It’s safe to say Ellie Hamblen of Alexandria is in the busiest and wildest week of her young professional career, surfing the whirlwind of public relations preparations for Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.
Hamblen, 26, is the communications manager for the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation – a position she took three years ago – and she is part of a committee of 90-plus public relations professionals within New Orleans and across Louisiana working to make this Super Bowl a success.
A graduate of Pineville High (’16) and LSU (’20), Ellie owns an MBA degree, and she is well on her way to mastering her current work. Rob Hatley, the vice president of corporate affairs and communications for Entergy, the principal sponsor of the Super Bowl, has nothing but praise for Hamblen, whom he has been working with, especially in the weeks and months and the past year leading up to the Super Bowl.
“She’s got a great mind for the game, the discipline, and what I would call a great attention to detail,” Hatley said Monday. “She brings a level of maturity to her role with some things that are difficult if not impossible to teach – like how to think strategically, how to read a room and even have a healthy sense of paranoia, as funny as that may sound.
“I’ve been in this business for 35 years,” Hatley continued, “and there are people with 15-20 years more experience that don’t do as well at the job as she does.”
Ellie said she has learned a lot from Hatley. “He’s been a good mentor to me. I’ve worked closely with him this past year.“
She believes she has had sports “ingrained” in her from her childhood, being the daughter of parents who both worked in the sports media in their professional careers. Her father, Mark, worked as the lead sportscaster at KALB-TV in Alexandria for many years, and her mother, Libby, was a sportswriter and assistant sports editor at The Town Talk newspaper in Alexandria before moving into the corporate world at Cleco.
She also owns some athletic talent, having earned all-district and all-Cenla honors at PHS as a soccer player. Considering her quick maturity as a communications manager, it’s not surprising to learn that she was a regular honor roll student during her elementary and high school years.
“My dad and I are very close,” she said. “We’re very similar, and one of the ways Dad and I bond is through sports. In fact, he was just in town a few weeks ago and we visited. He has season tickets for the Pelicans games, so he’ll come in and we’ll go to a Pelicans game and have lunch the following day and recap the game and talk about what’s happening in the NFL or college sports or tennis (another sport Ellie played at PHS).”
Ellie appreciates the role sports has played in her life, both as an athlete and a fan, noting the discipline required of an athlete and the need to be “part of a team” and the camaraderie that results from that.
Her work this week, she said, “gets crazier and crazier each day,” and she calls it a learning experience. “I learn every day, all day. It’s really fun.”
Nonetheless, she has felt the pressure and stress of the job. Hatley, who reports to Alexandria native and former Peabody basketball star Marcus Brown, Entergy’s executive vice president and general counsel, said Ellie has confided at times to him of having been a “wreck” after speaking to a group, but he reassures her, “You delivered well.”
Looking ahead on Ellie’s agenda, there will be, among other things, work to promote the 2025 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, National Congress and Trade Show, in August.
What is she most looking forward to right now?
“The handoff ceremony,” she said, referring to the post-Super Bowl ceremony next Monday morning at the Super Bowl media center when New Orleans officially hands off the Super Bowl to Santa Clara, Calif., and the Bay Area.
“That,” she said, “is when I can finally take a nap.”