How to Redesign Fixed Systems
with Pro Volleyball Player Cassidy Lichtman
What happens when you stop accepting the rules you’ve been handed and start redesigning the game itself?
Cassidy Lichtman is a former U.S. National Team volleyball player, gender equity advocate, and the leader of professional volleyball at Athletes Unlimited. In this episode, Cassidy and Lisa explore what it takes to build futures that don’t yet exist, even when the system seems rigid.
Cassidy shares the story of reimagining professional women’s sports in the U.S. What if athletes were centered as partners, not commodities? She breaks down how Athletes Unlimited is building leagues differently and why those choices matter far beyond sports.
The conversation also dives into moments of decision-making in complicated moments, including how Athletes Unlimited responded when its values were tested, and how constraints, frustration, and “this doesn’t make sense” moments can become catalysts for systemic change. Cassidy models what it looks like to question “used futures” and create something better.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
How to spot systems that feel “off” and start redesigning them
How values can show up in business models
Why women’s sports offer a powerful blueprint for future-facing leadership
This episode is a masterclass in agency, imagination, and long-term thinking—and a reminder that if a future doesn’t exist yet, maybe it’s yours to build.
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Cassidy: Every conversation I have around volleyball with people, I'm like, ''Hey, did you know that there are as many girls playing volleyball in high school as boys playing baseball?'' Everybody's just like, "Wait, what?" I'm like, "Yes, we call that America's pastime, but is it? Or is it America's boys' pastime, and this is America's girls' pastime?'' As you enlighten people, then they start to see it too, and then they can't unsee it.
Lisa: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
What happens when you question the rules that were handed to you and then build something better in their place? Today, I'm talking with Cassidy Lichtman, a world-class volleyball player, advocate, and leader at Athletes Unlimited, a new network of professional women's sports leagues that has reimagined how teams are built and run.
Cassidy takes us inside what it looked like to help create a professional volleyball league in the United States where none existed before, and how centering athletes as partners, not just participants, unlocked entirely new possibilities. This episode is a master class in seeing false limits, asking better questions, and designing futures that actually work for people living in them. If you find yourself nodding along as you listen, take a moment to leave a comment or rating for How We Future. It helps more people discover these conversations. Let's get started with Cassidy Lichtman. Cassidy, tell us about Athletes Unlimited and what it's all about.
Cassidy: Athletes Unlimited started in 2020 as the pandemic began. It's a network of professional women's sports leagues. It started with softball, then went into volleyball, lacrosse, and basketball. It has evolved over time in each of those sports. Essentially, it was about rethinking how we put together sports leagues, and a huge part of it was the partnership with the athletes from the beginning. I played in the first couple of seasons of the volleyball league. They really do center the athlete in decision-making processes and the co-creation of these properties in a way that I don't think exists anywhere else. I think that's had a huge impact on how the leagues have been built, the success that they've had, and the feeling that the athletes have as they get on the court and field.
Lisa: It's so fantastic. We are going to unpack all of that in this conversation. Cassidy, this season for How We Future, we're really trying to get at specific skills that people can learn to shape their own futures. When I think about what you have done and what Athletes Unlimited has done, to me, one of the core skills is how do we redefine the rules? How do we change the game? Time and time again, I see you making choices that put something new on the map that people didn't even know could exist, and then it becomes a thing, and then it becomes a bigger thing.
That's a lot of what I want to discuss with you today, which is what did you want to see that wasn't there? Then how did it come to be? Even just picking up on the theme that you talked about around Athletes Unlimited, let's start with the volleyball since you are a world-class volleyball player, was a participant, and now the chair of the volleyball division or league at Athletes Unlimited. There wasn't a professional volleyball league, period, in the US. Talk to us a little bit about what it was like to participate in this reimagination of professional sports for volleyball, but also, in general, about what professional sports could be like.
Cassidy: It was such a fascinating process to be a part of, and I think did teach me a lot of skills around how do we reimagine what the future can look like. I had been told my whole life that we couldn't have pro volleyball in the US. It just wouldn't work. There wasn't an audience for it. I believed that. I thought it was just the US media market's different, the sports market is different. Even after going overseas and seeing big fan clubs over there and that they're on TV across Europe and Asia, I still was like, "Okay, that's great that it can happen over there but not here." Then when the first season of AU happened, I was like, "Wait, nobody told us it could look like this."
It was such a moment of gratitude and pride, but also a little bit of anger of like, "You've convinced us that we were the problem." The truth is, if you invest in it properly and you make sure that everything around the athletes is just as talented and high-quality as they are, then people will watch and it'll be a legitimate product that you can sell. I think that was a big realization for me of looking at it and going, "Okay, have we been asking the right questions?" Again, the question wasn't about the athlete's talent. It was about the investment and where that was going to go.
When you think about the broad landscape of sports and all of the money that's going into the NBA and the NFL and Major League Baseball, it's like, "Yes, of course, startup leagues are going to need a little bit more time and women's leagues are maybe even more because all of the layers of disenfranchisement in the past." That was a big part of it. Then on the athlete empowerment side, all credit to our founders because you need people in power to share it if you're going to change those structures. They did.
Jon Patricof and Jonathan Soros, they're our two co-founders, and recognized from the beginning that they were not experts in these sports, which takes some humility to say like, "Oh, I actually am just going to listen to the people who have done this and who know what it should be like." They're experts in business and all of these other parts of what we were trying to build. When it came down to what does the court look like? What is the schedule? How do you want to play this game? What are the rules? What kind of players do you want to have in this league?
All of the questions that we know better than they do, they turned to us and said, "Tell us what to do." They started to educate us on the business side and the rest of it so we could come together in that conversation. It's such an incredible partnership that I appreciate it on the athlete side and I appreciate it just as much now being on the staff side.
Lisa: It seemed from the beginning they were really centering the athletes. What you're describing there, there's so much to unpack, particularly in the how we future skill realm. One is like, whose future is it? How do you come to believe that this future is the inevitable future when you want to question it? We've always been told that it could never happen here. Who's the they? Could it be you? What if it could happen here? You probably had a close window to see youth volleyball on the rise, certainly women's sports on the rise and timing was ripe.
Pandemic aside, but be like, "What?" Of course it could happen here. Why not? Busting that imagination and then be able to say, "Look at this thing we built. We built this." The other piece I hear is the co-creation of people bringing different expertise to the table. Here are the two founders. They have business expertise. They have belief. They have some funding and capital. You all have the expertise of your game and of athletes. That creating a tremendous opportunity to really reconfigure the structure foundationally different, putting, starting with athletes at the center.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the things that they do differently to support athletes, whether it's the ownership model, whether it's the encouragement to engage in issues that they care about. What are some things that they've done? Again, I think in professional sports, we often see the athlete as a part of it there but for lack of a more graceful way of saying it, I feel like almost commoditized part of it versus centered in the decision-making.
Cassidy: I would say there's three buckets. One is actual voice and governance, the second is storytelling and recognizing the whole human being, and the third is sharing an actual value creation. The first, in terms of actually including the athlete voice, that's embedded within the structure of the organization. We have a player executive committee for each of our sports, five athletes from that league. They meet weekly with the leadership and discuss essentially everything related to that league's operation. They're really involved in the decision-making. They're treated as incredibly important voices in that.
If the athletes say, "No, we don't want that," then that's taken very seriously. That's a big part of it on the operational level. Then at the higher strategic level, there are athletes on our board of directors of the entire organization, which is unheard of for a professional league. I was the first athlete on the board. Now we have two seats that are held by athletes. That is the seat at the table, that you're going over the budget and you're deciding the long-term strategic direction of these sports and leagues. The athletes are sitting right there in that room. That's a huge part of it.
I would say the storytelling and recognition of them as a human being, that is really around like these are people. I think so often that gets lost in sport on all sides, even the fans sometimes. I think we're starting to see fans engage with athletes as human beings because of social media and all that, but sometimes they forget. It's like you're booing somebody who has children and is walking out the store and going into the world. There's all kinds of forms that that takes.
One of them has always been an emphasis on civic engagement, just recognizing that athletes have so much potential to be leaders in that space, which has always been cool. That's taken many different forms, including partnerships with voting orgs and all kinds of stuff. Then just supporting the athletes in whatever they care about. Our causes program is one of the athlete's favorite things. Each athlete gets to choose a cause they play for during the season, and AU will match their bonus that goes to that.
It's, again, just recognition of you care about things other than just this thing you're doing on the court. When you go out there, you're playing for, literally, my shirt, play for what you believe in. That's one of our causes shirts from, I think, last year. Every time they win a game, it matters to them. It also matters to the cause that they chose. Then the third bucket is the long-term value creation. That was really Jonathan Soros, as we were building a league, he was like, the incentives of the athletes in the league should be linked together, which is very rare.
We've just seen a very hostile fight between WNBA and WNBPA. That happens frequently in leagues because the incentives conflict in a lot of cases. What we have at AU is what we call profit participation. Essentially, every athlete that plays in a game gets units, and they will share in the long-term value creation for the next 20 years after they played. If the value of the league grows, then half of that essentially above what our investors will get, so all of our investors cap their returns. If anything comes above that cap, then half of that goes to the athletes for decades into the future.
Part of that is thinking about, again, what happened right now, WNBA gave, I think, a one-time payout to former players. If you're Billie Jean King and you signed to play for $1 in the first tennis tour, and then years later, Coco Gauff is making millions, maybe you don't see that. It's really about thinking about how do we make sure that the people who are there from the start, who believe in it, who are helping build it, who probably won't see the giant salaries at the end, are benefiting, and then also that if the athletes are doing their part to build this league, that they're going to share in that value over time.
Lisa: That is so fantastic. I think people are really hungry for business models that have that long-term perspective. It's also an abundance model of like, "Look, you do well, we do well. Then the next gen does well." I imagine then the alumni, because you, unfortunately, can't play forever as much as we want to. There's just this reality called our bodies breaking down. Then being incentivized to be an ambassador for the sport, being a mentor for the sport, being someone that helps maybe bring it to a new city, and supporting these athletes beyond their play, it's so smart.
I think people are hungry for new models. It's just one of the reasons why, again, I keep coming back to Athletes Unlimited, not just for its potential to bring people together, for how it treats its athletes, but for putting just new business models on the map. I think that this is a case study that should be taught at Stanford Business Schools. This is impact investing at the highest civic level in ways that is also for profit. It's just incredible to see it. I think it's also worth noting it's a B Corp. Maybe talk a little bit about what that is and the kind of reports that you put out.
Cassidy: We're a public benefit company. We are a for-profit company that has a bottom line that we need to be aware of. We have a second bottom line that is social good or good for the world. We put out an annual public benefit report that details all of the work that we've done towards that public good throughout the year. That can be, because we are in the business of women's sports, our business itself does, we think, some social good because it elevates women in different ways and the storytelling that goes along with that. Also, I expect our structure and business model, the work that we do with youth athletes and underserved communities, some of our civic engagement, it's a broad spectrum. We have a whole impact department, that their whole job is to make sure that we have an impact.
Lisa: It's fantastic. It's also great for the athletes, too. I just think it makes them more resilient. It helps them realize if they have a bad day, there's something bigger than the sport. It's just healthy.
Cassidy: Yes, and they love it. The two probably favorite things our athletes did last season, other than play volleyball, was we did a clinic for people with disabilities, always the most inclusive environment you'll ever find. We put some sitting volleyball, some standing. The athletes were having a ball with these kids. Then we took them to go read to elementary school kids. It was the cutest thing you've ever seen.
Lisa: So cute.
Cassidy: They were like, "Can we do it again? Let's just go hang out with children." Some of these kids didn't want to let them leave. It was great. It's like, you can have a good time, you can have an impact, do the right thing, and then still play great volleyball and put it on TV and all that.
Lisa: It stays with you. I always think about what are the stories that you're going to talk about the next day and the day after? What's cuter than a young kid being like, "More, more?" Just slightly better than dogs and kittens that we see.
Cassidy: Exactly.
Lisa: It's so good. I want to talk a little bit about the storytelling piece and the narrative. Specifically, I would love for you to share the story about the second season. I think it was a volleyball. I think it's a great example of, again, challenging status quo and coming up with a new solution in ways that didn't necessarily exist before. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, going in the time machine to go back in time. I think it was, what, February 2022?
Cassidy: Yes, that sounds right. We had played our first season in Dallas, and we were planning to go back, get a two-year contract. In the middle of our off-season, Texas passed some legislation that we didn't feel super comfortable with. It was some stuff around diversity in schools. It was the most restrictive kind of abortion ban that existed, very open gun laws. There was a whole slate. Some of that was pretty antithetical to the values that we were espousing.
We had, for a few weeks, a really deep conversation between our player executive committee, which I was on, and the leadership of, "Do we feel good about going back to this place to play?" One of the things was a question around, should we boycott? Is that going to be effective? We hadn't even announced yet that we were going there. A boycott might not have been super effective. There had just been a story, I think Stacey Abrams had written about Major League Baseball, all-star game boycotting, because something had happened in Atlanta. That really hurt the people on the ground there.
What we said was, "Well, we want to ask the groups that we know on the ground in Texas what they think." They asked some of our grassroots partners, and they were like, "No, please come." We said, "Okay." We want to go because there are many people on the ground there that also don't believe in these things. How do we show up, not necessarily in protest, but representing what we do believe in? How can we make the space that we are building for our season, our arena, the concourses, all of the fan experience, how do we make that representative of our beliefs?
We started a little bookshop with books the athletes chose with under-seen and under-read voices. We had a wall with women in history that our athletes had chosen. They wanted to celebrate the super diverse set of women, the women who wouldn't probably be taught in schools at that point because of the laws. We had a voter registration at the arena. Then, of course, we had just our women who were on display every night playing.
It became a really cool thing. When I walked into the gym and saw that women's wall, for example, it was like, "Oh, this is something that we can bring to this community to just show them that there are other people who believe in these same things and that we're here for them." I'm really glad that we ended up doing it. It felt like a bigger impact than if we had just said, "Okay, now we want to go to some other state."
Lisa: The pictures were so powerful to see these incredible women. I think volleyball players are like Wonder Woman. I don't know how you jump 5 feet in the air. It's incredible, so powerful. You see them spiking ball, and on the court, you see vote.org. Just extraordinary to imagine that this is happening in a state that had just passed these very restrictive voting laws. You basically said, "What could we do within the confine of the arena?"
First, making the decision, should we not play and using critical thinking skills and gathering data from analogous examples about what would be the benefits of boycotting, what would be the cost? Then making the decision that you didn't want to cause unnecessary harm to the people you were trying to support. What's in a wider field of choices that we can make to make sure it is more value-aligned? What else could we do? Playing with the dials.
I just love that story because so often we feel like we're hand of the future and we just have to go along and we're in a binary. Yes, no. You turn that binary into a multiplicity of possibilities where, sure, you might not have been able to change legislation, but you were able to impact the experience of the players, the experience of everybody that came. You were able to model something very different and, again, created lasting memories, I'm sure, both for the athletes, as well as the fans.
Cassidy: What's cool is all of that stuff continued on. We did it that year in Texas, but then when our softball team went back to Chicago or basketball played in Vegas in their first year, they put up a bookstore and a women's history wall. Each athlete group took that in their different directions, but it lived on. I remember signing autographs and looking over and seeing a little kid reading about Ida B. Wells in a stadium in Texas.
You're just like, "Oh, this is something that matters. They can come watch volleyball, and they can get a little education." I think we sold out of a book of trans voices in Texas. Such a cool way to, again, express all of this stuff was chosen by the athletes. To not only express what the league cares about, but these actual athletes who are coming in and playing. They get to say like. "Yes, I have other things, things I care about too and other parts of my identity that matter to me."
Lisa: Incredible. I often think that when you have the ability to imagine different futures and then bring them to life, in part because of the partnership and the trust you'd build, you have outsized influence. Who knows where that little girl, where she is now and what she thinks is possible? One of the reasons why I love working with athletes, and you and I have done a lot of work around the civic engagement at the collegiate level, is that there are a lot of eyeballs on athletes.
Just by the nature of the fact you are playing on the court, surrounding you are people watching. How are you showing up? What are you wearing? How are you representing your values beyond just what the sport requires of you to do? I just think it is so powerful as a lever for us to pull right now. We're just really beginning to understand the ways. I think you and Athletes Unlimited are really doing that in extraordinary ways. Of course, I went to an ongoing campaign, this shirt I'm wearing, Power in My Voice. Can you talk about this a bit?
Cassidy: Yes. That was born out of that moment in Texas, too. We had all of these disparate things we wanted to do. I think we were initially trying to figure out a voting campaign. Then what came about was this umbrella over it of the Power In Your Voice. Again, that started with our athletes and to say, I can use my voice in all of these different ways. I use it by playing on the court, but also in choosing a woman to feature, or choosing a book that I want people to read or choosing to vote, obviously. Then we wanted to remind our fans and everybody watching, there's power in your voice too. It became this really cool campaign. There's a whole video that was created that I think still plays during a lot of our broadcast games on ESPN and stuff. To put that message out in the world of there is power in your voice, but you have to use it to recognize that.
Lisa: Give us a little window in where Athletes Unlimited is now. I know you have four leagues.
Cassidy: We have three sports right now, but softball is the one that's expanded a lot. Lacrosse got complicated because they're back in the Olympics and we played during the summer. They have conflicting tournaments. That one's on pause, but we've played in our sports up to this point, condensed seasons, a little bit of different format. That's what we've still done in volleyball, basketball, and softball. Softball expanded into a traditional league format as well. We essentially run the entirety of pro softball, and it has blown up.
I think it's a really good example of investing in women's sports and what it can do. I think ESPN was the first to really do that years ago with the College World Series. They recognized that there was a big audience for that. Now the Women's College World Series often is as popular or more than the men's in baseball. I think that investment paid off. AU recognized that, too, and came in as our commissioner. She's still the only woman to be the GM of a major men's professional team. She's the GM of the Marlins. She's just the coolest. Then we still run our volleyball and basketball leagues as well. There's so much going on in those sports at the professional level, too. Women's sports is just, I think, people have recognized there's a real business there. We're also nowhere near where the potential is going to take us.
Lisa: Super excited to think about it. Everybody watches women's sports.
Cassidy: Yes, exactly.
Lisa: Stanford just built a gorgeous new softball facility. Spectacular. I think, again, a great example of why not have a pro league for softball? Just because it didn't exist doesn't mean it can't. Again, we see the institutional and generational interest growing. Then you see these signals that just tell you, "Oh, this is not a fad. This is really here to stay." What was it? A couple of years ago, what was it? Broke the record for the volleyball. Was it 98,000?
Cassidy: Yes, 92,000 people. It's the most-watched women's sporting event in the history of the world.
Lisa: Incredible. Incredible. Just beginning. Cassie, I know throughout your career being just an incredible athlete, but also an incredible advocate for humanity and holistic well-being. You have really, even before you started at Athletes Unlimited, started something called P/ATH that was really about channeling the power of great athletes to talk about human issues and their own journey. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and why that was so important to you.
Cassidy: Yes. As you noted, athletes have a platform. I've always recognized that in my own life as not the kind of platform that an NBA player has. If I walk into a gym where one of my friends is coaching, and they say, "Oh, she played at Stanford. She played on the national team." Those kids listen differently than if it's their coach talking or their mom or whoever else and so recognizing that. Then the idea that we all say that sports teach human skills and life skills, but we don't do that very explicitly. I think it's fairly obvious that we as humanity need some work in that area.
It combined those two things of how do we take these people that everybody's looking up to, like a Steve Kerr in the Bay Area, obviously, and say, "All right, what are the life lessons that you've taken? What are the things that you could talk about in sport and the skills that these kids can practice that are going to translate on and off the court or field?" We made a library of content featuring these people talking about everything from what representation means to them to confidence-building.
I think a lot of it, and this ties into some of the work with AU, is the world teaches all of us that we can do certain things. There's not a lot of rhyme or reason behind that, actually. A little bit of it is lifting the veil and saying, "Actually, we're all capable of that." That's two sides of the same coin. One of it is, do you as a human have the confidence to believe that of yourself? Can you also look at other humans and see that potential in them? That's what a lot of that content was about. Then really concrete ways that they could practice that as athletes, on their teams, in their practices. Then, especially for younger kids, as you go to school or you're in your communities, what are the ways that can translate?
Lisa: That's incredible. Again, this is a pattern I've seen in you, Cassidy. You see the open spot, and you're like, "I wonder if, could I?" Then the next thing like, "Let's try." Then it's a library. Time and time again. Is there something just even at the personal level that helps you get from that like, "Oh, yes, I should really take this thing or this question that I have and turn it into something?" What is the flip for you?
Cassidy: I think I get annoyed mostly. I think it's really that of looking out there and going, "That seems wrong, incorrect." The fact that there wasn't professional volleyball in the United States, when it's the biggest girls' sport in high school in this country, it's just incorrect. It's that way because of so many systemic problems and issues that have been going on for generations and generations. That's something where it's like, we got to fix that. I think that's a big part of it, is just once you lift that veil of, "Wait, somebody said this was the way it is, but I don't think that is." As soon as you lift the veil, then you see it everywhere. You're like, "All right, I got to fix that."
Lisa: I love that. That feels like it summarizes my teaching. It's like once you see things in Technicolor, you're not going back to black and white.
Cassidy: Yes, exactly.
Lisa: Also, the willingness to question, like I said earlier, whose future is that? There's this concept around used futures. That does not serve us. That is a thing that we need to leave behind as we pioneer something different. Particularly, as you said, when you can gather evidence to say, "Wait a minute, just because it doesn't exist so far doesn't mean it couldn't or shouldn't." Then, of course, it is hard work to put that first on the P/ATH and then recruit the partners involved.
Cassidy: That's where you need people like our founders at AU, who, it's like, "Oh, they have power and access to capital and all of that." When you get those people on board, or they're even steering the ship, it definitely opens up a lot more space. Every conversation I have around volleyball with people, I'm like, "Hey, did you know that there are as many girls playing volleyball in high school as boys playing baseball?" Everybody's just like, "Wait, what?" I'm like, "Yes, we call that America's pastime," but is it or is it America's boys' pastime, and this is America's girls' pastime? I think that's what a ton of it is about. It's just like, as you enlighten people, then they start to see it too, and then they can't unsee it.
Lisa: It's so powerful. I nicknamed some of these things the, wait, that's a thing? Yes, that's a thing. Then, again, having that long-term perspective, you are building and growing. The pot is just going to get bigger. More and more people are going to be like, "Yes, of course that's a thing. I love that. American girl's pastime." Hell, yes, definitely. Tell us a little bit what is the future. Now that you're the chair of volleyball, what's next?
Cassidy: I have multiple roles in volleyball now. I run volleyball for AU, and then I'm also the chair of the board for USA Volleyball, which is a whole another beast of a thing. AU obviously is in the pro side. USA Volleyball governs the entire sport. I've been thinking more about youth sport than I have in a while. There's a lot of incredible things going on there and some concerning things going on there, because you want to make sure that all kids have access to this thing that's so important to your development, your health, and your confidence, especially in girls.
That's a big, I think, mandate for us to go, "Okay, can we look at the landscape and ensure that it's the same thing. The athlete is at the center of it." In this case, it's children, which is maybe even more important because they can't advocate for themselves as well. That same concept that started at AU, I think, is the concept I apply to USA Volleyball. If you're eight years old and you're picking up a ball for the first time, or if you're one of our Olympians, you should be at the center of this process. How do we make sure that that's the case when this has become a really big business of youth sports? That brings in a lot of different types of people and interests.
Lisa: It just feels like sometimes athletes are the last to be considered in some of these choices, which just is heartbreaking, given that these are still young people that are doing the thing that they love and ideally, finding community and confidence and all the other things that comes with it. Not that I have an opinion on it, but here it is. In part, Cassie, it's because I've seen the opposite. I've seen you and what you've done.
Earlier in Season 1, we had John Tanner talk about the work he's doing at Women's Water Polo. He really thinks of it as a master class in leadership that also happens to be world-class water polo. Just incredible. I imagine Stanford and the leagues that you're building out are similar. The idea that you could take a position of USA Volleyball and infuse that same sense of confidence and connection and those lessons with tens of thousands of young people, that is a hopeful thing. That is a hopeful future.
Cassidy: That's the goal.
Lisa: Cassie, what could we do to support you to get behind Athletes Unlimited to be a part of this hopeful journey that you're pioneering?
Cassidy: The world of women's sports, a lot of it's about awareness. Like you said, did you know that was a thing? I think so much of it is word of mouth. You want to do a good enough job that other people are talking about what you're doing. It's stuff like this where people who understand what the benefits are, and I know you do this all the time, are just talking about it. How great is this, and how great are these models, because I think it gets more out there because there are still people who don't know. Then they see a different type of future, and they're frustrated by it or just resign to it. You're like, "Okay, but it could be better."
Lisa: It doesn't have to be that way. It gets back to why we started this, and fundamentally, it's a realization like there is no they that's going to make it. We are the they. We are the they. You are the they. Time and time again, you are the they and putting yourself out there, which by the way, Cassidy takes a lot of courage, takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of effort. It doesn't just happen. I just really want to thank you for continuing to be a leader that gives me hope for the future that is challenging our structures that are not working for most of us as they should, and reimagining and reinventing new ones. It's just so awesome to be a super fan and a self-appointed PR agent for you and everything you're doing.
Cassidy: We appreciate it. Likewise, I think sometimes the future in this moment can feel really bleak for a lot of different reasons in the world. The one thing that gives me hope sometimes is the people I know who are trying to do good things and trying to make a better future. You're like, "Okay, if we just have enough of that, maybe we can get through this moment and onto something better."
Lisa: It's so true. I often call it my personal resilience strategy. Tell me one final thing, Cassie, before I let you go. When is the next volleyball season? Where is it going to be? How could we watch?
Cassidy: We actually don't know yet. The volleyball landscape is super complicated, and so we're trying to figure out how to make it less complicated and working with the athletes on what they want next. I don't know exactly when it is, but obviously, it'll be all over our socials if you want to watch softball that's coming up this summer, so that'll be super fun. Then our national team will also play this summer in volleyball. I think that'll be televised in the US, which is really cool.
Then the Olympics and Paralympics are going to come up in just a couple of years. We're for the first time ever, ahead of the Olympics, which obviously is amazing because it's going to be at home. We're hosting the Women's World Cup for the first time in volleyball in 27. The finals will be in Anaheim. All of that's super exciting for the sport.
Lisa: Oh, yes. That's exciting. I love it. A build-up to the 2028 Olympics in LA. Incredible. You've given us something to look forward to. That's a big part of it. Cassie, thank you so much for joining us. We're just thrilled to be part of your journey and to celebrate it along the way.
Cassidy: Thank you. This is great.
Lisa: As you head into the rest of your week, here's a great way to loosen a constraint in your life. Notice one assumption you've been carrying of something that seemed off, but you've thought, "Well, that's just how it works." Then ask who decided that and what might be possible if that weren't true. If this episode sparked a new idea or shifted how you see leadership, leave a comment or review. We love hearing what resonates, and it helps others find the show too.
You can also follow How We Future wherever you listen, and follow us on social for clips, prompts, and behind-the-scenes moments from conversations like this one. For deeper dives into designing better futures across sports, work, and civic life, visit the How We Future Substack linked in the show notes. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
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