ATLANTA - On July 7, Kjahna O woke up to a slew of missed calls, unread texts and social media notifications.
After going through the interview process to become a member of the Atlanta Falcons' scouting department and accepting the job, the hiring had gone public.
"And to me that was the wow moment," O told FOX 5 Sports. "Like, 'Oh my goodness, this is crazy,' because nothing has ever happened to me like that before."
O and another woman, Rushell Harvey, were hired as scouting coordinators — the fourth and fifth women to be starting new scouting jobs this year across the NFL.
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New Falcons scouting coordinator blazing her own trail
Kjahna O and another woman, Rushell Harvey, were hired as scouting coordinators — the fourth and fifth women to be starting new scouting jobs this year across the NFL.
"The Falcons went out and told me, hey look this is what we’re going to do, and we’re going to make you the best that you can be and we’re going to push you to do everything that you ever wanted. So them saying that — it was just amazing to hear, because as a woman in sports, not a lot of people give you that opportunity," O said. "Especially for me it’s not just only being a woman in a male-dominated industry, but it’s also being a Korean American in an industry that doesn’t really have a lot of people of color, so to represent my ethnicity is such an honor for me because I want people who look like me to see, hey if she can do it, I can do it. Because I didn’t have people like that growing up. I didn’t get to see many Asians in the NFL that weren’t in IT or weren’t in the business side of football."
As for her role in the scouting department, O will be cutting up film, helping evaluate college prospects, coordinating travel, prepping for the draft and combine, and acting as a liaison between Falcons players, their agents and the team. It’s a step up from what she did as football personnel & recruiting graduate assistant at South Carolina — and that experience is what made her the best person for this job, regardless of her gender. And most importantly, it's the next step in a career that she hopes leads to a dream job of becoming a director of college scouting one day.
Falcons hired two women of color as their newest scouting coordinators. Kjahna O is one of them. (Courtesy of Kjahna O)
"I’ve been put down a lot for wanting to do what I want to do, which is work in the NFL," she said. "I’ve had plenty of people tell me that you’re never going to make it, it’s never going to happen. And to me, that doesn’t make me uncomfortable. That just made me more passionate about actually doing it."
She has a lot of family that has recently relocated to Suwanee, from her grandparents to aunts and uncles. Before that, O grew up in Manhattan Beach, California, watching the USC Trojans, played flag football up until middle school and went on to earn her Master of Science in Sport and Entertainment Management at the East Coast USC — in South Carolina.
"I was always telling people when I was little that my dream job was to be a NFL quarterback, so although that dream is really not going to happen, working in the NFL is close to that," she said, laughing.