From Center Ice To The Bottom Line

Kelly Mahncke is the CFO and Assistant Executive Director of Finance and Administration at USA Hockey. The organization provides the foundation for the sport of ice hockey in America, helping young people become leaders and even Olympic heroes. It connects the game at every level while promoting a lifelong love of the sport. USA Hockey falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and is the National Governing Body for the sport of ice hockey in the United States. Its mission is to promote the growth of hockey in America and provide the best possible experience for all participants by encouraging, developing, advancing, and administering the sport.

Kelly and I recently had a dynamic and informative conversation about leadership skills and collaboration, the importance of financial strength within nonprofits, broken collarbones from playing hockey as a kid, and more.

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Kelly Mahncke is someone who experiences “pinch me” moments on a daily basis. She comes from a long line of hockey players and has been an avid hockey fan since she was a kid growing up in Colorado Springs, CO. In fact, she begged her parents to play the sport for five years until they acquiesced. She started playing at 13, played throughout high school, and when she ventured east to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Now, she gets to experience the fulfillment of the sport every day professionally.

In addition to being drawn to hockey and experiencing a great level of success as a result, Mahncke also knew from a young age what she wanted to study, finding a natural affinity toward business and finance.

“I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I’ve always been fascinated by microeconomics,” she explained. “I like macro as well, but business has always been something I’ve been interested in. I graduated with a bachelor’s in economics and then got some experience under my belt before I went back to get my MBA with an emphasis in finance.”

She believes that taking time to gain practical work experience following undergrad made earning her MBA all the more helpful to her career. She also spent time analyzing her various career options and the people in her life she wanted to emulate.

“When I thought about where I wanted to be, I looked at how I wanted to spend my days,” she said. “Do I want to spend my days engaged in things that are mentally challenging and interesting? Do I want to spend my time more in my individual type pursuits? Asking those questions really helped me think about what I wanted to do with my career. And then I started working backwards, so I started looking at some people I knew and jobs that they had and how they got there. What type of background do you need to have that kind of job? I did a lot of research that way in terms of what my strengths were and what jobs seemed really appealing to me.”

Mahncke’s research paid off. She was recruited to USA Hockey in 2019, where she is currently involved in strategic planning, growing the game, and getting people excited about hockey from an overall perspective. Although most people believe that USA Hockey just sends men’s and women’s hockey teams and sled teams to the Olympics, the organization has 1.2 million members around the country and focuses on youth sports. They develop players, officials, and coaches across the U.S. and have a number of companies under its umbrella, including an operating company, a foundation, an arena, a drive-in, concessions, a restaurant, and even an insurance company.

Pat Kelleher, Executive Director of USA Hockey, highlighted her qualifications: “Kelly’s exceptional financial background made her a top candidate to join USA Hockey, and her hockey background helped make her the ideal fit for our organization. Kelly not only understands our game, but she appreciates the value of all the different aspects of our sport that fall under the responsibility of USA Hockey.”

She and her team prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion and recognize how important that is to the game. Embedded within the strategic plan of the organization is its financial strength. Mahncke makes sure to focus on the importance of financial margin, noting that some nonprofits lose sight of that element, highlighting that “there is no mission without margin.”

Fulfilling their mission would not be possible without having a world-class team of people to carry it out. For Mahncke, perhaps partly due to the fact that teamwork is the #1 priority of any sport, no effort holds more value than building the best team. That highlights one of her biggest areas of focus and enjoyment: mentorship.

“I really enjoy that part of it,” she said. “One of the things that is unique to USA Hockey is we have people that have been here for over 30 years, so a very high percentage have been here for a long time. I am bringing in some new people too, and the mentoring piece is a lot of fun. I enjoy learning about them, where they want to go, and how I can support that. Our leadership team does that well.”

Mentorship is important to Mahncke for one reason: She learned from great examples along her own journey.

“I had many mentors, two in particular who really were incredibly important to my success and my development,” Mahncke said. “One was Virg Setzer, one of my professors I had while getting my MBA who is also an executive coach. The growth that I had working with him after I graduated propelled me beyond what I could have imagined. He taught me about communication and how to have difficult conversations. Another mentor I had, Mike Butler, was the CEO of one of the companies I worked for. He taught me about building teams, how to work effectively with the board, and the importance of courage in an executive role.”

One takeaway from Mahncke’s mentorship experience was that neither of her mentors focused specifically on finance or accounting; their lessons revolved more around leadership skills. She found that the people who weren’t CFOs or directly worked with them fully appreciated the strategic and leadership elements of the job.

Today, a unique leadership element of Mahncke’s role is her interaction with the organization’s governing body. She has found herself to be motivated and pleasantly surprised by USA Hockey’s collective positivity.

“Even when you have people who don’t pick the team, they don’t play on the team, and they don’t coach the team, everybody feels like they’re a part of it,” she said. “Everybody in every position contributes to us winning gold medals. The Olympic focus is unique to our company; it’s an interesting part to have something bigger than yourself to be a part of. There’s a camaraderie that comes with a team environment that is remarkable. .”

The sense of camaraderie helps the team come together on everyday operations, but also when the bigger events come around, particularly the Olympics and the World Juniors But the team’s agility is also important when other less regular opportunities come into the mix. Recently, USA Hockey learned that it will be hosting the Men’s World Junior Championships in 2026.

The last time that happened was in 2018, before Mahncke joined the company, which presents financial planning challenges and opportunities. With the event happening every year but not knowing if USA Hockey will be the host, it can make forecasting unpredictable.

“We go long periods without hosting, and that is an incredibly important event to us financially,” she explained. “The years where we are able to host the Men’s World Junior Championships have been very profitable for us, and we anticipate it’s going to be incredible. It’s a very big event, especially in Europe, with people coming from all over to attend. It’s a signature event for the game of ice hockey.”

Unpredictability has challenged her planning skills before, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was a communications challenge from a financial perspective,” she said. “The timing of our revenue happened to be very advantageous for USA Hockey because we open up our registration, which is 65% of our revenue, in April and then it reaches a peak around September/October. A lot of that cash propels us for the rest of the year. We were fortunate because we had collected a lot of our revenue and we didn’t have as many expenses because we weren’t traveling as often. That certainly helped us preserve our cash, but it was a very difficult time for players, families, volunteers, and all staff. I think we weathered it well.”

Kelly’s transparent communication is certainly appreciated by her board members. “Kelly’s skill at communicating information needed for the Board to prioritize what is necessary is outstanding and the transparency in properly vetting the implementation of our strategy to ensure success is of great importance to her” noted USA Hockey board member Donna Guariglia.

With those challenges in the rearview mirror, Mahncke and USA Hockey are able to look forward to upcoming initiatives.

“One of our major priorities right now is to revolutionize the way that we’re doing business to bring us as current as possible,” Mahncke explained. “A few years ago, we changed our IT strategy and wanted to bring everything in-house and potentially have the opportunity to monetize that. Although we’re not an IT company and it didn’t come to fruition like we had imagined, we’re in the middle of switching what we can to SaaS products. We are excited about where we’re going and where we think the future will be.”

Speaking of the future, Mahncke has the future in her sights for the next generation of CFOs, particularly how they can achieve success “One piece that has been really important to my career has been curiosity—being relentlessly curious about everything having to do with the business,” Mahncke reflects. “If you find a job that might interest you, a career path that might interest you, or someone that interests you, just get really curious about it. I’ve found that that is really helpful in determining what you want to do in your career, and it’s been very valuable for me.”

Pat Kelleher, Executive Director of USA Hockey, emphasized the importance of their working relationship: “The partnership between the CEO and the CFO is critical to our organization. Kelly is a tremendous teammate and provides great balance for me. I know that we can have the difficult conversations necessary to help us make the best decisions for all the people we serve within USA Hockey.”