Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jenny Nguyen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jenny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

Prior to opening The Sports Bra, I had around 15 years of cooking and 4+ years of being an executive chef experience under my belt. I knew how to manage a team and how to run a kitchen. But I quickly realized that owning your own business required an entirely new and much more broad set of skills that I did not have. I surrounded myself with people who knew more, had more experience and had the skillsets that I lacked. And from Day One I was transparent with each new hire, each friendly collaborator and every willingly helpful community member if they decided to join me, that I was learning as I went and that the entire endeavor was going to be an adventure. I hired the most qualified bartenders, servers, chefs and made sure that each and every one of them was passionate about our mission: to empower, support and promote girls and women in sports. By hiring the best people and making sure that we all had a shared vision – we were able and willing to weather any storm and go through all the uncomfortable and challenging growing pains associated with starting something from scratch. And by building this thing together, each team member played a vital role in creating The Bra – and that ownership and value brings a sense of belonging, importance and pride to our team that is irreplaceable and authentic.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Jenny Nguyen and I am the owner and founder of The Sports Bra, the world’s first sports bar 100% dedicated to women’s sports. I grew up in Portland, Oregon (where The Bra is located) and am an only child, first generation Vietnamese-American. My first true love was basketball which I picked up around the age of 5 and continue to play today. I was classically trained at Le Cordon Blue as a chef and worked in kitchens for over 15 years before deciding to open my own place. I decided to open The Sports Bra because I had spent my adult life craving a space where I felt safe, seen and where I truly felt I belonged. And a majority of my time spent out with friends was to watch women’s sports which ranged in its challenges. From not being able to get a channel changed on the TV to feeling unwelcome in a male-dominated and often toxic environment; sports bars left a lot to be desired for me and my friends. I wondered if other people felt the same and so I decided to open a place, a sports bar, dedicated to showing women’s sports on TV and to finally honor and celebrate the female athletes the way I felt they deserved all along. Turns out, I wasn’t alone: people of all ages, genders and walks of life have visited and shown support for The Bra and for the mission of empowering women athletes.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

My previous life as a chef was full of challenges. I was a woman in a male-dominated industry and for the most part, the industry not only tolerated toxic masculinity, but oftentimes rewarded it. I struggled with imposter syndrome and felt as if I too had to embrace the lifestyle and demeanor of an asshole, egomaniacal chef to not only get along, but to get ahead. It wasn’t until much later in my career that I realized what truly set me apart and made me a better chef and leader was my ability to empathize. To be a good listener and lead with love rather than fear actually resulted in better team morale and productivity (imagine that!). So I took those lessons I learned from being an executive chef ruling with a warm heart over an iron fist and really leaned into it when I opened up my own place. At The Sports Bra I realized this was my opportunity to create a system and team from the ground up. I didn’t need to follow anyone else’s gameplan, I didn’t need to report to anyone or abide by an unseen number-crunching, rule-checking suit-and-tie. I decided to lead with compassion, authenticity, transparency and accountability that had been so elusive in the industry I had grown to love. There isn’t a single day that I am not reminded of how fostering a healthy and supportive team is the true heart and soul and backbone of a business. That beating the dirt with a plow over and over will never yield the same results as planting a garden with seeds and water.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Most people don’t know this, but prior to opening The Sports Bra in 2022, I had been unemployed for over 5 years. I quit my job as an executive chef in 2016 and knew that I wanted to try something else. But I didn’t know what that was. In the interim, I managed to rent out the house I was living in and pick up small gigs off Craigslist here and there to make ends meet. It wasn’t until 2020 when the pandemic turned the entire world on its head when I realized I needed to DO something. I found myself restless, uneasy, and upset. Even though I had been unemployed for years, I hadn’t felt any negative feelings about it – I quite enjoyed the laziness and casual day-to-day life. But the pandemic, coupled with the social justice movements of #MeToo, the murder of George Floyd, the USWNT battle for equal pay, I felt fired up and wanted to contribute something, ANYTHING that I felt could make a difference, but I still didn’t know what that was. My entire life I’d really only ever been good at two things: basketball and cooking. That was when the seed for The Sports Bra was planted. So going from unemployed to owning a business was a huge (HUGE) leap, but one I felt I had to do, and in a lot of ways, felt was a natural next step for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thesportsbrapdx.com
• Instagram: @thesportsbrapdx
• Facebook: @thesportsbrapdx
• Twitter: @thesportsbrapdx

Image Credits
Jade Hewitt Media Sara Sorbo Photography StarChefs Dorothy Wang/Vogue Shannon Dupre