American Mikaela Shiffrin had barely skied across the finish line in her second run of the women’s slalom event at the Milan Cortina Games when the Olympic machine roared into action.
High in the Italian Alps, Shiffrin’s gold-medal run was the kind of moment viewers at home see as pure celebration – a champion, a flag, a podium.
Behind the scenes, it was the start of a sprint for University of Virginia alumna Tina Iordanou, now a senior marketing manager at NBC Sports.
“Today is obviously huge,” Iordanou said Wednesday from the site of the Winter Olympics. “Mikaela wins the gold right off and I basically am in ‘go mode.’”
Iordanou, far right, poses with silver medalists Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse and an NBC colleague as Team USA celebrates its first-ever Olympic medal in mixed doubles curling. (Contributed photo)
From Cortina – where she’s become known as – Iordanou helps coordinate the whirlwind of interviews, appearances and media obligations that follow Team USA athletes the instant they medal.
“It’s a gauntlet, but it’s the most fun gauntlet you’ll be in,” Iordanou said. “It’s a situation where media never ends here. It’s like, if we’re not talking about it locally live, it’s being talked about in the late hours of the East Coast or West Coast in the U.S.”
Still, Iordanou says the pressure she handles feels familiar.
“I think when you’re a former athlete, you kind of live in these environments,” she said. “Because so much of what you do when you compete is high pressure.”
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Long before she was coordinating logistics for Olympic champions, Iordanou was a UVA student-athlete, balancing earning a media studies degree with .
She credits UVA with making big careers feel tangible, especially thanks to mentors like Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship.
Iordanou competes for the Cavaliers during her time as a UVA student-athlete. She balanced a busy Division I soccer schedule while pursuing a degree in media studies. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“He was instrumental,” she said. “He was a professor I always felt was very invested in his students.”
During her time at UVA, Vaidhyanathan led a January term program to New York, giving Iordanou and her classmates a firsthand look at professional media careers. The small-group course included visits with journalists and industry leaders, helping students see career paths beyond the classroom.
After graduating from UVA in 2017 and playing professional soccer for a couple of years, Iordanou initially stepped away from athletics and tried working in insurance. But she was soon pulled back to the sports world and decided to pivot toward journalism and marketing, earning a graduate degree at Northwestern University.
She returned to women’s soccer through Gotham FC, the National Women’s Soccer League club based in New York and New Jersey, where she worked as a partnership manager, helping oversee sponsorship and brand relationships. She later worked for the NWSL itself before joining NBC three years ago.
