Guest speaker initiates change within the hockey community

Xavier Gutierrez, the first Latino president of the Arizona Coyotes NHL team,  encouraged Chapman students to push past ethnic discrimination barriers and pursue their passions. Photo courtesy of Gutierrez and WikiCommons.

The Hispanic Law Students Association co-sponsored an Oct. 15 Chapman Dialogue Series event, introducing Xavier Gutierrez, the first Latino chief executive officer within the NHL. As president of the Arizona Coyotes, Gutierrez aims to draw attention to inequalities and stereotypes within issues of diversity that have hindered the ability for Latinx individuals to move up in the American business hierarchy.  

Gutierrez moved back to Los Angeles to join Alex Meruelo as a partner at the Clearlake Capital Group investment firm. In July of 2019, Meruelo bought the Arizona Coyotes and began crafting a vision and leadership team. Familiar with Gutierrez’s talents and ambitions, he offered him the position.

“It wasn't necessarily the business opportunity that was the most important to me, but it was the opportunity that sports (gave me) to be the platform and the voice to really make a difference and an impact in communities,” Gutierrez said.

Sports are a growing market in Arizona, and hockey is a sport that lends itself to the social media age, said Gutierrez. It's fast and about passion and skill, but most importantly, it’s about the experience. He said he knows his job is to serve an existing fanbase, engage new fans, bring the sport to non-traditional hockey communities and diversify the historically white-dominated sport.

Vocal about the need for diversity in terms of capital ownership, Gutierrez began making changes at the start of his hire. It was important to him to have diverse individuals in the seats of decision-making authority because, as he said, “diverse voices make better business decisions.” 

To be intentional, authentic and innovative in outreach, hockey has has been increasingly embracing the reckoning of social justice and racial equality, Gutierrez noted.

Coming to the United States as an undocumented immigrant in hopes of a better life, Gutierrez left his hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico, at a very young age. After attending kindergarten in Los Angeles, he moved to San Jose, California, where he attended an all-boys high school, Bellarmine College Preparatory. 

Attending school with sons of the Silicon Valley elite gave Gutierrez the hope that an Ivy League education was not only attainable, but also probable. His educational community, Gutierrez said, surrounded him and his family with endless support, and in doing so, inspired him to pursue his passion in business.

“Sports is a business. You have sophisticated people, sophisticated investors, and it’s not just something you go and buy tickets for, but it’s a real sophisticated institutional platform.” Gutierrez said at the event.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard University in 1995, Gutierrez spent a year as a financial analyst for the NFL and eventually enrolled at Stanford University Law School in 1997.

“I had always admired folks that went to law school in the way that they approached problems, and I knew that that was the skill set that I wanted,” Gutierrez, said when asked about his inspiration to practice law at the Oct. 15 event.

To Gutierrez, racial equality and social justice are concepts not singular to the Latinx community, but other communities that have been discriminated against on the basis of race. 

“I want young people, I want female fans, I want nontraditional hockey communities, I want the African American community and members of the LGBTQ community,” Gutierrez said. “It's all of those communities that haven’t been a target of the NHL that I want to embrace and really be an outreach to.”