Laura Simon
Director of Women's Rowing
Laura N Simon started her rowing career in college, at UCSB, as a walk-on coxswain. The varsity coach at the time pulled her aside and said if you stick with this, you could make the National Team, you’re that good. 10 years later, they were teammates for USA. Laura was a 2x Olympic hopeful and trained with the team through two Olympic cycles. Laura credits Amy Fuller Kearney & Aimee Baker for believing in her when she didn’t quite have the confidence to believe in herself. However, what she did do was she chose to believe that they might be right, that she actually might be that good and put her head down and worked. This experience has become the backbone of her coaching career, whether coaching, mentoring or recruiting, her goal to help young women see their potential when they are unable to see it themselves. This passion led her to recruit young women from a place of confidence rather than fear, which she realized was prevalent in DI recruiting. Laura was a beast of a recruiter for both UMass & Yale, winning the hearts of families and athletes even if they chose not to come to Yale/UMass. In addition to her full-time coaching, Laura was an assistant coach with the USA U19 team from 2009 to 2017, holding various titles from CanAmMex Head Coach, 2014 Youth Olympic Head Coach, and U19 Women’s Pair Coach. In addition, Laura was the coxswain selector during those years for all female coxswains selected to attend the women’s camps. Her reputation in the rowing world as being transparent, supportive and competitive, led her to an Executive Coaching position at Google’s venture capital seed stage fund, where she coached startup founders on leadership. When she moved over to the tech space, she also started supporting families through the college process & offering private coxswain coaching, which she will continue to do. Laura’s excited for the opportunity to work with young women in the sport and to continue to give back to the sport that taught her the importance of gratitude & gave her the ability to believe in herself. Her mission in building a team of young women is to create a strong positive culture where gratitude and strength are at the core of our decision making processes, our reactions to situations and our drive towards one team goal = to be the best we can be together.