Ryan Sakamoto

Assistant Sports Information Director
Age: 33
Hometown: Easton, Pa.
Time at Georgetown: 6 years

What drew you to your field?
I actually started out in print journalism, and as a college student, had moved more into a public relations and communications field. This was kind of a natural progression from that.

What drew you to Georgetown in particular?
I grew up a big Georgetown basketball fan, and I was in the middle of a job search, and in the job I was working at the time, I didn’t have very difficult hours. I was actually on the Georgetown Athletics website looking for basketball tickets, trying to figure out how to make my basketball ticket schedule work for the year, and I saw this job posting. I applied, I happened to know somebody who knew Mex [Carey, assistant athletics director for communications], and it just worked out.

What is your favorite part of your job?
I love dealing with the people here at Georgetown; I think the student-athletes, the coaches, the staff, the people here are terrific, and the university community as a whole is great to deal with.

What is the greatest challenge you face in your position?
Going back to the people, there are so many different people you work with on a daily basis, so I think that the biggest challenge I face is keeping everybody on the same page no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s an event or something you’re trying to release or put up on the website. I think it’s always a challenge when you work with people for a living.

Do you see any areas in which you or your department could improve to better serve the student-athletes or the university community at large?
I think that you can always improve, no matter what you do. I think there are always little things, like learning from people you work with, that you can do to make things better. The idea is to stay open-minded and to continue to talk to people, and to deal with people.

Are there any aspects of your position that the majority of people might not know about?
It depends on the audience. I’m not sure how much the typical person knows about what we coordinate here. We just make sure that games can be streamed online, we deal with outside media, and we talk to parents sometimes about tailgate planning for road trips; I’m not sure there’s anything out of the ordinary.

What about your job makes you nervous?
I don’t know if there’s anything that makes me nervous, but when you work in this type of field, there are so many student-athletes that I work with on a regular basis [and] you certainly worry the most about a lot of the things that have been in the news. You see a lot of problems that people have had with social media, and you see some of the trouble that especially coaches have gotten into, and that’s always a concern, even if we haven’t had many issues with it here.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever seen happen during a game?
I would say, going back many years now, I remember Roy Hibbert hit a pretty big three against UConn, and I guess you don’t really think of Roy as a big-time shooter, so I think that would certainly be one. I think that’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve seen. Also, I think the story of Michelle Konkoly, the swimmer — seeing her get back in the pool is incredible.

Interview by Alexander Brown