Women & Sports Lunch Panel

The Delaware County Press Club celebrates Women’s History Month with a Women & Sports luncheon panel featuring  Leslie Gudel, COO of Strategic Sports Marketing (SSM) and Elevate Sports and Media and founding member of Comcast SportsNet; Dr. Monica Taylor, Chair of Delaware County Council and professor and program director in Kinesiology at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia; and Lindsey Moppert, senior Broadcast Journalism major at Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication.

Panel members will discuss their careers; the impact of sports on women athletes and business leaders; and how sports builds character, teamwork, and other life qualities. A Q&A period will follow the discussion, with questions welcome from the audience.

About our panelists:

Leslie Gudel is an Emmy winning sportscaster and entrepreneur.  A native of Los Angeles, Gudel moved to Philadelphia in 1997 where she became the city’s first female sports broadcaster, helping launch Comcast SportsNet (now NBC Sports Network).  During her 19 years with Comcast SportsNet, Gudel used her spare time on the national beat. She spent three years with ABC Sports as a sideline reporter for college football, as well as reporting from the US Open Figure Skating Championships, Indy 500, and Little League World Series. Additionally, Gudel had a five year run as co-host of  “NASCAR Garage” on TNN and as the sideline reporter for the Pro Bowler’s Tour on ESPN.

As an entrepreneur, Gudel launched her first of two businesses in 2009, while maintaining her on-air job. Her company, Baby Matters, generating 12 million in revenue over four years.  Gudel launched her second company in 2015, an online gift product company called Flatterbox.

After 25 years in broadcasting, Gudel transitioned to the business side of sports. She is currently the COO of Strategic Sports Marketing (SSM) and Elevate Sports and Media. SSM focuses on pairing athletes with brands/corporations, as well as taking an active role in the new Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) opportunity with college athletes. It’s Gudel’s goal to help athletes build a brand while they’re playing so they have an asset to leverage after their playing careers are over. Elevate Sports and Media is a start-up sports agency, currently in its infancy. Additionally, Gudel is involved in the company’s other brand, Sports Vault, an online memorabilia business.

Gudel’s daughter had a stroke in 2014 at the age of ten, the result of a ruptured arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in her brain. This led to the creation of a non-profit called Kendall’s Crusade. To date, they’ve raised just over $350,000 in five years to help fund research and care for patients with an AVM. 

Outside of wearing these many hats, Gudel loves working out, traveling, cooking, photography and spending time with her two kids, Kendall (18) and Chase (16).

Dr. Monica Taylor was a standout player with the University of Maine’s women’s basketball team and went on to play professionally in Ireland. She served as a graduate assistant basketball coach at East Stroudsburg University; worked at the United States Military Academy at West Point; and was a professor and assistant women’s basketball coach at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Now Chair of the Delaware County Council, she is also a professor and program director in Kinesiology at University of the Sciences, Philadelphia.

Lindsey Moppert is completing studies in Broadcast Journalism at Temple University, where she is a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Association for Women in Sports Media, and is captain of Temple’s Cheerleading team. She has completed internships at ESPN and SFBN and is now working at Temple with “Temple Update,” OwlSports Update Productions, and American Athletic Conference Campus Connect. She’s also an intern with "PHL17 Morning News."

All Press Club events are open to the public. Reservations are recommended but guests may also pay by cash, check, or credit card at the door. Masks are optional.

Special Request: Please consider bringing a new book or two for students in grades K through eighth for the Press Club’s Book Drive.