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Jessica Mendoza was a four-time First Team All-American softball player for the Stanford Cardinals between 1999-2002 and a former member of the US women’s national team between 2004-2010. She won gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
In 2015, she became the first female analyst in the history of Major League Baseball. Mendoza is currently a broadcaster for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. On her Hispanic heritage, Mendoza told ESPN she felt Latinas needed to “Embrace the fact that you are different.” She often points her source of inspiration to her father, who was a first-generation Mexican-American that taught her to love her Hispanic roots.
Mendoza will become the first woman to serve as a solo analyst on national baseball television - weeknight games for ESPN the 2020. In addition to her already impressive accomplishments, she will become the first woman to serve as a World Series game analyst on national radio this season.
Other major roles includes, past president of Women Sports Foundation, an organization founded by Billie Jean King in 1974 aimed to advance the lives of women and girls through sports and physical activity. During the 2008 Olympics, she was also an athletic ambassador for Team Darfur, which was devoted to raising awareness of humanitarian crises related to War in Darfur.