As a child, Kara Sears fell in love with the energy of a good hockey game. The colors, the sheer force of the players slamming against the walls. The smell of hot nachos and popcorn.
Sears and her father would watch the Colorado Avalanche play at Ball Arena, and those evenings are some of her fondest childhood memories.
“I’ve always been big into sports—whether it was playing them or being a spectator,” Sears said. “I love the environment that the sports and entertainment culture brings.”
Today, Sears is part of a team directly supporting those energy-packed moments at Ball Arena. Less than two years after graduating from the University of Denver, she’s a human resources business partner at Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, a Denver-based holding company that owns teams like the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Arsenal Football Club.
But Sears’ road to success started with another passion: she first studied social work and child welfare at the University of South Dakota. She worked with adults with disabilities at a local nonprofit near Sioux Falls and volunteered as a coach and partner player at the Special Olympics. After graduating from USD, she worked for a local branch of Scouting America. But after a few years of harsh winters, Sears decided to return home to Colorado.
In 2023, Sears began a dual program at DU to complete a Master’s of Social Work alongside a Master’s of Science in Management at the Daniels College of Business.
At the time, Sears recalls, a business degree felt like a helpful addition to her main course of study in social work. She loved the nonprofit world, and hoped to sit on a board of directors someday. However, she quickly realized she needed to change her focus.
“I had a little mini, quarter-life crisis,” she laughs. “There just wasn’t a path in social work that I felt necessarily drawn to.”
But Sears found guidance in a Daniels class called Leading Self (MGMT 4202), with professor Andrew Schackenberg. The course combines deep introspection with mentoring to help students lead themselves towards their personal and professional goals in a strategic way. With the help of a mentor named Tony, she realized that she could use her expertise in social work to excel in another role: human resources.
She fell in love with the technicality of the role—how HR professionals are tasked with implementing policy and procedures, but also understanding the individuals that make up their workforce.
“HR isn’t necessarily the flashy job title but what I loved about the idea of HR, is that it’s a cross-section between the people-side of the organization as well as the strategic side,” Sears said.
To be successful, Sears explains, HR professionals must develop a good understanding of all facets of a business. That way, they can integrate the company’s strategy and goals with employee hiring and retention.
“How to keep people around, what people need to be successful in the organization and what it looks like when there are cuts to the budget,” Sears said. “While you do get that human interaction, there’s so much skill that comes with HR.”
In addition to her coursework, Sears found community with DU’s Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) Club. She attended conferences, worked with Daniels’ Career Services and connected with mentors like professor Bud Bilanich, in the Department of Management.
Bilanich recalls sharing his career strategy with Sears: First, find out what you want to do. (She’d already checked that off the list). Then, identify companies where you’d like to work. And find a way to get introduced into that organization, through mentors and networking.
“Going through this three-step process, they’re being proactive,” Bilanich said. “You feel like you’re in charge of your job search, rather than blindly sending out resumes.”
Kroenke Sports was an easy first choice for Sears. But entry-level positions weren’t easily available at Kroenke. So, Sears chose to apply for an internship.
During the interview process, Sears says, her professors and career counselors were just a phone call away. She found herself drawing on examples from class projects to answer interview questions—including a team project where they served as consultants for an organization in a case study.
“Being able to lean in on that real world experience definitely helped me,” Sears said. “I had never worked in HR, but I could bring up that consulting project, and the strategic thinking that my group put into developing a plan.”
Sears, right, speaks at a young alumni panel at Daniels.
In August of 2024, after Sears graduated from DU with a Master’s of Science in Management, and a graduate certificate in human resource operations, she began her internship in Kroenke’s HR department.
“She was willing to display humility and take an internship —lots of people don’t want to do that,” recalls her mentor, Bilanich. “But she made herself pretty much indispensable, and they converted her to a full-time employee.”
Sears played the long game. She poured everything she had into that internship, made important connections with her colleagues and excelled.
“Truly, the only reason I am in the position where I am at Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, is one of my coworkers really believed in what I could accomplish,” Sears said. “If you don’t try, you’ll never know if this position is right for you.”
Last spring, Sears accepted Bilanich’s invitation to visit a meeting of current Management Club students to speak about her career journey and help them think about their own paths forward.
Her goal was to encourage the students, but also to arm them with some real-world experience for how to navigate a difficult economy.
“The job market right now is brutal,” Sears said. “It might take hundreds of applications before something sticks, but I hope they give themselves some grace.”
In a full circle moment, Bilanich says at least four or five undergraduate students in the audience have since come to him and asked for help building similar career search strategies for themselves.
“I am just so impressed with (Kara), both as a human being and as a young professional,” Bilanich said. “She really took responsibility for herself and did what she needed to do, in order to do what she wanted to do.”
Sears’ career is just starting, but she says she has already fallen in love with her job. She supports the groups overseeing Ball Arena, the main stadium where the Nuggets and the Avalanche play. She says her colleagues are the day-to-day foundation of what it takes to keep the facility running at its best and keeping fans coming in and out.
“It’s so fast paced and every day looks different,” Sears said. “I just love the environment that sports and entertainment culture brings.”