Latest news with #JenniferCohen
USA Today
19-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
USC Trojan Athletic Fund unveils new season ticketing model for football and basketball
For nearly two decades, USC's Trojan Athletic Fund has used the same model for season tickets. However, that is about to change. On Thursday, the TAF unveiled a new model for football, men's basketball, and women's basketball season tickets that will go into effect beginning with the 2025-2026 basketball season and the 2026 football season. The new system is designed to make things simpler for season ticket holders. Previously, many season tickets included up to three separate required payments: the actual cost of the tickets, a Trojan Athletic Fund contribution, and a Coliseum restoration gift. Under the new system, however, the cost of the seats and any required per-seat gift will be combined into one, making things easier for fans. In addition, the new model will utilize a system known as 'Victory Points.' Fans can earn Victory Points both by purchasing season tickets and by donating money to USC Athletics. Victory Points will be used to determine priority order for things such as seat upgrades and away/neutral site game tickets. 'Thank you to all of our donors,' USC Athletic Director Jennifer Cohen wrote on social media. 'We're excited to share the new Trojan Athletic Fund designed to elevate our stewardship, improve your fan experience, and support our student-athletes! Nothing compares to the power of the Trojan Family. Together, we will #WinTheEra' Those looking to learn more about the new model, including a list of frequently asked questions, can do so here.
USA Today
18-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
AD Jennifer Cohen recaps the 2024-2025 USC Athletics season in State of Troy
AD Jennifer Cohen recaps the 2024-2025 USC Athletics season in State of Troy The 2024 USC Athletics season season has officially come to an end. It was another successful year for the Trojans, highlighted by bringing two more national championships home to Heritage Hall. Last week, USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen shared her latest State of Troy update. Included in it was a recap of the Trojans' 2024-2025 athletics season. 'USC is synonymous with broad-based excellence across all sports,' Cohen wrote. 'And our accomplishments in 2024-25 rank with any in school history. ' 'Heading into this week's NCAA Division I Outdoor National Track & Field Championships, we are poised to secure USC's highest-ever finish in the Learfield Directors Cup. After USC ranked fifth following the winter rankings, baseball's remarkable run to the NCAA Tournament and the final of the Corvallis Regional – plus postseason runs from men's and women's tennis, men's and women's golf, and a national runner-up finish for women's water polo – highlights how spectacularly our coaches and teams have performed across this spring. 'That success also helped us win the Crosstown Cup for the 14th time. It's always a thrill to Beat the Bruins, and points from women's volleyball, women's soccer, football, women's rowing, women's golf, women's basketball, men's volleyball, beach volleyball, men's tennis, women's tennis, and women's water polo bring the Cup back where it belongs. 'Our success this year also extended into the classroom. During the Spring 2025 semester, our student-athletes earned a 3.240 cumulative GPA, with 61 student-athletes earning a 4.0 and 440 student-athletes earning a 3.0 or better – all department records. 'I'm so incredibly proud of our student-athletes, faculty, coaches, and staff for all they have accomplished this year, and we couldn't do it without our donors, fans, and the entire Trojan Family.' With the 2024-2025 season in the books, attention now shifts to 2025-2026. The USC football team will kick off fall camp in early August, marking the start of what should be another exciting year in Troy.
Los Angeles Times
16-06-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Times of Troy: How will USC allocate the $20.5 million it can pay its athletes?
Welcome once again to an offseason edition of the Times of Troy newsletter. We return to you at the dawn of a new era in college athletics, one that USC and its leaders have promised they will win … if the lawyers don't first. The House settlement was at long last approved earlier this month by a federal judge, ushering in a world where college athletes will be paid directly by their schools and all of college sports problems are solved overnight! … just kidding! There are more of those than ever! USC, like most of its power conference peers, plans to pay out the maximum of $20.5 million that's permitted by the settlement, the vast majority of which — around $15 million or so — will go to the football program. But the approach to allocating the rest, and securing third-party NIL outside of the cap, is likely to differ wildly from school to school. USC has not yet shared specifics of how it plans to allocate that money, but in her recent State of Troy address, athletic director Jennifer Cohen noted that USC would be 'increasing investment' in all 23 of its programs. That investment, The Times has since clarified, will include either direct payments to players from the $20.5-million revenue-sharing pool, an increase in the program's number of funded scholarships or a combination of the two. Each of USC's 23 athletic programs, in other words, will benefit from the advent of revenue sharing in one of those three ways. UCLA, on the other hand, has taken a different approach by announcing that it will not add any additional scholarships and instead divide all of that $20.5 million among its individual athletes. We can safely assume USC won't stray all that far from the formula put forth last year when the settlement received preliminary approval. That model called for 75% of the cap set aside for football, 15% for men's basketball and 5% for women's basketball, while the other 5% would be split up among the rest of the school's programs. That remaining 5% to 10%, set aside for non-revenue sports, is where strategy will come into play. Newly funded scholarships still count against the cap, up to $2.5 million, and still cost the university real money. USC won't just add them indiscriminately. Adding a scholarship could make a more significant difference than cutting a check. But it also means less to directly pay athletes who are looking for checks. Take the beach volleyball team, for example. When I spoke with coach Dain Blanton a year ago, on the way to their fourth consecutive national title, he told me funding for additional, beach-only scholarships would be a game-changer. And for a sport such as beach volleyball that's unlikely to deal with regular NIL bidding wars, adding scholarships makes more strategic sense than it does in other sports. USC baseball also makes for an interesting test case. Some top-flight baseball programs — mostly from the Southeastern Conference — will choose to invest millions in paying their baseball players directly. Some, meanwhile, might decide to fund 20-plus additional scholarships from the previously allotted total of 11.7. The new scholarship limit for baseball programs is now 34, leaving a ton of wiggle room. USC isn't going to fund that many scholarships. Nor is the school likely to funnel all of its remaining cap — after football and basketball — into the baseball program, no matter how many national titles it has won. So how does its baseball program keep up with the Joneses? Those vast differences in strategy are going to have ripple effects, especially in a sport such as baseball, where some programs will be much more well funded than others. 'Parity is probably going to be lost somewhat [in college baseball],' USC baseball coach Andy Stankiewicz told me. 'Some programs are probably going to fund up to 30 or more. And then some other programs probably aren't even going to fund 11.7. That's what's kind of lost in all of this.' There's still so much we don't know about how USC will approach this new era of revenue sharing. Could it follow a similar approach to Ohio State, which plans to directly pay athletes in just four sports, while adding 91 scholarships among the rest? Or might it hew closer to its crosstown rival, focusing more on direct cash payments? How USC plans to divide its $20.5-million cap is just part of the equation. It's how the school maneuvers outside of the cap and navigates NIL GO, the new NIL clearinghouse, that will be the true test of its might in this new era. All NIL deals over $600 must now be submitted to Deloitte, which will determine if those deals have 'a valid business purpose' and fall within 'a reasonable range of compensation.' That system is not just begging for legal challenges, it's ripe with loopholes. There's no way for Deloitte to monitor if athletes actually follow through on the deliverables of an NIL deal. What's to stop a third party from paying athletes for a deal that looks legit on paper but has terms that they never expect the athlete to deliver on? That's a question for another newsletter. But what we can say now is that USC, with its massive media market, is better positioned than most to win this new era as promised. Whether USC will actually deliver on that promise — before the lawyers step in and upend the rules again — will be up to those in charge … and the mountains of fundraising dollars they'll need to keep it all afloat. The USC men's track and field team brought home its first outdoor national title since 1976 last week, which will couple nicely with the indoor national title that the team won in March. It's just the second time in school history that USC's men's track and field program has won both titles in the same season. The Trojans have 27 outdoor titles, more than double any other NCAA track program. It's quite a culmination for Quincy Watts, the Trojans' director of track and field, who was promoted into the job four years ago — and who now needs to be kept at whatever cost. At the start of his second summer at USC, Eric Musselman opened up men's basketball practice last week to reporters, and with basically a brand new team of Trojans on the floor, there was a lot to take in. A few initial observations from Galen Center … —This team is more talented and athletic than last year. That feels pretty clear already, and this group has barely played together. The difference is especially stark in the frontcourt, where Jacob Cofie and Ezra Ausar give USC a physical presence in the paint that it sorely lacked last season. This team also has length in abundance on the perimeter, where Chad Baker-Mazara and Amarion Dickerson look like they could be menaces on defense. The backcourt is where USC suffered its biggest losses in the offseason, but with Baker-Mazara, Rodney Rice and five-star Alijah Arenas likely to be in the starting lineup, all three are capable of initiating offense or scoring themselves. The feeling inside the program is that this team has upgraded, especially on defense. At first glance, I have to agree. —Alijah Arenas isn't practicing yet, but he will be soon. Arenas was in attendance Thursday, but the incoming freshman still has high school coursework to catch up in order to graduate a year early. His absence has nothing to do with his serious Cybertruck accident and hospitalization in April. He'll join the Trojans sometime this summer, and when he does, he'll likely step right into the starting lineup. —Baker-Mazara is a tone-setter. No one was more vocal or fiery during USC's open practice, and as Musselman pointed out afterward, you won't find many in college basketball with more experience than the 25-year old, sixth-year senior. You also won't find many players with as much personality as Baker-Mazara, which seems to so far be working quite well with Musselman's brand of intensity. 'You put crazy and crazy together, it might work!' Baker-Mazara said Thursday. I'd be willing to bet already that this pairing works out for both sides. —New point guard Jordan Marsh may play a bigger role than expected. The North Carolina Asheville transfer is only 5-11, 164 pounds, but I was surprised by how active he was on defense. I'm not the only one. Marsh has turned heads through the first week of summer practice, to the point that he may be more than just a backup point guard next season. As a legitimate microwave scorer off the bench, don't be surprised if he gets 20-plus minutes at times next season. I caught up last week with Stankiewicz, who, in his third season, led the Trojans back to the NCAA tournament for just the second time in 20 years. USC fell in the NCAA regionals to Oregon State, a team with legitimate hopes of winning the College World Series, but overall, this season was a major step in the right direction for Trojan baseball. This is no longer a program that needs to build back 'brick by brick', as Stankiewicz has said. 'The foundation is built,' Stankiewicz told me. 'It's solid. We've got pieces in place where we can now start to build it even taller.' That metaphor will come to life next spring, when USC has a sparkling new stadium to play in. The Trojans have some key pieces to replace, with ace Caden Aoki bound for Georgia as a transfer and at least two key contributors, two-way star Ethan Hedges and starting pitcher Caden Hunter, sure to be drafted. But expectations will be higher next year nonetheless. And Stankiewicz is ready for that next step. 'This is a program that's been to Omaha a lot,' he said. 'The expectation is that we'll get back to that, and our guys have to understand that. This wasn't enough. It was good. Well done. Nice job. But this can't be what this program is about. It has to be about going to the next step, and the next step is winning a regional, winning a Super, getting to Omaha.' We asked you in our last newsletter whether a smoother path to the College Football Playoff for USC was worth losing its annual rivalry with Notre Dame. Over 1,000 of you voted. And you answered, unsurprisingly, with a resounding 'No'. 82.4% of our Times of Troy readers said that they wouldn't risk the USC-Notre Dame rivalry for a better shot at the Playoff, while less than 17.6% say it would be worth it. USC women finish second to Georgia at NCAA outdoor track and field championships USC men capture share of NCAA outdoor track and field national title Q&A: How are college sports changing in the wake of House settlement? USC baseball eliminated in NCAA tournament, but its revival fights on Caleb Williams explains why he and his dad schemed to avoid going to the Bears from USC As an evangelist of our Times 101 best restaurant rankings — and of the late, great Jonathan Gold — I've had my share of delicious dinners across this fine city during my 13 years here. But my meal last Tuesday night at Dunsmoor in Glassell Park may very well have been the best I have ever had in L.A. Trust me, I don't say that lightly. But almost a week later, I still catch myself daydreaming about the sour milk cornbread, drowning in butter, honey and flaky salt. To call it 'bread' at all doesn't even capture its essence. My wife and I sat at the chef's counter last Tuesday to celebrate her birthday, and we watched in awe as they cooked most of the menu over an open hearth. Every single one of the five dishes we ordered was extraordinary. The Carolina gold rice and baby albacore were also serious standouts. But I'm pretty sure you can't go wrong with anything on the menu. That concludes today's newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you'd like to see, email me at and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Business Insider
19-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Point72 hires Schonfeld's top HR exec as hedge fund talent wars go beyond investing talent
Jennifer Cohen, Schonfeld's one-time top HR executive, is joining $38 billion Point72. Cohen will be the 2,900-person firm's chief human resources officer, starting in January. She previously worked for private equity firm Global Atlantic and Goldman Sachs. Firms are also raiding each other for operations, human capital, and technology leaders. The latest big move is Jennifer Cohen's decision to join $38 billion Point72 from Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. Cohen has been the head of human capital management for Steve Schonfeld's eponymous fund since 2022. According to an internal Point72 memo seen by Business Insider, she'll join Steve Cohen's fund in January as the firm's chief human resources officer. "Jenn will play a pivotal role in advancing our human resources strategy, focusing on enhancing talent management, supporting organizational growth, and reinforcing our culture of excellence," wrote Gavin O'Connor, Point72's chief operating officer, in the memo. "She is uniquely positioned to lead these efforts, bringing a data-centric and process-oriented approach honed over 25 years of experience across business operations and human capital." Cohen worked at private equity firm Global Atlantic and Goldman Sachs before joining Schonfeld. At the multistrategy fund, she was a part of the leadership group that guided the manager through an unsteady 2023 that included takeover rumors by rival Millennium and ultimately culminated in the layoff of 15% of the firm's total workforce. The manager has since rebounded, with strong performance in 2024 and so far in 2025. Point72 has a larger head count than Schonfeld, with more than 2,900 total employees, according to the Stamford-based manager's website.
Business Insider
19-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
$38 billion Point72 poaches Schonfeld's top HR executive
Jennifer Cohen, Schonfeld's one-time top HR executive, is joining $38 billion Point72. Cohen will be the 2,900-person firm's chief human resources officer, starting in January. She previously worked for private equity firm Global Atlantic and Goldman Sachs. Firms are also raiding each other for operations, human capital, and technology leaders. The latest big move is Jennifer Cohen's decision to join $38 billion Point72 from Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. Cohen has been the head of human capital management for Steve Schonfeld's eponymous fund since 2022. According to an internal Point72 memo seen by Business Insider, she'll join Steve Cohen's fund in January as the firm's chief human resources officer. "Jenn will play a pivotal role in advancing our human resources strategy, focusing on enhancing talent management, supporting organizational growth, and reinforcing our culture of excellence," wrote Gavin O'Connor, Point72's chief operating officer, in the memo. "She is uniquely positioned to lead these efforts, bringing a data-centric and process-oriented approach honed over 25 years of experience across business operations and human capital." Cohen worked at private equity firm Global Atlantic and Goldman Sachs before joining Schonfeld. At the multistrategy fund, she was a part of the leadership group that guided the manager through an unsteady 2023 that included takeover rumors by rival Millennium and ultimately culminated in the layoff of 15% of the firm's total workforce. The manager has since rebounded, with strong performance in 2024 and so far in 2025. Point72 has a larger head count than Schonfeld, with more than 2,900 total employees, according to the Stamford-based manager's website.
