Donna Providenti ’93 faced a life-changing decision in 1997.
After graduating from Lehigh with an accounting degree and becoming a CPA, she had done what seemed like all the right things. She had a respected degree, a professional credential, and a well-paying job in New York City. Still, something was eating at her. She wanted — no, needed — to do something different.
That’s when she saw an advertisement for an internship with the NHL. If I don’t do it now, she thought, I’ll never do it.
“I became an intern at 26 years old,” Providenti says. “I started over. It was paid, but it paid like $8 an hour, something ridiculous. I gave my parents a heart attack.”
The decision meant giving up stability and starting again at the bottom. It also led to a dramatic career change and a series of “pinch-me” moments that include working at two FIFA World Cups, a Winter Olympics, and an NHL All-Star Game.
“It launched me,” she says, “into this new world.”
Learning to Move Things Forward
When she arrived at Lehigh in fall 1989, Providenti knew she wanted to pursue a business degree. The decision to major in accounting came easily.
“It was perceived to be the hardest degree at Lehigh,” she says. “I always like to do the hard things, so I was like, ‘I’m just going to do that.’”
Providenti recalls standing out while taking a class from Dr. Kenneth P. Sinclair, who was affectionately called Mr. Lehigh by his students and was the chair when the undergraduate accounting program was named BusinessWeek’s best in 2007.
“Corrado,” he said (using her maiden name). “You should be a salesperson. Why are you an accountant?”
Seeing it Come to Life
After working in accounting for four years and completing her NHL internship, Providenti joined the organizing committee for the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which the U.S. hosted. Based in New York City, she focused on the games at Giants Stadium.
“Whatever you could do, they would let you do it,” she says. “I quickly ended up wearing a lot of hats and learning so much.
Providenti, who played soccer at Lehigh, gave speeches at many New Jersey high school soccer events, imploring teams to buy tickets and emphasizing the importance of showing up for the games.
She remembers standing in the tunnel for the U.S. team’s opening game as NSYNC prepared to begin the tournament’s Opening Ceremony. Then she stepped toward the field and looked up.
After a year of speeches, conversations, and pitches, the crowd was right in front of her, all 78,972 fans. That attendance set a record for a women’s sporting event in the U.S. It also proved Sinclair right when he said Providenti should work in sales.
“I thought, ‘I might know half the people in the stadium,’” she says. “I felt like I had talked to every one of them selling them tickets for a year. Just to see all these people actually show up for this thing that we were promoting for so long was just incredible.”
Finding Her Place in Sports
That experience would be the pinnacle of most people’s careers, but it was just the first of many for Providenti. She worked in marketing for the NHL All-Star Game in February 2000 and joined the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Providenti eventually became chief operating officer and partner at the marketing agency LeadDog Marketing Group. Although she wasn’t an accountant, her degree helped.
“I can translate what the numbers mean to people, to boards of directors. You have to bring those numbers to life.”
In 2025, 10 years after selling the agency, Providenti joined BaAM Productions as the head of overlay/delivery, which led to her involvement in the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Her company provided temporary infrastructure such as broadcast compounds and pathways for cables for 13 facilities across the U.S. and Canada.
What struck Providenti most was seeing how far the game’s reach extended. She received messages from friends and family around the world.
“Everyone having a World Cup experience and seeing how universal it was felt amazing,” says Providenti, who, because of her work, got to attend Spain’s 1-0 win over Argentina in the final, a game likely watched by about 1.5 billion people worldwide. “To see the passion from the Argentinian fans and the Spanish fans and just the absolute energy? There’s nothing like that.”
Helping the Next Generation
After achieving so much in her field, Providenti feels compelled to give back.
She has worked throughout her career with Women in Sports and Events, which provides women early in their careers the chance to meet with female executives. The goal is to provide them with opportunities to network and grow in a male-dominated field.
“These young people made so many amazing connections,” Providenti says. “Just having women helping women, younger professionals getting to see that there are women in these high-level positions, this was very transformative for some of them. There’s a lot of learning there.”
She also serves as a mentor to Lehigh’s women’s soccer team and former student-athletes.
In 2023, she served as a panelist for a Lehigh women’s soccer alumni career event. She talked about how to balance work and family — something she admits she’s struggled with because of how much she loves her work — and how to be a working mom.
“That’s really a struggle for women,” Providenti says. “We have all the opportunities and choices, but there’s still a lot of realities that women need to talk to each other about and be honest with each other about.”
She was impressed with how the team looked her in the eye and shook her hand, things Lehigh women’s soccer head coach Lauren Calabrese ’07 has them do while performing drills in practice. Providenti says the student-athletes reminded her more of working professionals than college students because of the way they talked, their aspirations, and their thoughtfulness.
Her advice was to remain open to where the next experience or conversation might lead, take their career one job at a time, work hard, and let everything else play itself out.
She was happy for the opportunity to give back.
“Women’s soccer,” Providenti says, “has given me a lot in my life.”
