Before she became an NFL rarity, a female executive in a team’s football operations department, and was promoted twice in three years by the Jaguars, Kirsten Grohs was sitting in a Hamilton, Ontario, kitchen concerned about her future.
She had already traveled an improbable path from modeling to professional football, working as an intern for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and earning degrees in psychology, French and sports and business administration.
Now, buried under college debt and low on cash and connections, Grohs was stumped when she visited Marcel and Julie Bellefeuille in May 2013.
But then it hit Marcel Bellefeuille, then coach of the Canadian Football League’s Tiger-Cats.