Shoreline Volleyball Alumna Teresa Causin lands her dream job at ESPN

"It is 24/7 sports here, so it’s important to have an interest in, and passion about, sports,"
says Teresa Causin, posing at ESPN's SportsCenter desk.

Shoreline Volleyball Alumna Teresa Causin landed her dream job at ESPN as a program manager. Causin played for the Dolphins during the 2001 and 2002 seasons. She was two-time Northern Region Defensive Player of the Week and led the Dolphins to the 2002 NWAACC Championship game. After Shoreline Causin continued her education at the University of Washington and earned a Bachelors degree in Communication.

Sports Fan Lands Dream Job at ESPN

Teresa Causin has always been an avid sports fan. Her passion runs so deep that her husband’s wedding gift to her was Seahawks season tickets. So it’s only fitting that she now works at one of the world’s most successful sports networks, ESPN.

Causin (BA, Communication, 2006), a program manager for ESPN.com, spends her days overseeing web development projects, working with editors, designers, developers, and product managers to keep projects on track. Her work has an enormous reach: for the last 12 months, ESPN.com averaged more than 10 million unique visitors a day, spiking to more than 14 million on NFL Sundays and during the NCAA Tournament.

As a UW undergraduate, Causin could not have imagined such a job. She had planned to major in business, but changed her tune after taking a few communication classes and finding them compelling. Settling on a career path after graduation proved more difficult.

“To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do,” says Causin, who opted for a job as enrollment processor at the Art Institute of Seattle, with the idea that she would take classes in graphic design and pursue a career in web design.

Before that came to pass, she was offered a contract position managing virtual events — online meetings with attendees from around the globe— for Microsoft. Next came a position as resource manager with Identity Mine, a small software company in Tacoma, where her focus was the efficient use of resources across multiple projects. Causin discovered that she had already honed many of the skills needed for that position. Her Microsoft experience had made her more tech savvy, and her volunteer work as a youth volleyball coach had trained her to effectively identify and tap individuals’ strengths. “I had experience managing people coming on and off the bench, as one might say,” says Causin.

Causin’s main piece of advice is applicable to all job seekers, regardless of their field: “Find something you love doing. Don’t settle. You spend a lot of your life working—you should love it, every single day. It will take some time to figure out exactly what it is that makes you jump out of bed each morning and look forward to your day, but once you find it, there is no replacement.” 

Read more  in the Perspectives Newsletter on the  UW College of Arts and Sciences website.