About PRO Sports Communications

Melinda Travis is a communications professional with over 15 years of sports industry experience, working on both sides of the media equation, as a public relations practitioner and as a sports journalist.

She started her career in broadcasting as an in-house reporter and associate radio producer for the NBA Orlando Magic. As part of the team’s daily media contingent, she experienced firsthand the adversarial relationship that exists between professional athletes and the media. It was that experience along with a desire to help athletes better understand and work with media, which prompted her career shift to public relations.

A native of Canada, Melinda gained her sports communications credentials at Major League Baseball, managing media relations and grassroots events for MLB International’s Toronto office. In 2000, she moved to Southern California and made the transition to agency life, where she led accounts for such premier sports and entertainment brands as the NBA, WNBA, The GRAMMY Awards and Black Entertainment Television (BET).

In 2005, she co-founded Comment Communications, a PR firm servicing clients including SONY Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox/MGM, Toyota, Rock & Republic, USA Swimming and the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid.

This year, Melinda launched PRO Sports Communications, offering athletes, organizations, corporations and non-profits within the sports industry a unique combination of complementary services under one roof: strategic PR & media relations, media training, crisis management, broadcast coaching, and language workshops including accent reduction and grammar improvement.

At PRO Melinda translates her diverse experiences into agency leadership focused on meeting the needs of clients and their key stakeholders.

A lauded industry strategist, Martine Charles is exceptionally well versed in the development and execution of comprehensive media relation campaigns as well as targeted corporate and crisis communications plans. Her relationships with the nation’s top sports, business and entertainment media have enabled her teams to produce outstanding press coverage and clear-cut brand positioning strategies for all its clients.

Previously, Charles served as Vice President of Corporate Communications at VH1 and RealNetworks, Inc., (Nasdaq: RNWK), and held executive positions at CNBC and other high profile media outlets. Among her accomplishments, Charles was instrumental in launching CNBC/MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” “Geraldo Rivera” and “Business Center with Ron Insana & Sue Herrera,” as well as “Tim Russert” and the show “Equal Time” with Dee Dee Myers and Bay Buchanan.

At RealNetworks, Charles oversaw the research, events and public relations divisions of the growing technology company. A communications pioneer, she implemented campaigns to introduce “television on the Internet” via paid subscription services. That early program offered millions of delighted subscribers the ability to watch E!, ABC News, CNN, MLB, NASCAR and NBA programs on their laptops and the technology introduced at the time is today a lifestyle staple.

Katrina Florence Younce is a co-founder and Principal at PRO Sports Communications. With over ten years of experience on the PR side of the sports and entertainment industries, Katrina has proven success at helping clients achieve their goals through creative and strategic public relations campaigns.

Previously, Katrina was the Senior Account Director at Comment Communications where she served as project manager on a variety of accounts, including USA Swimming.

Before Comment, she was Manager of Communications for NBC Universal Television Distribution where she developed and executed publicity strategies for the company’s domestic syndication television properties, international television distribution and ancillary sales groups. While there, she helped build comprehensive and creative public relations campaigns for series such as “Access Hollywood,” “The Chris Matthews Show,” “George Michael Sports Machine,” “Blind Date” and “The Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo.”

Prior to NBC Universal, she oversaw the public relations department at G4, a growing cable network targeting the young male audience. In this role, Katrina spearheaded the public relations strategy for the network including brand identity, network messaging, crisis communications, consumer television publicity and talent relations.

Katrina began her career at The Lippin Group, one of the leading independent entertainment/media public relations and marketing firms in the world. Over the course of three years she rose to Senior Account Executive and handled such high profile accounts as The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which included organizing media efforts for the Primetime Emmy Awards as well as several other events throughout the year. Additionally, she oversaw public relations campaigns for FINE LIVING, Tollin/Robbins Productions, Loyola Marymount University – School of Film & Television and RCA Music Group, among many others.

Rich has more than 25 years of experience as a lawyer and entrepreneur, identifying, operating, financing, and consummating transactions as well as providing advice and business counsel to entrepreneurs in the technology, sports and entertainment, media, finance, broadcasting, and telecommunications industries.

Rich has been an operating principal in several major start-up companies. Rich founded, owned and operated a sports management company for several years, was the owner/operator of the City of San Francisco Marathon, served as a founding executive, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and General Counsel of the American Basketball League (ABL), and has served as the personal sports attorney for several professional athletes, including, Olympic Champion Edwin Moses, NFL Hall of Fame Wide Receiver James Lofton and world champion sprinter and basketball player Marion Jones. Rich also served as a Senior Counsel with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C in the Silicon Valley and Hughes & Luce, L.L.P., in Dallas, Texas. At both firms, Rich’s practice focused on venture capital and technology transactions.

For several years, Rich was an Adjunct Professor of Sports Law at University of California, Hastings College of Law. Rich has also served on the boards of directors and advisory boards of several start-up technology companies.

Rich is a graduate of Dartmouth College, earned a Masters of Arts degree from Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Rich is a member of the State Bars of California and Texas.

Currently, Rich’s Legal Crisis Management & Legal Crisis Communications practice is based in Dallas, Texas.

Marc Watts brings unrivaled journalistic credibility and media experience to the PRO team. An award-winning former CNN Correspondent turned broadcast agent, Watts’ holds the distinction of having more on-air experience than any news agent in country. With a unique grasp of talent and network needs, Watts has placed hundreds of clients in media jobs, developing and coaching them to be dynamic communicators, presenters and personalities

Since his on-camera debut in 1981, Watts has worked at stations in Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago. He is best known however, for his award-winning work on CNN. He was CNN’s lead correspondent during the O.J. Simpson criminal case, the so-called “Trial of the Century,” filing more than 1600 on-air reports for that story alone. Watts is a nationally respected media voice, and is often called on and quoted by media publications on a variety of issues facing television news.

Watts was also the principal reporter for CNN’s coverage of the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing and in 1994, first all-race elections in South Africa. He played a central role in CNN’s Cable Ace award-winning coverage of the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake. He covered both Rodney King beating trials, the Menendez brothers murder trial and in all, Watts has won more than 50 journalism and production awards. He’s been parodied on “Saturday Night Live” and mimicked on “The Tonight Show” and got a big kick out of each. Marc still regularly appears on-camera on various television networks and media outlets. He’s served as a consultant to news executives across the country regarding media strategies and news coverage. Working with Olympic and professional athletes looking to make successful transitions to the broadcast booth, Watts is able to strategize and advise them on communication skills that he has employed and developed himself over the years.

Kelly Reiter grew up in Canada speaking English, Punjabi and eventually, French. She majored in romance languages in college, spent a year at l’Université Paul Valéry in France, and graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BA in French Literature and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification. After a fulfilling and inspiring 2-year teaching commitment in Tokyo, Kelly sought a strong theoretical foundation on which to build her instructional success. She headed to California to pursue graduate studies in Applied Linguistics at UCLA and began her deep and continued exploration into the culture-language-communication link.

While at UCLA, Kelly quickly established herself as a dynamic, innovative instructor and curriculum designer, teaching accent reduction, business communication skills, and Power Grammar workshops at The American Language Center for 11 years. She also developed and implemented Pepperdine University’s ESL transition program for international students and taught for the Los Angeles Unified School District as well as Santa Monica College.

In the early 90’s, Kelly co-founded her own communications consultancy geared towards serving Japanese bankers, realtors, developers and investors in California. Her programs were tailored to executives requiring language, cross-cultural and race/gender sensitivity training. Her clients included Asahi Bank, California Steel, Dentsu, Hotel Nikko, Isuzu Motors America, Nippon Steel USA, Inc., Subaru, and Nippon TV.

Since then, she has consulted for a variety of global corporations around the world including Bertelsmann (parent company to Sony BMG) and Lufthansa. Her programs have expanded to serve medical professionals, actors, and professional athletes who are looking to overcome the accent barrier and find renewed success in their careers. Her success across industries as the go-to accent modification coach is rooted in her profound understanding of the link between language, culture, and communication.

Magaly Morales De Groot is the Hispanic Communications Consultant for PRO Sports Communications. A veteran journalist, she brings over 15 years of newsroom experience to the company.

Prior to joining PRO, Morales worked with “Hispanic Market Weekly,” writing content for their weekly feature, “Industry Snapshots,” and the company’s television upfront season coverage. In 2004, she helped launch “Hispanic Television Update,” a bi-weekly electronic newsletter published by the editors of Broadcasting & Cable and Multi-Channel News, covering the Spanish-language television business.

She began her career in 1994 at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as a News Researcher before making the jump to the paper’s newsroom, where she became an assistant reporter of the Lifestyle section. Morales quickly became known as the department’s expert on “all things Latin,” and carved out a new position for herself, covering Latino media.

In February 2000, she launched a weekly column “On Latin TV,” covering programming, gossip and entertainment news. Within one year, the column was nationally syndicated by Tribune Media Services. Over the next decade, Morales had three syndicated columns, published in English and Spanish, in several national publications.

Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Peru and Venezuela, Morales immigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1989. She currently resides in Berkeley, CA where she also owns a translation services company, “World Reach Translations.”