OL Reign Legend: Maya Mendoza-Exstrom – Senior Vice President of Legal & External Affairs for Seattle Sounders FC
The Legends Campaign, a partnership between OL Reign and Starbucks, honors women for their extraordinary contributions to our community in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Prior to our July 11 match against Kansas City, OL Reign recognized Senior Vice President of Legal & External Affairs for Seattle Sounders FC, Maya Mendoza-Exstrom, for her inspiring contributions to the soccer community in Washington.
Born and raised in western Washington, Mendoza-Exstrom is a lifelong fan of soccer who grew up playing the game, as well as watching the Seattle Sounders in the NASL, A-League, USL and now MLS. In her work with Sounders FC, she advises on the legal aspects of club operations. She also leads all external affairs, including government relations, community initiatives, civic and community relations and philanthropic efforts.
Mendoza-Exstrom was fully immersed in soccer from the get-go thanks to her parents. “When my parents got together, they started playing Jack and Jill soccer in the 70’s, which was completely the biproduct of early investments of soccer in our region. You know, Washington Youth Soccer has been around for 50 years, since the late 60’s. On top of that with the Sounders coming in 1974, there was sort of like this burgeoning soccer mecca here. All of the cool kids were playing soccer, so of course my parents started playing it,” said Mendoza-Exstrom.
“When they had us [kids], they sort of just threw us into it,” she laughed. “I started playing when I was four, my sister that is a year younger than me started playing that next year too. I’ve been in the game my entire life. We both played in college. After I left college, I coached. I got my badges, got up to my “B” license. It was the natural transition for me. I coached at the University of Puget Sound, the same college I played at, for 13 years and was the Director of Coaching of my childhood club and coached ODP. It was so much fun to stay involved in the game.”
As she got older and completed law school, Mendoza-Exstrom began to think about how her involvement in the game would look like in the future and decided to focus on the nonprofit work happening around the game. “I joined my first board pretty much straight out of law school and got really invested in the public education space and the lack of access to sports and arts and music – all of the things that were my go-to outlets when I was a kid growing up in public schools. I really started to advocate for kids to have free access to those things because they were so seminal to me,” Mendoza-Exstrom explained.
“Going into this space raised some fundamental questions about where youth soccer was changing and where the pay to play model is in our country and what the future looks like. How do you have a system/model that reconciles all of the factors that leave people out of the game? I was having those conversation a lot. The nepotism of my life is my dad has been involved in the game forever too. He was a pro bono Outside Risk Management Counselor for Washington Youth Soccer for a really long time. He is now the chair of the Washington State Public Stadium Authority which is the board that manages the public’s interest in Lumen Field since 1997.”
Mendoza-Exstrom recalled a big soccer tournament at 60 Acres in Redmond, in the summer of 1998. “We would be out at the field all day after our games because dad was advocating for a referendum to be passed knowing that it was a predicate for MLS and for U.S. Soccer to come here to Seattle. I’ve literally been around the game and in the game for my entire life in Washington and a fan of the Sounders. I think the family lore is that my first Sounders game was a Vancouver Whitecaps game in 1982 or sometime around there.”
Prior to joining Sounders FC, Mendoza-Exstrom was in private practice for seven years at Mendoza Law Center, dealing in all manner of business transactions, serving as outside general counsel and providing assistance with corporate formation and governance, real estate transactions, intellectual property licensing, employment matters, contract negotiation and commercial litigation.
Mendoza-Exstrom currently serves as board member for RAVE Foundation, the official charitable arm of Sounders FC, working to build small and innovative soccer fields dedicated for free play in communities in Seattle. She also serves as a board member with the Seattle Parks Foundation, the Wing Luke Museum and Legends of Washington Soccer, the international Global Sports Initiative housed at Harvard University, an Emeritus Trustee of the Highline Schools Foundation Board of Trustees and regularly works with the Seattle Sports Commission.
With her extensive background and experience as a player, coach, coaching director, referee and now parent in Washington Youth Soccer, Mendoza-Exstrom also oversees soccer camps, clinics and youth club development activities. She has been a key stakeholder for all civic matters related to the Sounders FC, from organizing with city leadership and government officials on the recent winning efforts of the United Bid to bring the 2026 FIFA World Cup to North America, for which Seattle is a finalist among possible host cities, to managing the city-wide logistics around the team’s 2016 and 2019 MLS Cup Championship parades and rallies, as well as working with the nearby City of Tacoma on the feasibility and development of a soccer-specific stadium. Mendoza-Exstrom additionally serves on the United Soccer League Board of Governors representing Sounders FC at the league level.
In the eyes of Mendoza-Exstrom, there’s a space for everyone in the soccer world. “I have two daughters and I look at them and I look at the world that I walked into because of soccer. There are so many women that grow up playing this game and it is not a predicate – You don’t have to grow up playing the game to work in the sport but man, there are so many opportunities. Any possible field you could want to pursue is something that works in the sports ecosystem.”
She also highlighted the importance of community within the game that follows soccer to feel like something bigger. “Soccer is so fundamentally different than any other professional sport in American. In part because of this global community that we all talk about but there is also a hyper-localness to soccer that permeates the world over and that’s why you get four different fan bases on four different street corners in London yelling at each other. It’s why the Sounders and OL Reign are rooted so deeply in this community. You don’t become a soccer fan necessarily just because of championships and trophies, you become a fan because of the value that we provide as members and stewards of the community.”
“Soccer carries the best ethos of a place and a region. If we are not representing that in our values on the field and in the front office, then what are we doing? Women out there get that. Girls out there get that too. There are so many opportunities for people that want to make their mark on this world through the game.”
She paused to marvel at how quickly the sport is evolving and becoming increasingly sophisticated in that way it operates. “Yes, I am a lawyer who provides a service to a professional sports team, but we also have data and analytics folks, we have a medical staff, we have financial staff, we have administrative staff, we have operations staff, and we have people in content creation. The industry is just moving at the speed of light. Why wouldn’t every single girl growing up want to be part of that?”
Mendoza-Exstrom reflected on the importance of having a professional women’s soccer team in Washington. “Growing up, it was hard to find the opportunities to see women’s soccer in person. Now, I can take my daughters to see a Reign game anytime I want. I can turn on the TV and find these things on TV and streaming so easily.”
A parent now, Mendoza-Exstrom sees the women’s soccer world from a new perspective. “It means everything to me that my girls see these women and we get to talk about all the stuff they do off the field to make the world a better place. The performance on the field and the burden they carry off the field to make the world better is something my girls need to see, and they can see it right here.”
She continued, “We chase the women’s World Cup as a family. We align our travel schedule every four years to make sure that our girls get to go and experience this as much as they can. My oldest daughter was a baby in a carrier at the final in Vancouver, but she was there for Carli Lloyd’s hattrick and I have the pictures to prove it to her.”
“The accessibility of this world to them is incredible. My daughter is playing club soccer now. She is a U8 now. We haven’t had a chance to get down to Cheney since she made that transition, and I can’t wait to see her live that experience now that she is playing for real and what it is going to look like through her eyes. It is incredible because it is not something my sister and I grew up with.”
When asked what being honored as an OL Reign Legend meant to her, Mendoza-Exstrom humbly responded, “I don’t feel like I’ve done enough to be a legend. It just further motivates me to continue to do the work. This game has so much growth left in it. I am just such a super fan and fascinated by how differently the NWSL is evolving and that so cool. The investment that is going into women’s soccer right now. It just nice to be associated with the club. I get to work collaboratively with the folks in the OL Reign front office on a lot of cool projects and hopefully more as the years roll on, but this is just so gratifying.”
“I am very humbled. It just encourages me that there is more work to do, and we have got to keep pressing to raise the profile of women’s soccer and women’s sports in this country. That’s what this means to me. ‘Okay Maya, roll up your sleeves, there’s more work to do’ and I’m so in for that. It is not a question of holding the door open anymore. Rip the damn thing off the hinges and just leave it open.”