Brooke Cooper was 12 years old when she thought her career in baseball was over.
She had aged out of her local Little League offerings and there were no more opportunities for girls to play the sport, Cooper tells CNBC Make It. She tried playing softball next, which is traditionally seen as the female counterpart to baseball, but says she “didn’t have the same passion.”
“I loved playing baseball,” Cooper, now 33, says. “I never pictured I could have a career in baseball.”
In March 2024, Cooper became the general manager of the Worcester Red Sox, a Triple-A minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the first female general manager in Boston Red Sox franchise history.
However, Cooper says she was rejected the first time she applied for an internship with the team, then known as the Pawtucket Red Sox. That summer, the then 20-year-old waited tables and volunteered at a sports marketing firm instead, she says.
From intern to general manager
Two years later, she says she applied for the merchandising internship again, this time as an MBA student at Providence College, and got the job.
“The first time, I tried to play it cool, which sounds so ridiculous because I was 20 years old and had no idea what I was doing,” she says. “That second time, I made it so clear how much I wanted it, how hard I would work, and I’m sure I probably had a better sense of maturity a couple of years later.”
As an intern, Cooper says she balanced business school classes with vacuuming and managing merchandise inventory in the team store.
“I was running my own small business within the larger business,” and while the gig only paid her minimum wage, she says the experience itself was “professionally fulfilling.”
Soon, she began climbing the ranks, first as an assistant to the director of merchandising, and then a manager of merchandising. As the team’s director of marketing and merchandising, she helped temporarily rebrand the Pawtucket Red Sox to the Hot Wieners in 2018. In 2021 she was promoted to the vice president of marketing, and the year after she became the team’s assistant general manager.
Dealing with imposter syndrome
When Cooper started with the Worcester Red Sox in 2015, she says she didn’t think it was possible to have a career in professional baseball. There was only one other woman working for the team’s front office, and Cooper says her dream was to open a community center similar to a YMCA or Boys and Girls Club anyways.
“I say I don’t have imposter syndrome, and then when I describe it, it’s the definition of imposter syndrome,” Cooper says.
Looking back, she says having that imposter syndrome ended up working to her benefit because it allowed her to speak up and share her candid thoughts with managers and in meetings without being afraid of losing the job.
‘I’m really, really happy to be part of an organization where this can be normalized’
Cooper never felt singled out for being a woman either, she says. Her managers and team leadership have treated every promotion as a matter of fact, recognizing her as the best person for the job, she says. Becoming the Red Sox franchise’s first female general manager wasn’t “a big deal” in her organization until it was publicly announced, Cooper says.
Of the 120 Minor League Baseball teams that serve as developmental programs for 30 Major League Baseball teams, 14 were led by female general managers in the 2025 season, according to the league. In 2020, Kim Ng was became the first and only female general manager to lead a Major League Baseball team. Ng left her role with the Miami Marlins in 2023.
“I’m really, really happy to be part of an organization where this can be normalized,” Cooper says of the Worcester Red Sox. “I find working in Minor League Baseball professionally challenging in a good way, and also very personally fulfilling … I am kind of living out my dream.”
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