Ian Anderson has served as Chief Strategy Officer since June 2022. He is in his second stint with the Earthquakes after he rejoined the club ahead of the 2019 season.
A graduate of Claremont McKenna College where he played college soccer, Anderson started his career at the MLS league office in New York City. He joined the Quakes in 2012 in business development and then served as Special Assistant to the President, where he worked on major projects across the organization, including securing a seven-figure jersey partnership deal with Sutter Health and helping structure the club’s then affiliation agreement with Reno 1868 FC.
Anderson left the club in 2016 to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business. During his time at Stanford, he worked at Goldman Sachs in the sports investment banking group and spent time in Australia as a strategy consultant on growth/expansion for the A-League.
Anderson returned to the Quakes after his MBA as Director, Business Strategy and was promoted to Vice President, Strategy in May 2019. In that role, he has led teams responsible for commercial revenue, data and analytics, strategic planning, and business operations. On the commercial side, he and his team have delivered 60-percent revenue growth over the past two years. Under his leadership, the Quakes have built strong new connections to the Silicon Valley tech community, most notably through marquee sponsorships with PayPal (stadium naming rights), Intermedia (jersey rights), Adobe, Roku, Uber, and Dropbox.
On the sporting side, Anderson leads the club’s newly formed soccer data and analytics team, working closely with General Manager Chris Leitch and the soccer operations group to support player recruitment, match analysis, and research and development.