FIFA Master Alumni - Where are they now? - Neikelle Moore
Neikelle Moore
Current Position: Senior Director, Marketing Strategic Initiatives - FIFA World Cup 2026™, On Location
Year of Graduation: 2011 (11th Edition)
Nationality: United States; Trinidad & Tobago
What does your current role involve?
About one year out from the largest World Cup ever, no slow days and rare short days!
In July 2024, FIFA appointed On Location as the Official Hospitality Provider of the FIFA World Cup 2026™. At the time, I was working as a contractor for FIFA, leading marketing planning across FIFA channels for the global announcement and subsequently the launch of the hospitality deposit programme in November 2024. That position introduced me to the Hospitality space and turned out to be specifically grounding as in February 2025, I joined On Location as Senior Director, Marketing Strategic Initiatives – moving from the property side to the provider side while continuing to support the Hospitality programme for the 2026 tournament.
In this role, I serve as a link between Marketing and other departments – Sales, Commercial Strategy, Tech, and Delivery – ensuring cross-functional alignment for key milestones and milestone activations and project-long initiatives. I manage strategic projects, including guest communication planning, creating efficiencies for executing marketing deliverables, and acting as Marketing's daily liaison with FIFA Hospitality. My work requires a mix of planning, collaboration, and problem-solving, whether ensuring our team stays on track and equipped to deliver, identifying dependencies across workstreams, supporting procurement, or stepping in to resolve a hurdle. Having worked on both sides of the Hospitality relationship, I have a unique insight into each organization’s needs and processes, which allows me to advance new approaches proposed for the FIFA Hospitality programme, and it helps me connect people and ideas beyond marketing alone.
What I enjoy most is seeing the full picture—how each department, decision, and detail plays into the larger business. This role has increased my knowledge of hospitality and ticketing in sports, an area I hadn’t previously worked in, and enhanced my understanding of the full event experience, both strategically and operationally.
Which aspects of the FIFA Master course have helped you most in your career?
A significant portion of my career has involved coordinating between US-based entities and their international offices, as well as engaging in business development and managing partnerships in various countries. This also involves navigating the relationships that come with those dynamics. Furthermore, in the positions I’ve held, it has been essential for me to ask pertinent questions to draw out critical information, even when I don’t know what I don’t know. So, the aspects of the FIFA Master course that helped me the most were:
- Living among and learning and working with peers with varied backgrounds in different countries and building long-lasting, meaningful relationships.
- Having exposure to the legal, commercial, sociocultural aspects of sports to confidently start projects or analyze issues.
- Amassing a broad bank of knowledge about sports (clutch at the most unexpected times!)
What advice would you give to future students on the course?
Geek out! The FIFA Master is a rare chance to dive deep into sports, which I imagine you’re passionate about. Learn from classmates, alumni, professors, guest speakers, and the communities you live in along the way. Remain open too. You may have a fixed set of ideas of what careers are possible in the sports industry. Stay curious and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by avenues you don’t even know (can’t even imagine!) exist.
Embrace the full experience. There will be excitement and there will be pressure – embrace both. Decide what making the most of the programme and the experience looks like to you, pursue it, and enjoy the time.
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