Musings from our Intern Extraordinaire

  Image generated by Adobe Firefly

Written by Morgan Mead, Intern
Introduction by Michael Dean, CEO

Discovering a truly talented intern is a rare and delightful surprise—like unwrapping an unexpected gift. You find a young person who’s not just mature beyond their years but also brings a fresh perspective to the table. It’s more than surprising; it’s reassuring. Maybe even comforting.

At B33, we’ve been lucky to have our fair share of incredible interns. Honestly, I’m not sure why—maybe it’s just luck. One such intern, Morgan Mead, is a perfect example. From the moment she joined us, her insight, drive, and ability to jump right in made a noticeable impact. She didn’t just surprise us—she energized the entire team.

As a capstone to her summer with us, we asked Morgan to write a blog post about our client Gallagher’s sponsorship of the World Rugby’s WXV women’s rugby tournament. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but what she delivered was so much more. She drew an amazing connection between the strong women in Shakespeare’s plays and today’s determined female athletes. It was a really cool mix of literature and sports that I hadn’t seen before. 

I’d love for you to take a few minutes to read Morgan’s post. It’s incredible what can happen when someone is given the chance to shine.

So let me get a few things out in the clear before the start of this blog post. I am Brand33’s twenty-year-old intern (I prefer the title intern extraordinaire, but you can't give yourself your own nickname), I favor rugby over American football, and I cried when my high school Shakespeare class ended.   

I love Shakespeare for a plethora of reasons, but the reason that I always give people when they give me a weird look is that Shakespeare makes me feel less alone.  Someone must have inspired Shakespeare to write outspoken female characters like Lady Beatrice, Viola, and Rosalind. Now, this blog post is not me trying to convince you to go out and watch a bunch of Shakespeare's works.  I wouldn't complain, but that isn't the goal. My goal is to make a connection between Shakespeare's women and Women's World Rugby. 

World Rugby has been working to spread the women’s game worldwide to women of all different backgrounds. The new WXV tournament has been World Rugby's chosen method of outreach. The 18-team 3-level tournament makes its debut in October with the goal of providing a more meaningful springboard for women's rugby teams from all unions going into the 2025 Rugby World Cup. The WXV tournament is not only aiming to broaden the reach of the women's game, but rugby as a whole. The WXV is ultimately going to bring a large number of like-minded athletes together, each looking to propel rugby into a larger spotlight. Shakespeare famously wrote in As You Like It, “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.” In the context of the WXV tournament I wish to edit this line into instead saying “Do you not know I am woman? When I want to play rugby on a global scale, I will elevate all women at the same time” (Morgan the Interns Athletic Rendition of As You Like It).   

I am continuously drawn towards the strength that the women in Shakespeare's plays possess. In Much Ado About Nothing Beatrice says, “oh that I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace.” If Beatrice was a man, she could do anything that she wanted, including exacting revenge upon the men that have wronged her best friend. Also, to be clear she wouldn't have actually gone and literally eaten a human heart. It’s a figure of speech, ok? The comedies Much Ado About Nothing, A Comedy of Errors and As You Like It show female camaraderie in a way that many of Shakespeare's plays very clearly do not.  

Shakespeare's tragedies take their heroines down a different path. Juliet is a young lonely girl with a fraught relationship with her parents. Her only positive female interactions are with her Nurse, a relationship that eventually sours after Juliet's parents threaten to disinherit her, ultimately leading to Juliet’s death. Ophelia lives in a male-dominated castle with one other named female character. Ophelia's boyfriend returns home and decides to put on the performance of a lifetime by pretending to lose his mind. How could that go wrong? Hamlet (the aforementioned boyfriend and every English Majors favorite emo drama queen) kills Ophelia’s dad and tells Ophelia “Get thee to a nunnery” which is the Shakespearean equivalent of cussing someone out. Alone and without anyone to turn to, Ophelia drowns in a river. These women are wildly different characters, but the two common things in their stories are that they end up dead and that they have no supportive team of women to turn to.  

Women's Rugby provides their players with not only a like-minded goal, but a supportive environment. Women working together as a team, propelling each other towards victory and creating a sense of competitive camaraderie in the process.

Now, these players may not be dealing with 16th-century Dutch royalty like Ophelia or 14th-century friars who fail to deliver lifesaving mail like Juliet, but they certainly deal with modern challenges facing female athletes.  

By becoming a sponsor of Women’s World Rugby, Gallagher has very consciously and very purposefully chosen to place themselves behind the Violas, Rosalinds, Beatrices, Juliets, and Ophelias of the sports world. In fact, Gallagher is the first sponsor of Women's World Rugby that isn't also a sponsor of World Rugby. These women are not wilting flowers, they are strong players that are attempting to succeed despite their circumstances. While angrily chastising love interest and reformed womanizer Benedick; Shakespeare’s Lady Beatrice quotes esteemed songwriter Taylor Swift's song “The Man” exclaiming “oh that I were man!” While I am not a female rugby player attempting to broaden the scope of participation in the women's game, I know that I have shared the same sentiment while being mansplained Jane Austen by a premed student.  

Being part of a team is a healing thing and the WXV tournament provides a space for more women to be part of a powerful group of strong individuals. I can’t help but wonder how Ophelia's fate may have been different if she had in fact gone to a nunnery (not in the crass Shakespearean way) and surrounded herself by a bunch of women. Women's World Rugby is providing a space for all different women from all different walks of life to come together and be part of something bigger than themselves, ultimately boosting the broader visibility of women in sports. Women's equity in sports still has a long way to go, but hopefully the WXV will create less “oh that I were a man” comparisons and more “though she be but little she is fierce” statements.

Morgan Mead
Intern at Brand 33