Michaela Hammond: From Agent to Sports Fashion Media Executive

What is your name and what do you do?

My name is Michaela Hammond, and I am the CEO and co-founder of OffBall, which is a sports culture media platform.

So Michaela, we're gonna go back to the beginning.

We go in chronological order.

So tell us about your family.

Tell us about where you grew up.

I am so proud of where I come from, but I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I come from a very proud Native American family.

Our home pueblo is twenty miles north of Albuquerque.

It's called San Felipe Pueblo, and I spent the majority of my childhood going there, participating in our customs.

My family is just, like, a really proud native family.

It all stems from my grandma, who passed last year.

She really taught us how to carry our culture, but also go out into the world and do more and see more.

My mom had me when she was nineteen.

I think that my family is full of survivors, full of people who have never had a straight and narrow path but have achieved nonetheless.

And I think that watching my mom, I wouldn't say struggle, but I think now I understand that she was struggling.

But as a kid, you don't ever realize, like, the things that your parents are thinking or doing.

But watching her sort of just be so committed to creating a good life for us, I have, like, that dedication and commitment just, like, in my core, and it's really defined everything that I've done and that is, like, across the family.

family.When you say carry your culture, so that came from your grandmother, that was instilled in you, what did that mean to you then? What does it mean to you now?

Being in broader business culture, going to school in New York, even in Albuquerque, like, a lot of people don't engage with or understand Native American traditions and customs.

You know, they're just not at the forefront of people's minds, and people don't realize that there's thriving Native American communities, like, still across the country.

It's funny, like, we are one of the most conservative sort of traditional Pueblo Indians, uh, which is, you know, just specifically where we're from.

And we have been able to maintain our language and our customs and our beliefs in a way that other Native American communities have not, just through history, and we don't have to go through American history today.

So when I, I think about carrying my culture, it's, there are just certain things, a deep sort of, like, confidence, sense of family, purpose, working for a greater being or cause that sort of exists outside of just your independent beliefs, really just believing in community and what that community gives you and what you give that community.

And those are things that have, like, propelled me through life, whether I think about them daily or I think about them when I go home.