell, where he earned such honors as the Sportsmanship Award, Most Valuable Player, and Captaincy. After college, Matt continued playing competitive squash, where he enjoyed a lengthy career at the local, state, and national levels, with highlights including 7 Rhode Island State Championships, the 2003 5.5 US National Championship, and representing the United States in the 1997 Maccabiah Games.
As a coach, Matt served as the Head Pro at the Agawam Hunt Club in Providence, RI, and then moved to coaching high school teams, serving as the Director of Squash at the Kingswood Oxford School in W. Hartford, CT, and then Head Girls’ Varsity Coach at the Penn Charter School, in Philadelphia, PA. Matt continues his service to the game by being a Nationally Certified Referee for USSQUASH.
In 2011, under the aegis of the Smith College School for Social Work, Matt conducted qualitative research on the experience of elite college squash players (“No Purer Joy: the Developmental, Social, and Motivational Aspects of Elite College Squash”). Combining his social work training, with its person-in-environment perspective, and his life-long interest in the psychology of sport, Matt founded Altius Performance Works to help athletes overcome hurdles to peak performance. Along the way, Matt helps the athlete’s entourage communicate better, strengthen bonds, and ensure longevity in sport by fostering a growth mindset in the athlete and the athlete’s system. His blog, “Floating & Stinging: A Sport Performance Blog” is a repository of some of the fruits of his research and tips on developing resilience on the court and off.
Matthew A. Munich LCSW
5015 South Park Drive, Suite 250
Durham, NC 27713
(t)617.545.3527
(f)919-849-5590
Marci Sier, MA, MPC, ChPC
Marci comes from a high-performance background as both a player and a coach. She uses her world class doubles and singles experience to knowledgeably guide, mentor, and train individuals and teams of all ages, helping them reach their potential both as athletes and as people.
Marci has been the head squash professional at The Badminton and Racquet Club in Toronto since 2008. She is also a Mental Performance Consultant who practices as a professional member of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association. Marci has been the provincial junior coach since 2015, coached at the Women’s World Team Championships 2014, and continues to coach at the top junior tournaments in the world. Marci was also the recipient of the Squash Ontario Coaching Achievement Award in 2017. Additionally, Marci is also an active coach developer and evaluator in Canada, and sits on the Squash Ontario Junior High Performance Committee, Squash Canada Coaching Committee, and Squash Canada High Performance Committee.
Bounce Back Seminar
“Bounce Back” is a Performance Psychology seminar that explores an individual’s mindset and interpretation in making mistakes and acceptance of them. Exercises are used to look at with what mindset individuals approach mistakes, and how it affects their learning process and ability to change. Many individuals are not comfortable with making mistakes, and this stops them from the process forward. Learning to shift mindset to embrace mistakes as strengths allows individuals to better analyze their current process. Through this positive discovery of learning how to make mistakes, they can then build their “how to” actions of change they need for better daily habits that will lead to better focus, productivity, and motivation. But first, we need to enjoy making mistakes!
Erin Malone
Originally from Sydney, Australia, Erin moved to the US in 2009 to attend Villanova University. A dual-sport athlete in both Swimming and Water polo, Erin was an NCAA Finalist receiving All-American Honors in Swimming and was awarded Villanova Student Athlete of the Year in 2013. She holds a BA in Communications and an MBA specializing in Analytics & Strategic Management. Erin is now the Director of Digital Marketing, Analytics & Insights at Free People where she leads the growth and strategy of their digital business.
Christina Minnis
Investment Banking
Christina is co-head of Global Credit Finance and head of Global Acquisition Finance. She serves as a member of the Firmwide Capital Committee, Investment Banking Division (IBD) Executive Committee, IBDRisk Committee and the Partnership Committee. Christina is a member of the Board of Advisors of Launch With GS,Goldman Sachs’ $500 million commitment to invest in companies and investment managers with diverse leadership. Christina joined Goldman Sachs in 1998 as a vice president in IBD, where she focused on leveraged finance deals primarily for the Financial Sponsors Group. She joined the Fixed Income Division in 2001 as part of Capital Markets and focused on industrials followed by healthcare. Christina served as co-head of Leveraged Finance in the Americas and as co-head of the Healthcare Group in the Americas from 2013 to 2014and as head of Corporate Finance for theConsumer Retail and Healthcare Group from2014 to 2015. She was named managing director in 2004 and partner in 2008. Prior to joining the firm, Christina was with BT Alex Brown from 1987 to 1998, where her last position was managing director in Corporate Finance. Christina is a member of the YaleDevelopment Council and Yale School of Management Advisory Board. She is also a member on the Board of Directors of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Christina earned a BA in Economics fromYale University in 1987 and an MM from theKellogg School of Management atNorthwestern University in 1991.
Maisha Kelly
Following a national search, Maisha Kelly was named Drexel’s Director or Athletics on June 16, 2021. Kelly, a native of Philadelphia, returns to the city after serving as Bucknell University’s senior associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator.
Kelly’s administrative role at Bucknell included oversight responsibilities for as many as 12 of the 27 varsity athletics programs, including women’s basketball. She also served as the athletic department’s liaison to the academic deans, human resources, financial aid and admissions, student affairs and oversaw NCAA compliance. Kelly spearheaded the department’s long-range planning, she served as the university’s deputy Title IX coordinator, and she played an active role on the President’s Diversity Council. Kelly created the athletic department’s first student-athlete leadership development program — the Bucknell Athletics Leadership Institute — in 2011, and last year organized the Bucknell Athletics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, comprised of administrators, coaches and student-athletes.
In 2019, Kelly’s primary role shifted to development and fundraising, where she was focused on increasing annual support for the Bison Club and spearheading the fundraising efforts for major capital projects related to Bison Athletics. In 2021, she coordinated a 24-hour giving challenge that netted more than $1 million. In addition, she was the fundraising project manager for a $10 million transformational facility enhancement of Bucknell’s historic Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium.
In April 2018, Kelly was appointed by the NCAA Board of Directors to the NCAA Division I Council, where she represented the Patriot League on important NCAA policy matters. Kelly was also a member of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee. She previously served as a member of the Division I Nominating Committee and the NCAA Division I Track and Field Committee, where she was appointed Chair in her final year of service. Kelly is a 2019 graduate of the NCAA Pathway Program.
Kelly is a member of the Women Leaders in College Sports and a graduate of their Executive Institute. She is also a graduate of the NCAA Leadership Institute for Ethnic and Minority Females. Kelly and her husband, Kevin, have two young children, Gregory and Kennedy.