Entrepreneurs and company rock stars divulge their secrets for success
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
Joe Kudla
Athleisure for men: Joe Kudla went where no man has gone before when he founded Vuori in 2015.
Ten years ago, the former CPA and business owner began practicing yoga as a way to work through pain he was experiencing from having played sports in high school, as well as lacrosse at USD. It was then that the sometime apparel investor began researching the world of yoga. “As a surfer, I knew there were 4 million people that surfed in the US and there are hundreds of brands competing for that surfer,” he says. “But there were 30 million practicing yoga. The market was like eight times bigger than surfing and men were 30 percent of it—and the fastest-growing demographic. That was the a-ha moment. ‘Why is there nobody doing anything cool for guys in this premium activewear space?’”
He launched Vuori, pronounced “vee-OR-ee,” from the Finnish word for “mountain.” Kudla is not Finnish but loved the name and the meaning.
Vuori’s line of jogger pants, board shorts, and hoodies favors a neutral color palette and clean design aesthetic. Many of its fabrics are proprietary, including a lot of full dull yarns with a brushed hand to make them extra soft. Notably absent are the primary colors, logos, and team sports aesthetic typical to the gear Kudla says he grew up with.
But most people, including wholesalers, didn’t get Vuori when it first launched. “The wholesale accounts wouldn’t talk to us. They were confused as to what we were trying to accomplish.” Consistently they were told they needed to address the female consumer walking in wearing Lululemon. At the time, Lululemon sold menswear, but in their stores, Kudla felt like he was shopping for his wife. “If the wholesalers were thinking about activewear at all, they were thinking about women. Men’s just wasn’t a category that really existed at wholesale. So we had to build the distribution ourselves.”
They started out selling directly online. Later they opened a space in Encinitas for free yoga, boot camps, art shows, and community events, which they eventually turned into a permanent retail store in March 2016.
Vuori has since launched a women’s collection and, in addition to being sold in retailers like REI, CorePower Yoga, and Sun Diego, they have five stores in tony California districts—the Encinitas flagship, the marina in San Francisco, Manhattan Beach, Fashion Island in Newport Beach, and, as of November 2019, Del Mar Highlands Town Center—right next to Jimbo’s and below five planned fitness concepts. Kudla admits “the rent can be scary,” but he leverages his e-commerce data, which illustrates where his customers live and shop, to make informed decisions. They’re looking to open four more retail stores this year in places like Scottsdale and Denver.
Vuori had long been profitable enough to expand without actively seeking funding. But in August, Norwest Venture Partners presented Kudla with an opportunity. They put $45 million in minority investment on the table, allowing him to maintain control of the business, enjoy a long-term investment horizon, and benefit from a network of pros who could guide him. He says it checked off all the boxes. “It wasn’t a bad time to do it, but it definitely was not in our strategic road map to raise money in 2019.” Now they can return money to early investors and, as he puts it, save for a rainy day.
And rain is something that Seattle-born Kudla knows something about. It rained every day for six months his senior year of high school, so he decided not to attend the University of Washington. Instead he came to San Diego and hit the ground running. —Erin Meanley Glenny
Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz
Sydney Prather
“Imagine throwing a dart at a dartboard and it hits the perfect person you were supposed to meet at the time,” says Ari Raz, cofounder of baby food company Once Upon a Farm.
He’s describing how he met Cassandra Curtis, who created Mother’s Garden, the company’s predecessor, in 2013. But he might as well be talking about Once Upon a Farm’s entire trajectory, which has involved one fateful connection after another.
First there was Curtis. Seven years ago, she was a working mom in University City who wanted her daughter to have the freshest, healthiest food possible, but didn’t have the time to make it. Curtis knew someone in high-pressure pasteurization, which destroys bacteria in food without heating it, and she applied it to recipes that she sold in local farmers’ markets and stores.
Meanwhile, Raz was running a baby food delivery company in Washington, DC, and was looking for a technology that would scale the business. He heard about Curtis through a friend of a friend; he reached out—several times—and in 2016 the pair relaunched her brand as Once Upon a Farm.
They set their sights on grocery stores, a challenge because all the other baby food on the market was shelf stable, and theirs had to be refrigerated. They brought on an advisor, Greg Fleishman, who had experience with Kashi, Bear Naked, Coca-Cola, and other big brands. Fleishman in turn introduced them to John Foraker, the CEO who had grown Annie’s from a small mac-and-cheese maker into a $100 million business; he became one of their first investors and an informal advisor.
By 2017, Once Upon a Farm was small but succeeding. Curtis and Raz had nearly $1 million in sales. That June, a call from Fleishman changed everything. For several years, A-list actress Jennifer Garner had been looking for a business to get involved with; as a longtime advocate for kids, she thought she could do even more good through the right company. Fleishman, who knew Garner’s manager, told her about Once Upon a Farm. Soon Curtis and Raz were driving up to LA for a meeting.
“It’s crazy to think about today,” Raz says. “What are the chances someone that famous hears about a company this small?”
When Garner learned that Foraker was involved, she wanted to meet him. For three hours they talked about how businesses could be a force for good, and by the end of the meeting, they had both decided to join Once Upon a Farm as cofounders, with Foraker as CEO.
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
“There’s definitely been adjustments,” Curtis says. It was hard to relinquish control of the business, but doing so let Raz and Curtis focus on the things they really enjoy. Curtis develops products and makes sure they contain the best-quality ingredients; Raz is working on international expansion. He also oversees the company’s organic farm in Oklahoma—the farm where Garner’s mother grew up (now run by her aunt and uncle).
In the past two years, Once Upon a Farm has expanded from 300 to 9,000 retailers across North America. The company is tight-lipped about sales, but it’s safe to assume that they’ve grown far beyond $1 million. And though these days it’s often described as “Jennifer Garner’s baby food company,” the original founders don’t mind.
“To turn this concept into the vision we held for it—to provide as many children as possible with nutritious food,” Curtis says, “this was the way to do it.” —Sara Clemence
J. Dean Loring grew up in the meat business—he refers to himself as an “SOB,” son of a butcher—and he was running his own burger joint in his 20s (Stars Hamburgers in Humboldt County, with two locations still operating). But it would take more than those qualifications to open a totally new burger chain in San Diego, on the brink of the recession, in a relatively saturated market, with some stiff competition.
Loring’s bright idea? Open a fast-casual (aka counter-service) restaurant where full-service, white tablecloth restaurants are king: La Jolla.
“Fast-casual concepts were in their infancy during the recession, and real estate was a lot cheaper,” he says. “We figured, why not? It’s easier to exceed the guest’s expectations in a limited service environment when expectations are lower. It allows us to focus on food and making it better every day. That was our logic: offer pure, simple, delicious food for a value at a time when maybe people had a bit less money.”
It worked. On the first day, Burger Lounge ran out of food after just three hours. Four months later, they opened a second location in Kensington. Loring and his business partner at the time, Michael Gilligan, personally funded the first four locations before Loring went out on his own as president and CEO and partnered with private equity firm KarpReilly. Today, Burger Lounge has 25 locations throughout the US, with plans to expand further this year.
Now, as that fast-casual concept is no longer novel, Burger Lounge is instead banking on its “original grass-fed burger” to drive business.
“It’s a bit like Chick-Fil-A laying claim to the ‘original chicken sandwich,’” he says. “Does anyone believe they were the first people to think of putting chicken between two slices of bread? Before we put cows in industrial feed lots, all beef was essentially grass-fed. Since many are not aware of the evolution of the beef industry in America, we think it makes sense.”
Burger Lounge vets and manages relationships with responsible, sustainable purveyors.
“We had to sleep with a few frogs to find a few princes,” he quips. “Over time, you figure out if you can build trust with them and if their operation is authentic.”
And the menu continues to evolve. Just last year, Burger Lounge introduced a vegan burger. But it won’t put imitation meat on its menu anytime soon. “Selling a lab-produced burger doesn’t fit with our values,” he says.
When asked about Burger Lounge’s business valuation, Loring stays mum, because he’s not looking to sell it or to franchise for the foreseeable future. Instead, he shares a different number: 3 million—the number of diners per year at Burger Lounge’s 25 locations. Loring proudly claims that he’s built the country’s largest restaurant consumer base of fresh American grass-fed beef.
“Americans eat roughly 50 billion hamburgers a year. I don’t think that is going away anytime soon. Our grass-fed beef hamburgers are better for you, better for the environment, and I think they taste better.”
Spoken like a true “SOB.” —Sarah Pfledderer
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
Reid Carr
When Reid Carr founded his agency 18 years ago, the marketing industry was very different. Red Door Interactive was still trying to convince clients to build their first website. But as digital marketing tactics and platforms grew exponentially, RDI adapted along with them. They put the first restaurant on social media (Souplantation) and were the first company to collaboratively design an office using Pinterest.
Carr and his team won clients when they were relatively small and then helped them grow. From there, he would try to win what he calls more “twos”—”Win something smaller than your first. That’s where I focus. You know you can work on that because you have clients that are bigger. Then if we grow them, and they become our largest, it creates room to win more twos and threes.”
The key is to diversify. “We have to act like a mutual fund,” he says. “I’ve been through multiple economic downturns. I’ve watched a competitor go out of business damn near overnight because all their clients were home builders. If you get into any one category or vendor, you put yourself at risk.”
The formula has worked. Asics, Titleist, Bosch, Thermo Fisher, Charles Schwab, and Shea Homes have all been clients for years, the latter two for well over a decade.
Carr wants to remain “fiercely independent” and never sell out. “I want to build something I can hand off,” he explains. “So, there’s a strong foundation, core values, and infrastructure that will allow the next generation to flourish. I strongly believe that if you’re built to sell, it’s usually a shaky infrastructure because they believe it’s going to be someone else’s problem.”
Carr’s company is not a cutthroat environment. None of his colleagues are out solely for themselves. Carr gave a TED Talk in 2014 on running a “100 percent jerk-free workplace.” In marketing, he says, people will come forward with an idea “and a creative will say, ‘Hey, man, stay in your lane, this is my thing. You’re not good enough, cool enough, old enough, experienced enough.’ Our creative team is not like this because of our core values.” He maintains a culture of respect and open-mindedness by hiring candidates that have these innate values (vetted through an in-depth, three-hour job interview). Any employee can express an opinion, no matter department or rank, which allows for a diverse workforce.
They can’t work for jerks, either. In fact, over the years RDI has fired three clients—including one that was their second-largest—and fired “a ton before we ever won them.” A toxic organization causes problems; if it’s an individual, sometimes the client will do something about it. “We’ve had cases when they came back years later and said, ‘Things have changed here, can we talk?’”
You never know who will knock on the red door next. —EMG
San Diego brands explain how they made it to the top
Aliza Carpio | Photo: Madison Parker
Of the nearly 50 million people around the world who use TurboTax, probably very few know that it started in San Diego. Back in 1983, scientific programmer Michael Chipman came up with the idea of software that could guide people through filling out their tax returns, and even print out the forms to mail. That’s when ChipSoft was born. Up in Palo Alto the same year, tech consultant Scott Cook and his wife were balancing the family checkbook when he had a similar idea. Cook and Stanford student Tom Proulx created the personal finance software Quicken and founded Intuit Inc., which acquired ChipSoft ten years later.
Today, Intuit is based in Mountain View, traded on the NASDAQ, and has 19 offices in eight countries. Its Carmel Valley campus is home to 1,500 employees who work on TurboTax and the apps Turbo and Mint.
While there’s an in-house strategy to keeping all those customers happy—which they’ve coined Customer Driven Innovation (CDI) and Design for Delight (D4D)—management also pays a lot of attention to the well-being of the employees who implement that strategy.
“Culture is queen,” says Aliza Carpio, who came to Intuit from HP 18 years ago. She is now Intuit’s “principal tech evangelist,” which puts her in charge of creating a cool office culture in her company.
Intuit boasts a robust offering of extras and extracurriculars. Every employee-run club has a local Intuit executive as a sponsor or guide, like the African Heritage Network and the Asian Pacific Network. Intuit’s San Diego campus hosts five meetups—one of which is San Diego JavaScript, the largest tech meetup in San Diego. There are book clubs, workshops, and programming with companies like Athena and Qualcomm. During Hacktoberfest 2019, when engineers contribute code to open-source projects around the world, less than six percent of the participants worldwide were women. But among the Intuit engineers contributing, a full 23 percent were women.
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
Madison Parker
In 2013, the company launched an initiative called Tech Women @ Intuit, or TWI. The initiative ensures that women are not just applying to work at Intuit, but also choosing to stay and moving up in the company. The programs support women at all stages of their careers, and the company also reaches out to middle and high school students. There are mentorship programs, professional development circles, and events—one of which is the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists, produced by anitab.org. Carpio, who also hosts the podcast Tech Heroes, cowrote two talks presented to 60,000 women in engineering at the 2019 event. There, she noticed a huge shift in the types of questions candidates were asking compared to even the previous year. Instead of asking about the interview process and what projects to expect, their only inquiries seemed to concern culture—opportunities to give back to the community, team dynamics, and why Carpio has stayed at Intuit so long.
“You have to have champions like me for people to feel like they belong, can do the best work, can be fulfilled. I’ve been here 18 years because the culture is really cool. Eight different jobs in 18 years and I’m always thinking about it.”
Today, one-third of Intuit’s board of directors are women. The executive team, including the chief financial, technology, and marketing officers, is 40 percent female. If getting to the top is tough, Intuit women have cracked the code. —EMG
NuVasive president Matt Link
You know you’ve made it when a former Pittsburgh Steelers running back and Hall of Famer wants to be your spokesperson. Jerome Bettis is that spokesperson for NuVasive, the spinal tech company that changed his life.
In 2017, Bettis was suffering from incredible back pain and his doctor recommended a spinal fusion (a surgical procedure joining two or more vertebrae), but he was reluctant.
“He’s an avid golfer, and he was concerned about how quickly and effectively he could return to golfing,” explains NuVasive president Matt Link. “Through a recommendation of a former teammate who’d had a similar issue, he ended up having an XLIF.”
XLIF (Extreme Lateral Interbody Fusion) is NuVasive’s pioneering spinal surgery technique.
Before XLIF, most surgeries for spinal fusions required stripping away muscle and moving blood vessels. And the minimally invasive options weren’t easy to teach and reproduce. NuVasive’s founders developed technology that allowed for a new safe and relatively easy procedure. During an XLIF, surgeons enter from a small incision on the side of the body, without having to strip away muscle. They’re able to use this path toward the spinal cord because of NuVasive’s neuromonitoring technology, a retractor with a built-in system that tells surgeons where the nerves are so they can navigate around them. Overall, this approach results in a smaller scar and faster recovery time.
NuVasive was a small neurophysiology tech startup in Scripps Ranch before XLIF brought the company into operating rooms around the world. They secured venture capital funding and invested heavily in clinical trials to show that the technique was safe and effective. After obtaining FDA clearance, they introduced XLIF to the market in 2003.
It wasn’t an overnight success, though. “There was a healthy skepticism in the community,” Link says. It was very different from existing techniques, and nobody had heard of it before. It took time to gather data and win over the medical community.
NuVasive continued to improve the technology, and in the mid-2000s, sales for neuromonitoring started to take off. The company added new tech to its portfolio and expanded—a lot. During one especially fruitful period, NuVasive went from a $100 million company to a $1 billion company in 11 years.
NuVasive is now the world’s largest spine-focused company. It has a satellite office in Amsterdam—though its global HQ and largest employee base remain in San Diego. Link credits the city’s biotech community and the talent they’ve drawn from it for a lot of the company’s success. —Heather Karpel
Paul Goodman and Griffin Thall
Sydney Prather
In 2010, two La Jolla guys returned from a surf trip in Costa Rica with the ultimate souvenir: 400 brightly colored bracelets woven by two locals, which they sold to friends under the name Pura Vida, inspired by the country’s laid-back lifestyle. Today, an eye-catching $75 million acquisition has made Pura Vida one of the most enduring success stories of San Diego’s lifestyle brands.
Social media marketing was in its infancy a decade ago when Griffin Thall and Paul Goodman founded the brand. This was back before influencers were sponsored—before “influencer” had even entered the Insta-lexicon—and succeeding meant more than cracking an algorithm. It was grassroots, with the pair personally seeking out true fans, organically building a powerful feel-good presence into an empire.
From their early days selling in local boutiques, and soon enough at Coachella and Padres Opening Day, they strung together a community. Today, about 65 percent of Pura Vida’s sales come from e-commerce, 20 percent from wholesale, and 14 percent from monthly subscriptions.
And while social media platforms have changed over the years, from Vine to Snapchat to TikTok, the Pura Vida demographic hasn’t. Now it has a name—the VSCO girl. Named for a photo editing app, VSCO girls represent a market many brands want to break into. They wear Birkenstocks, drive Jeeps, drink from sticker-covered Hydro Flasks, and love Pura Vida. The vibe? Studiously unplanned.
“How can you go for the most unpolished look and still consider it marketing?” asks Thall, who says 98 percent of his demo are women. “It’s the complete opposite of retouched.”
Thanks to its fluency in content marketing, Pura Vida boasts an incredibly engaged customer base (No. 1 in jewelry, according to marketing consultant Stylophane) and a following of over 1.9 million on Instagram and just under 2 million on Facebook. In summer 2019, they sold a majority stake to Vera Bradley after interviewing more than two dozen private equity firms.
The Indiana-based publicly traded company, primarily known for its sturdy quilted handbags, acquired 75 percent of Pura Vida for $75 million, with the right to acquire the remaining 25 percent of the company after five years. Thall, 32, and Goodman, 30, also stand to earn up to $22.5 million in bonuses if the company meets certain performance goals.
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
Sydney Prather
Their decision to sell offloads lead production and back-office functions—accounting, finance, legal—to Vera Bradley, freeing up the existing Pura Vida team to focus on branding, marketing, and sales in their new La Jolla headquarters (ocean views, ping-pong, palm frond wallpaper).
The founders, who are SDSU alumni, employ 750 artisans in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and India, while raising more than $1.9 million for charitable causes through online sales of their charity collection bracelets.
While cause-minded outfits like Toms Shoes were an early influence, Pura Vida’s true brand heroes are Billabong and RVCA, both of which were pioneers in using real skaters, surfers, artists, and musicians in their influencer campaigns—in other words, professional athletes, not models.
“That girl in the dress with the photo crew in the Maldives? That’s done. No one cares,” Thall says. “If you can sell something that is the complete opposite of that, you might be onto something.” —Gillian Flynn
8 San Diego Brands Explain How They Made It to the Top
Like so many traditional comic book characters, Comic-Con had relatively unassuming beginnings.
In the 1970s, Shel Dorf, Ken Krueger, and Richard Alf gathered about 100 enthusiasts in the basement of The US Grant hotel. Last year—its 50th—Comic-Con’s estimated 135,000 attendees took over the San Diego Convention Center and surrounding downtown blocks. They came not just for comics, but for movies, television shows, games, cosplay, and more. If you were there (in or out of costume) you might have spotted Tom Cruise, Kristen Bell, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Presidential hopeful Cory Booker even took a break from campaigning to visit. A museum in Balboa Park is in the works.
There were a few secrets to Comic-Con’s success, not least that it was—and still is—run by fans. “We have always wanted to put the type of show together that we would want to attend,” says David Glanzer, the organization’s spokesperson and chief communications and strategy officer. Driven by passion rather than popularity, Comic-Con has both predicted shifts in culture and encouraged them. It hosted a panel on what was then called The Star Wars in 1976, a year before the film’s release.
“Comic books, film, science fiction literature… we felt that they were expressive forms of art that were fun and often educational,” Glanzer says. “We just tried to put on the best show we could, focusing on those things that we felt had merit.”
Comic-Con took a big-tent approach, gathering different media and genres under one roof. “There is something of a cross-pollination,” Glanzer says. “You may like movies, but then come to discover that you like science fiction as well—or comic books or gaming or costuming or interactive multimedia. I would hope that we had at least a small part in bringing these forms of art to a wider audience.”
That’s putting it mildly. Along the way, entertainment companies realized how much power there was in Comic-Con’s ardent audience. The event has become a key promotional platform for Hollywood, and the changes that has brought haven’t always been welcome. But Glanzer says they try to stay true to their roots. “Comic-Con really is dedicated to increasing the public’s awareness of popular art. We are fans ourselves, and we are learning every day.” —SC
Jonathon Glus on the Art + Design District, investing in the creative economy, keeping artists in the city, and what we can learn from places like London and Chicago
Jonathon Glus is the Prebys Foundation senior fellow leading the development of the Art + Design District at the Downtown San Diego Partnership. He has been asked what an arts and design district is many times. In our conversation, I asked him instead to describe what it isn’t. His answer opened up a broader discussion about what San Diego has and hasn’t invested in, what it has the capacity to become, and what other cities have done that we haven’t. Glus speaks about global art fairs and architecture biennials in Chicago and long tables at dinner parties all with the same fluency. He also discusses who gets to live in the neighborhoods where creative work happens, and what it means when they can’t afford to stay.
Jonathon Glus: It is not a place designed intentionally and specifically for tourists. Of course there will be opportunities for tourists to come, but the district is really focused on creatives, on creative education, and on the creative workforce—as well as our major performing arts organizations. That is the emphasis.
[It needs to] develop greater connectivity between the anchor institutions—the symphony, Broadway San Diego, the opera, all the wonderful things happening in Balboa [Park]—and the creative workforce that will be living and working in that neighborhood 24/7.
We have not been intentionally investing in the contemporary art product that other major cities have been building. A contemporary art fair. A biennial that reflects the ethos of this region. Chicago developed an architecture biennial about eight years ago. London has a design biennial. Desert X, right here in Southern California, invests in and elevates contemporary artists inside a city. We have not really been playing in the global art market in a way that we have the capacity to.
We have a wonderful foundation. Two theater companies that produce work that goes to Broadway more than many regional theaters in the country, major museums, artists teaching at UC San Diego and University of San Diego. What a city does when it wants to take itself to the next level is intentionally create the product. Miami went after the Art Basel fair; they did not passively receive it. You have to have the intention and the will, and you have to go after it. We haven’t done that in the way that other cities have.
Look at what we did with the tech sector; we’re now a major tech center. That was intentional. Leadership organized around it. We have to do the same thing around the arts. We have a lot of contemporary art collectors here. We have a lot of galleries. But the ecosystem of the business of contemporary art is not as organized or as visible as it should be.
It’s bits and pieces of different cities. Dubai has invested very quickly and very intentionally in contemporary art—art fairs, design fairs, higher education, artist residencies from all over the world. London has centered artists and creatives in the contemporary zeitgeist in a way that was not true 40 years ago. They built biennials. They ensured British artists had affordable housing and workspace. They made sure the media paid attention to what they were doing.
If you don’t have an artist at your dinner table, it’s not a dinner party. That sounds elitist, but it’s true. It shows the value that artists have in a community. Our relationship culturally with Tijuana is really significant here because artists in Baja seem to be at the table.
They aren’t. When super creative people are in a community doing extraordinary work, that draws other super creative people doing extraordinary work. That’s why other arts and design districts around the world end up populated with some of the most interesting restaurants and young fashion designers. Creatives want to be around other creatives.
Our creative economy already employs about 170,000 people and generates more than $11 billion in economic activity. It’s large and robust. But we must center all of this in accessibility and affordability. Williamsburg used to be affordable. Artists can’t afford to live there anymore. Wicker Park and Bucktown in Chicago—artist central, now unaffordable. If we’re going to invest in this district, we have to be really intentional about housing and workspace, so creatives have a place in the future of this district.
I think the lesson is that nothing changes. What do people love? Long tables. Why? Because you’re with a lot of people—some you may have known your entire life, but most you don’t. And if it’s driven by a creative process, all the better. We know one of the best ways to do that is around food, but also music.
For the Art + Design District, part of why we’re leaning into the process is because, culturally, we’re bringing down the barriers between film, fashion, multimedia, tech, and architecture. It’s an experiential mashup in the best possible way.
And it’s not just about art and design, but community writ large. Creative expression is something we all desire. Whether it’s at a long table, at the opera, or in your studio, we gravitate toward creative expression as a way of building community and communicating with the people around us.
I hope you are writing about this in seven years when the district is fully mature. But this is just the beginning for all of this. I think that’s what’s most exciting to me. We don’t know what this is going to be like, but we know it’s going to be creatively centered, and that’s super exciting to me.
A conversation with Sebastián Morúa on art, community, and why the club’s future heroes should include the creatives helping build it
Sebastián Morúa is the Senior Vice President of Brand & Innovation for San Diego FC. He oversees Playmakers, the program through which the club has, over the past three years, engaged with over 80 working artists—not as marketing partners, but as co-creative directors.
Morúa didn’t build Playmakers as a community-outreach program bolted onto a Major League Soccer franchise. He built it as the identity of the franchise. When we sat down, he talked about the World Cup, San Diego’s creative workforce, his challenge to other sports franchises in the city, and the mural of heroes he hopes people will see one day when they close their eyes and picture San Diego FC.
Sebastián Morúa: I want to answer that in two parts. Philosophically first—because I think what you’re really asking is why should any sports team do this when most don’t.
Sport is a platform for transformation. It has proven that over and over. We saw it this summer with countries participating in the World Cup for the first time and what that did in their home countries—the sense of self-identification, pride, possibility. That is the power of sport.
When you take a sports team that’s fueled by that principle and understands what it could mean for other stakeholders in a community, you start to think about what you can accomplish in collaboration with them. One of those stakeholders, very early on, was the creative community. If we were going to build a team that represents this place and its people, we needed to go to the source. Artists are uniquely positioned to translate the essence and the soul of a community. When you zoom out and look at the multitude of artists in a place, you start to see the fabric of that local culture. That’s where the sense of pride and possibility gets unlocked.
Our mission is to create opportunities for talent to flourish and make San Diego shine. That means the club is a platform. When we started doing the early research for the brand, we brought artists into our focus groups. The response was immediate. There was a clear need. In 2024, we ran the first full year of what became Playmakers, working with more than 20 artists to help us tell the story of how San Diego FC could weave 18 distinct communities together.
We’re in the business of developing communities through sport. We’re not in the business of fútbol to entertain communities. That is an outcome—but not the purpose.
No. I wasn’t thinking about where this was going or how much it would cost. It instinctively felt aligned with our organizational purpose, and we made a decision to go for it. Now it’s become what it’s become.
If a fan closed their eyes 20 years from now and tried to paint a mural of the heroes that make up the club, they would see a big percentage of Playmakers artists on that mural. Ask any fan about the team they’ve supported for decades, and they’ll tell you about players, maybe a coach, maybe an owner. We’re expanding that. In our mural, there’ll be artists, entrepreneurs, community leaders, youth coaches. The community will be present.
Three to five years from now, Playmakers is an established community of creatives who have co-directed the identity of the club and the evolving identity of San Diego. If we keep the pace we’ve kept, we should have collaborated with 150 to 200 artists whose stories we’ve told and whose next steps we’ve helped support.
There’s a huge benefit for us as a club and as a brand. This is symbiotic. The artists have a need, we can support that need, and in return the community cares more about our club because of the investment we’re doing in the community. That’s what I would tell another organization.
San Diego is waking up to how much it has to offer the global conversation around culture. There’s a purity to life here—partly because of the weather, which allows us to spend so much time outside, in nature—and that exists alongside this incredible richness in food, music, art, and now sports.
I have a sense that San Diego is ready to unlock its full potential. You see it in the artists and creatives here. They’re ready. There’s very little hesitation. It’s more like: “Hell yeah, of course I want to do this. I know I’m talented. I’ve been waiting for something like this.”
That energy, combined with the unique lifestyle and character of this place, creates a really exciting sense of what San Diego can become in the years ahead.
I would ask: What would you say to the other big players in San Diego who are—or could be—shaping the cultural fabric of our community? Do they understand the symbiotic benefit? Are they supporting it?
Because Playmakers, in the end, is a cultural compass. It’s making sure that San Diego still feels—and will always feel—represented in the creative process of building San Diego FC and what that means for San Diego.
The pitch is a canvas. Athletes are painting collectively during every game. There is a story in every game. That’s the link between sport and art. At the core, it’s the same creative process.
Artists and advocates are building a more sustainable creative future through public funding, political organization, and cross-border collaboration
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.
We’ve been here before.
In 2012, city funding for the arts and culture in San Diego had eroded. As a corrective, the city council unanimously approved “Penny for the Arts”—a promise to dedicate roughly one penny of every dollar spent on hotel rooms (the Transient Occupancy Tax, or TOT).
The logic was fair and sound: Cultural institutions and events help attract visitors. Those visitors pay hotel taxes. So, the people agreed, some of that hotel-tax revenue should go back into maintaining the cultural ecosystem that helps bring those visitors and that money.
Projected as a five-year plan, the measure was supposed to increase funding to $17.9 million by 2017.
It never did. The penny was never guaranteed, so each year the city used part of it for other priorities. By 2023, the money going to arts and culture was up to about a half a penny. Even as TOT revenue has gone up significantly.
In 2019, TOT revenue was $245 million.
In 2025: $325 million.
One fix would be to guarantee the penny. Not simple, given San Diego’s financial woes. But the alternative—eroding the culture that makes San Diego San Diego, give it its identity—also doesn’t feel wise. Plus, even a locked percentage still rises and falls with tourism, which is why culture advocates want a guaranteed floor on top of it.
Another solution would be to give the arts commission actual authority.
“It’s an advisory body,” says arts commissioner Kamaal Martin. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who takes our advice.”
He described the commissioners debating real, consequential questions this year, like whether and how to divide the cuts between funding pools. But those conversations “don’t connect to whoever’s actually deciding,” Martin says. “We haven’t been entrusted with decision-making about relevant things nearly enough.”
Christine Martinez is building political infrastructure through her organization Arts+Culture:San Diego—which is starting a 501(c)(4) lobbying structure not unlike police and fire unions. Martinez is also keeping her community actively engaged. “We won’t be caught off guard next year like we were this year,” she tells me.
Then there’s the evergreen issue of affordability and accessibility. Kiplinger’s most recent report ranks San Diego as the 11th most expensive city in the US, based on cost of living. The average home value is $980,700 (the US median is $540,000), but San Diego’s median household income is only one-third greater than the national level. Rent is also 66 percent higher than the national average ($2,716 vs. $1,636).
This is why San Diego has long suffered from the creative brain drain—creatives leaving for more affordable cities. “Artists are free to live wherever they want, and they will go where the rent is affordable,” says Jennifer de Poyen of Space 4 Art. “When they leave, they take their gifts with them, and their contributions, and their economic impact.”
One saving grace is the presence of Tijuana, where the cost of living is about 60 percent lower than San Diego, per Numbeo. Tijuana has long functioned as an affordable neighborhood for many in San Diego’s creative culture. It’s part of the reason why the binational identity is such a constant in our galleries, music, theater, murals, and culture. While that cross-border blood flow is one of San Diego’s most compelling attributes, few artists living that life would call it convenient or easy. A city is at a disadvantage when its culture creators have to cross a border to go home at night, and cross again the next morning to work.
In May, San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a $2.75 million arts initiative of its own. It includes an Artist Space Grant Program aimed directly at the affordability crisis, as well as an artist-in-residence program, a dedicated Binational Creative Economy Investment, and a one-time investment in the Black Arts and Culture District in Encanto.
Bob Lehman of San Diego Art Matters has been doing county-level, binational organizing for years; in 2023, he helped get the county’s arts commission reestablished after 30 years of defunctness. That’s important because it gives arts and culture an official seat in county government, advising the County Board of Supervisors on arts and culture policy. He also brought in consultant Laura Zucker, who ran LA County’s arts program for three decades, to build a real regional plan.
“I really believe we’ll have something set up here that other communities come and look at,” he told me. “A national template other cities come to learn from.”
When asked who decides which artists will get the new grant money, county arts commissioner and executive director of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center Monica Delgadillo Hernandez doesn’t hedge.
“That’s part of the infrastructure we’re going to be building,” she says. “What should a panel of reviewers look like? Should it be the commissioners? Should it be other folks? A supervisor?” She was just as candid that the commission itself doesn’t reflect San Diego’s population—Chicano communities are roughly a third of the city, she tells me, “and that’s not represented at the table yet.”
The great news is that none of these solutions have to be invented from scratch. Numerous cities serve as examples of what’s possible—if we have the will.
Jonathon Glus—Prebys Foundation Senior Fellow for Art & Design, the Executive Director of the Art + Design District, and board president for California for the Arts—worked in Houston before coming to San Diego. The Texas city dedicates 74.5 percent of its hotel tax to arts grants by formula, and that support is guaranteed. Washington, DC locked in dedicated arts funding in 2019. Salt Lake City, my hometown, has run a voter-approved arts tax for almost 30 years, most recently reauthorized through 2034. And just this summer, New York City pushed cultural funding to a record $323.8 million, even incorporating an emergency fund.
Denver’s model is interesting because instead of a city-dependent funding model, theirs is a 0.1 percent regional sales tax. In place since 1988 and renewed by voters three times, their Scientific & Cultural Facilities District has distributed between $54 million and $85 million to arts, culture, and scientific orgs—each of the last 12 years.
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.
None of these cities got there by accident. They decided, on purpose, that arts and culture were worth protecting from politics—and, in some cases, worth building an entire identity around.
“That’s how Miami has flipped the switch,” says Glus. “People go to Miami for culture as much as they do the beach.”
San Diego has spent decades selling itself backward: Beach and weather first, culture as an afterthought you might stumble into. Glus would love to see the strategy flipped: Visitors should come for the art, “and then, by the way, you’re on the beach.”
“I do think it was a wake-up call for the community,” de Poyen says of the budget fight. “People understand that our funding is vulnerable. It was a lesson in how much power people have when they coalesce. But wow, is it painful.”
Glus says he’s genuinely optimistic. “The players have all changed seats, but the work is moving forward.”
“I believe optimism is a moral duty,” says Martin, who’s both power-fist and polite.
In eight months, there will be another budget fight. Everyone I talked to expects it will be worse. But something happened this spring that can’t be undone.
“I hope this rupture has brought us together in a moment of self-realization,” says Leticia Gomez Franco of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. “I hope we stop being so transactional; we begin to see ourselves and each other as partners in this work.”
That’s the whole ask, really. And it’s on all of us.
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.
Aaryn Belfer is a writer and editor specializing in nonfiction across art, architecture, and culture. Once upon a time, she wrote a provocative column for San Diego CityBeat (RIP). She was a runner up in the 2025 Matchbook Stories contest at the San Diego Central Library and is irrationally happy about it. Currently in her Soft Girl Era, Aaryn has expensive taste in (mostly flat) shoes and will choose a great art exhibit or live jazz concert over almost anything else. Except, possibly, Javier Bardem.
At Vi at La Jolla Village, residents don't have to choose between security and adventure, connection and independence. They get all of it.
Today’s seniors are more connected than ever, with a renewed focus on retirement as a time of discovery and enriching experiences. The ultimate reward for a retirement well-earned is the wisdom to appreciate it all, and what better place to enjoy that unique perspective than Vi at La Jolla Village, in the heart of San Diego.
All-access pass to good living.
As a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC), Vi provides access to a connected and fulfilling community while making it easy to plan for future care, should the need ever arise. With a care plan in place, residents enjoy greater financial predictability and long-term value, freeing them to focus on making the most out of retirement.
Resort-style amenities at the epicenter of a cultural hub like San Diego offer a retirement experience unlike any other. Paired with exceptional dining, spacious accommodations and dedicated staff, the best of maintenance-free living is all around. And with the introduction of Vista 360 Well-Being, Vi’s panoramic approach to wellness, there are more ways than ever for residents to access it all.
The harmony of mind, body and community.
The key to longevity is striking the right balance in maintaining an active lifestyle with an active mind in a fulfilling community. With newly renovated community spaces and restaurants, Vista brings a variety of opportunities for residents to elevate their well-being through Vi-exclusive “Signature Experiences.”
Vista Enrich takes an evidence-based approach to brain vitality, keeping residents at the forefront of cognitive health through exergaming (exercising + gaming), nutritional plans and informative workshops. It is also home to The Brain Vitality Studio, an innovative facility dedicated to cognitive fitness that has garnered national recognition.
Vista Discover invites residents into stimulating educational experiences, from chef-led cooking demos and guided wine tastings to lectures at local universities and intimate lectures following cultural outings.
While Vista Enrich focuses on brain health and Vista Discover engages residents intellectually, Vista Explore cultivates a sense of adventure through curated travel and local excursions. But broadening one’s horizons doesn’t always require a plane ticket. One recent event brought a taste of the world right to the community: an onsite “jazz cruise” featuring live music and global cuisine served at a series of themed “ports” all within the community’s own ballroom.
“Location, location, location”
One of the biggest perks of life at Vi at La Jolla Village is its proximity to just about everything. With easy access to transportation and local attractions just steps away, residents can explore and engage with their community at their own pace.
“There are trolley and bus stops within a 5-minute walk that will get you to the beach, UCSD Campus, medical appointments, downtown La Jolla or San Diego, et cetera. We rarely use our car,” said resident Tom Yager.
With the best of San Diego just steps away, residents don’t just live in the city, they live within reach of everything that makes it special.
The best of all worlds.
At Vi at La Jolla Village, retirement isn’t a chapter to slow down; it’s an invitation to discover more. Tailored community experiences created by Vista, paired with the vibrant pulse of San Diego just outside the door, mean that residents don’t have to choose between security and adventure, connection and independence. They get all of it.
This is what an all-access pass to good living looks like: the comforts of an elevated lifestyle, a community built for growth and a city made for discovery – all in one place.
To learn more about Vi at La Jolla Village or for details on available floor plans, visit ViatLaJollaVillage.com/SDM.
The history, communities, and creative movements behind a cultural scene that extends far beyond the city’s postcard image
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act II. See Act I and Act III here.
Without concrete, wildflowers are just weeds. Any honest history of San Diego art and culture is tension and its reckonings. It begins before the name existed, with the Kumeyaay. It must pass through the Panama-California Exposition, one hell of a county fair that conjured Balboa Park as our grand cultural stage. It pays tribute to the lights of La Jolla, where the donor pool helped realize unrealizable things. It should mention names like Marston, Scripps, Ochoa, DeWitt, Lopez, Klauber, Baldessari, Torres… so many.
In short spaces like this, long histories like that become roll calls. So this is more of a walk through pressure points, notes on recurring forces and regional oddities.
Border life is key to understanding the here of here. Art without dialogue is just decoration. At its best, that dialogue should be a tad muddy, emotionally gassed. In other words, it should be in need of art—to widen perspective, parse meaning, see the unseen.
San Diego’s central dialogue—the magic and the stressor—is being flatmates with Mexico’s second-largest city by population. That makes San Diego a swing-gate of shared and vastly different perspectives, both its own place and something larger. And in no other major city in the US do the fresh flow of ideas from two countries—different governments, laws, mores, expressions, arts, cultures, traditions, economies, loves, and resentments—mingle at such a constant daily rate (due respect to El Paso).
That binational steam created Chicano Park, one of the most uniquely San Diegan contributions to national and international culture. When construction of the I-5 and Coronado Bridge divided Logan Heights, neighbors protested by transmuting prejudicial concrete into redwoods of Chicano art. Turning a civic wound into a beautiful and enduring landmark that expressed and preserved a core identity—like East Side Gallery in Berlin or Constitution Hill in Johannesburg—is damn near the core of what art is supposed to do.
Like any city, the underground-overground friction is crucial in San Diego. Our culture is headlined by institutions that lift creative work onto national and international stages: MCASD, The Nat, SDMA, Centro Cultural de la Raza, the Symphony, WorldBeat Center, The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Mingei, Museum of Us, Stuart Collection, Timken, ICA, Comic-Con, etc. The next mutations grow in the seams: street murals, music dives, tattoo shops, wheatpasted walls, graffiti, lowriders, surf and skate art (though in San Diego, this is mainstream), pop-up shows, backyard shows, beach raves, any place with room for people and a loose relationship with regulations.
Both art and culture get their power from power. They’re fundamentally a conversation with and retort against dominant structures. San Diego’s most pervasive structure is arguably the most rigid form: the military. Its presence is heavy in the southern tip (Border Patrol), the middle (Navy and MCAS Miramar), and northern edge (Camp Pendleton). The military is San Diego’s largest employer, by a long shot.
Within this plus-sized environment of order and hierarchy, it’s understandable that Shepard Fairey’s “OBEY” posters in the late ’90s struck such a potent chord. The most compelling punk rock is often outside a strong governor’s window. (The “OBEY” series featured an ominous, propaganda-style André the Giant wheatpasted on random ugly surfaces across San Diego—launching Fairey’s style that he eventually used for Obama’s “HOPE” poster.)
Armed forces are often viewed as the absence of creative culture—understandably so, since rogue individual expression feels like a pretty sure way to sink a war effort.
But in San Diego, the Navy’s unsuspecting role as art creator—directly or indirectly—is hard to ignore. Tattoos are a dawn-of-time practice of many early cultures, including the Kumeyaay. But Polynesia was a core realm. Sailors were exposed to it on deployment in the Pacific Rim, inking their arms with the names of loved ones and unit insignia. Back in San Diego, they’d flaunt those tats in the beaches and bars of Mission Beach or PB (Marines did the same in Oceanside.) Enlistees were the muscular flesh galleries that helped turn skin art into one of the city’s most widespread modern art forms.
During WWII, the military also trained huge legions of San Diego laborers how to build war machines. Those mechanics, engineers, machinists, welders, painters, and metal fabricators used those skills for creative good in their neighborhoods—especially in custom car culture, which took off in the post-war ’50s and ’60s. Mexican-American vets helped develop the lowrider scene, a deeply rooted part of San Diego creative expression. Galleries on slow-moving wheels.
Tourism is the other mainstream force ripe for creating against. It is both critical to San Diego’s economy, and one of the greatest barriers to deeper, more nuanced expressions of what and who San Diego is. The industry of selling our city to passers-through creates a gigantic tarp of cultural tropes. It reinforces the most obvious charms—cute zoo animal takes in an epic sunset with a giant margarita—and doesn’t yield much airspace to the thrilling micro-cultures that live and breathe where locals live and breathe. Nothing against watercolors of dolphins, but much against the hegemony of watercolors of dolphins.
Maybe because of these dominant forces, San Diegans especially tend to force underground and institutional art into a needless cage match. It’s human instinct to champion the underdog as more worthy, but that has always felt like a form of articide.
It’s like saying the only good food is made by gritty upstarts who crafted their own whisks from discarded shopping carts. Most of those plucky whisk-makers would love to eventually be paid properly, would love a stage, a grant, a building, a donor, a lighting rig, health insurance, maybe even one chair that doesn’t threaten the spine.
That’s what the major institutions do. Both stages—the duct-taped and the donored—serve vital roles and deserve commensurate support if we care about the entire lifespan of creative expression and not just its first exciting steps. Championing the starving artist exclusively just secures an enduring poverty for the creative class at large.
I’ve often theorized it’s harder to create great art and culture in cities like San Diego, where the climate is supernaturally pleasant. In colder/hotter/rainier/less beautiful cities, people are forced indoors to fabricate their own beauty (the grunge music of Seattle, the obscene creative output of Reykjavík). San Diego’s eternally mild sunshine tends to make the human body our art medium of choice. But scratch the surface of that surf poster (and I’ve only scratched a miniscule percent here), and this city’s far from the cultural shallows it gets accused of being.
Addendum: A Personal Agenda. In scouting the route of art and culture across San Diego county through history, two areas come up again and again: La Jolla and Barrio Logan. So I propose a collaboration between two icons of artful concrete—Chicano Park and Salk Institute (one of the world’s great examples of brutalism architecture). Let Barrio Logan’s muralists go nuts on that coastal science fortress, unite the realms for a moment in time.
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act II. See Act I and Act III here.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
The city’s cultural sector regained millions after a proposed 85 percent cut, yet nonprofits, youth programs and major institutions still face painful losses
This is part of a three-part series. This is Act I. See Act II and Act III here.
Every spring, Christine Martinez reaches out to the arts community to explain what’s on the line, hoping they’ll engage with the city’s budget process. Cultural funding, she constantly reminds, is almost always strapped to the guillotine. Especially in a city strapped for cash.
“It’s not an easy ask,” says Martinez, manager of Arts+Culture:San Diego. “Showing up is a real cost for small, volunteer-run groups that can’t spare half a day at City Council without possibly having to close their doors.”
Then, last April—with one day’s notice to arts leaders—Mayor Todd Gloria proposed a budget that didn’t trim arts funding; it eviscerated it, from $13.8 million to $2 million. An 85 percent slash. Other city departments faced cuts of about 7 percent.
The scheduled date of the cuts was just three months away (beginning of the fiscal year). Organizational leaders have to plan months if not years ahead to run their organizations. They had made hires, dedicated spending, and programmed their seasons based on a reasonable expectation that support for the arts would be somewhat in line with previous years. (The City has allotted at least $7 million a year to arts every year for the last 20 years, and the last four years have ranged between $13.8 and $18.2 million.)
The day felt even more existential given the national and international climate around the arts: namely, the federal government’s repeated proposal to eliminate the country’s two biggest cultural foundations (NEA and NEH), and the global trend of AI replacing more costly human creatives.
“It shocked everybody,” says Kamaal Martin, arts commissioner and co-founder of Art Power Equity. “If the message had been, ‘Times are tough, everybody tighten their belts a little,’ it would have landed differently. But there was no vision offered for the future, no parity in the cut. It was just, essentially, ‘Fuck you.’”
Among things I’m good at—sleeping late, low bidding for expensive shoes on Poshmark, parallel parking on either side of the street—budget analysis isn’t among them. In trying to understand how bad the finances were for San Diego to propose this drastic cut, I found myself drowning in numbers, pie charts, and politi-speak.
In his April 27 newsletter, Gloria explained that balancing the budget means “asking hard questions about every single dollar this city spends: Is this a core responsibility of city government, or is it something we do when we can afford to?”
Fair enough—if he were to ask those hard questions about every single dollar this city spends. It also makes his conclusion clear: The City of San Diego does not view supporting arts and culture as a core responsibility.
Which begs more than a few questions: Should the City be responsible? If not, then who? How crucial are arts and culture to a city? And since this is a budget discussion, how much revenue does the arts and culture industry generate for San Diego? What’s the ROI?
$1.2 billion.
That’s how much economic activity San Diego’s arts and culture nonprofits generated in 2022, according to the City’s latest Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 report. The industry created nearly 17,000 jobs and generated $878 million of personal income for local residents. About 15 percent of the people showing up to arts events in San Diego are tourists, so money was raised through TOT (Transit Occupancy Tax). The activity generated $275.7 million in tax revenue to the city.
In other words, the ROI seems to be ROI-ing.
Still, there have been signs that cuts were coming. In 2025, the City demoted the Department of Cultural Affairs to a division, folding it into the Economic Development Department (EDD). That meant Cultural Affairs no longer had independence, nor its own leader sitting at the same organizational level as departments like parks and recreation, library, police, and fire. It lost institutional leverage and would now have to compete with other EDD priorities—real estate, airport operations, business development, etc.—for budget allocation.
To be clear, few arts administrators and leaders I spoke with are interested in the either/or false choice of funding law enforcement or after-school programs; the fire departments or libraries. They’re sincere in looking for solutions that don’t leave any single group with a greater burden of righting a long-out-of-balance budget.
Jennifer de Poyen, executive director of Space 4 Art, says Gloria had long been a supporter of the arts, which made his attempted Red Wedding especially upsetting.
Aaryn Belfer is a writer and editor specializing in nonfiction across art, architecture, and culture. Once upon a time, she wrote a provocative column for San Diego CityBeat (RIP). She was a runner up in the 2025 Matchbook Stories contest at the San Diego Central Library and is irrationally happy about it. Currently in her Soft Girl Era, Aaryn has expensive taste in (mostly flat) shoes and will choose a great art exhibit or live jazz concert over almost anything else. Except, possibly, Javier Bardem.
Laika Nur, MD, takes her love of volleyball from the court to the clinic as team physician for the San Diego Mojo
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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