Kara Nortman was on a mission. After attending the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup soccer final in Vancouver, Canada, where the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) defeated Japan in an electrifying 5-2 game, she was determined to buy American defender Meghan Klingenberg's jersey for her then five-year-old daughter, Layla. And yet, Nortman says, she couldn't find one anywhere. "I went to store after store," she recalls. "I finally found a jersey that fit, but it was blank and had no name on it."
When Nortman-a venture capitalist with a background in tech returned home to Los Angeles, she realized she also couldn't find regular-season National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) matches on TV. Then the USWNT won again at the 2019 World Cup, with a team headlined by Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Christen Press, three players from a group that had launched a high-profile lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation over unequal pay compared with that of the men's team players.
To Nortman, the overwhelming interest represented an opportunity. "You had a billion people watching on broadcast and another half billion on streaming," she says. "You have an activation at the highest level, but then you can't do anything with your enthusiasm."
Nortman found someone whose enthusiasm matched her own in actress Natalie Portman. The two had met at an event in 2018 and bonded over their love for women's soccer and their dedication to pay equity.
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