Stacy Johns has been in the zone since joining the Los Angeles Football Club in 2020 as its chief financial officer.
She has been promoted three times, with the most recent one in April, when the soccer organization named her the new chief business officer. In 2023, she added chief operating officer to her title, and she became president of the Grasshopper Club Zurich following LAFC’s 2024 acquisition of the Swiss club.
An Indiana native, Johns joined LAFC after 16 years with the Indianapolis Colts, where she held various roles, including vice president of finance and human resources during her final six years with the team.
In her role as CBO, Johns oversees both LAFC and BMO Stadium – also home to the National Women’s Soccer League team Angel City FC. As CFO, Johns secured the largest naming rights deal in Major League Soccer history, linking LAFC and its stadium with BMO. That same year, LAFC became the first and only MLS club with a valuation over $1 billion – an achievement that earned the Los Angeles Business Journal’s CFO of the Year Award in 2024 for a private, mid-sized company.
You have an extensive background in business operations within sports. How did you come to choose this sector as your career path?
Honestly, I kind of fell into it, which I think is not the case for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people who drive hard at this. I came out of college as a CPA working for a public accounting firm and was kind of shopping for that industry that would really excite me. Funny enough, I landed on the Indianapolis Colts engagement and really the rest is history. I love consuming sports, and I was an Indiana native and adored my Indiana sports teams and it just all made sense. I became so curious about the business of sports once I started in a finance position, it all grew from there. I added HR, then business and data strategy, organizational strategy work, and then eventually sales, IT, stadium operations until I found myself overseeing mostly all of it. I didn’t grow up wanting to run a sports team, but over the past 20 years, it became my passion.
What do you enjoy most about your work and leadership at LAFC?
A big part of the reason I came to LAFC is the culture, but I would say my favorite part about it is the people – everyone from the hardest working (and most fun) staff to the best supporters and fans to the players to the external stakeholders to our incredibly passionate, intelligent and accessible ownership group and everyone in between. The owners really allow the (executive) team to create a culture that aspires to be better than the standard sports team or club and cares deeply about their people. So it’s about the people, it’s about our culture. I want people to know that we care about them at LAFC, and I want them to know that we’re lucky to have them. … Our people really are what make us so special.
What do you deem to be some of your greatest successes?
A couple things–I would say being part of the team that landed the largest naming rights deal in MLS history with BMO. I (also) would say one of them is establishing a culture of fiscal responsibility. … That was really hard at the beginning, but I think now, if you look at what we’ve done, we’ve been able to do it by being fiscally responsible. It’s much more strategic….I’m very proud of that.
Also, we’ve created programs, like our Leadership Academy, and bringing in coaching resources with Novus Global to help really make growth and education a priority in a relatively small team. It’s been super rewarding.
What has surprised you most about working in sports and entertainment?
How much I would love it, and love what I do. My parents told me when I was younger how important it was to love your job and love your work, because it’s like, it’s what you do most of the time. And you know, I don’t really think I knew what that meant (at such a young age).
What has also been so surprising is the lessons it would not only teach me, but my family. With sports, which I think is already one of those really unique careers, if you work in the right environment, your family is “in it” with you. I have three kids, and my career has not only shaped my life but also theirs. They come with me to games. They come to the office with me. They’ve seen how happy their mom is while at work. It has allowed me to live my best life as a professional and a mother. Most importantly, it has taught my kids that loving your job is such an important piece of being happy. We spend so much time at work, life is short, love what you do and in sports, you can share that love with your family.
There’s a growing number of women who are in front, the front offices of sports teams, yeah, sports related industries. What does that mean or say to you?
Diversity of thought is so important, and without women in key positions, I don’t know how you get there. For me, it’s been a journey over the past 21 years in this industry. When I started, I had like two or three women to ‘look up to’ who were really killing it in the NFL. It was much harder to network back then, and every young woman in the field would have loved to have them as a mentor, so that was tough. I was fortunate to have a group of young, talented women who all started with me in the NFL that I still consider friends and mentors. Many of those women sit at the top of sports organizations now, including one prominent woman in NFL finance and several running teams.
We really leaned on each other, which was awesome, but what I think is great now, (and) I’m proud to say now that young girls and women can (now) look around and easily find representation and people to network with at all levels of sports organizations. It has been fascinating to watch, and those of us who sit in the seats accept the responsibility to help bring other women up as we climb and also educate the youth so that this trend not only continues, but becomes something we don’t even need to talk about anymore.
What do you hope to see in the future for women pursuing a career in sports, on or off the field or court?
In a perfect world, we are no longer talking about women on or off the court (or field) in sports because it is no longer a topic. I am constantly asked to speak on ‘women’s’ panels and for now, that continues to be important and an incredible resource for the young female and male future leaders.
When I look at my son, who’s 12, he doesn’t go to an Angel City or LAFC game and think one is better than the other. … he sees it equally, and I hear that from other kids (his age and older). I want to believe that when we get another 20 years out, we’re seeing a whole other shift, where the value is not different, and we don’t have to even talk about it anymore. … I want there to be a day when I am invited to speak on panels, where I am an expert, regardless of my gender, and we don’t even need those gender-specific panels or conferences in sports.
