St. Louis has a super-rich history of soccer, so I was very fortunate growing up to have coaches that played.

We like to be kind of at the forefront for how all football federations should treat their female athletes.

The women's national team is a very successful team, and that success has given us a platform to speak on gender equity issues. Millions of young women play soccer in this country, and it's empowering for them to see that our contribution to the game is valued.

In soccer, female athletes across the world wear shoes that are not meant for us, our feet, or our game.

I used to tell the players that professional football is a part-time profession. I used to tell them it gets you ready for your life's work.

Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.

It's always been my expectation to be the top guy, the face of the company, the one with all of that responsibility. But that should be everybody's goal. I didn't get into this to just be in the middle of the pack. If you want to do that, go work in a different line of work. This isn't the place to camouflage yourself.

Working for CNN, you help set the agenda for decision makers and industry leaders simply by doing your job. What the network covers and how we cover it affects people. I am not naive enough to believe I work in some 'pure' news vacuum.