Morgan makes history as new vice president of USHL

Stephanie Morgan was working for a bank in 2016 but had other ideas of what she wanted to do professionally.

"I saw this job open up, in Chicago, it's in hockey. I'm not a hockey girl. I didn't play but I thought, ‘Let's take a shot at this. Let's see what it's about,'" Morgan said. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my career would've panned out to how it is today."

Morgan, who joined the United States Hockey League as a staff accountant in 2016, was named the league's executive vice president on Sept. 1. She's now the most senior female executive in junior hockey, USHL president and commissioner Glenn Hefferan said.

"She has an incredible breadth of knowledge and skill set and demeanor and is incredibly wonderful to work with," Hefferan said. "She's so confident and she's a big part of how the trains keep moving in the USHL."

The USHL, a Tier 1 league, is the highest junior level sanctioned by USA Hockey. It is the equivalent of the Junior-A Canadian Hockey League, but it does not offer stipends to players so they can remain eligible to play in college.

Morgan had earned her degree in finance at Eastern Illinois University in 2012 when she made her first foray into sports. She worked a summer internship in ticketing and merchandising for the Windy City ThunderBolts, a professional minor league baseball team in Crestwood, Illinois, about 30 minutes southwest of Chicago.

"After that, it was going through numerous interviews for all sorts of different jobs, from ticket sales to basic accounting positions to different sports leagues and teams," she said. "I never really lost that hunger, I guess you could say, to be in this industry."

Hefferan was named the 11th commissioner in league history on June 15. He said he immediately saw the closeness Morgan has fostered amongst the staff.

"Stephanie has created a culture that it's a family. She's created a legitimate family," he said.

"One of the very first things I did [as commissioner], we're all remote and I asked to bring the whole staff together. I did 1-on-1 interviews and then we met as a group. The thing that struck me is they all care about each other, they all care about each other's success, they're all grateful when others pitch in with their stuff and they all take the time to recognize each other's good work. That comes from somebody with a little bit of longevity and leadership and that's Stephanie."

Dan Lehv, president of the Chicago Steel, has been working with Morgan since she joined the USHL. He said she's been great at wearing many hats, from compiling the league schedule to handling its finances.

"She has, behind the scenes, been an incredible asset to the USHL since her entry into the league," Lehv said. "A lot of the work she does goes unnoticed by fans of USHL teams, but she has done an incredible job of not only working with all of the member clubs we have but of keeping the back of our house in order so that we can continue to drive player development. She's incredibly gifted in a bunch of different areas."

Morgan celebrates her seventh anniversary of joining the USHL this week. She said she would've laughed if someone told her when she started at the league that she would now be its executive vice president.

"It's really rewarding at the end of the day when you get everyone on the same page moving forward together," she said. "It's a great thing here in the league office that we've done, and I'm not the only one by any means. It's really a group effort and something we really focus on here is to keep elevating the league and making sure all member teams are together, no matter what their title is."