Ready for Kickoff

Despite starting off on the traditional path of a business-school graduate and joining Goldman Sachs, Peter Tomozawa WG93 has sprinted onto the field of sports. After a front-office role as president of business operations for Seattle Sounders FC and helping the Los Angeles Olympic Committee win its 2028 bid, Tomozawa is preparing the Emerald City for soccer’s premiere event. Ahead of six matches beginning June 15, Tomozawa, the SeattleFWC26 CEO, shared the simple business philosophy that has guided his career, the importance of building community, and his hopes for the legacy the tournament will leave behind. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Wharton Magazine: Before the World Cup, you were with Seattle Sounders FC. What sparked your move from the finance world into a role as president of business operations for the soccer club? 

Peter Tomozawa: I was an engineering student, and I fell in love with the concept of “kaizen.” It’s a Japanese manufacturing process that is all about incremental improvement. But I took that to mean one should live every day to incrementally improve all the time. After Wharton, I worked for Goldman Sachs for 17 years. And my mindset around every job they asked me to do was, how do you make it incrementally better every day?  I was lucky enough to become a partner at Goldman Sachs. But I had five kids and was never home. In 2010, I retired from Goldman Sachs, moved to Hawaii, and went to work for the state of Hawaii as a commissioner of charter schools and for the mayor of Honolulu. I helped with the state’s management of the charter school system and the city’s funding of a light rail system.

As life would have it, my youngest son was invited to play for the Seattle Sounders youth academy. So we moved to Seattle from Honolulu to support his soccer. The CEO of the Los Angeles Olympic bid committee was also a Goldman Sachs partner, and I talked my way into being part of the team and learned the business of sports. After two and a half years of commuting to Los Angeles, I became the first president of business operations for the Seattle Sounders.

WM: Take us behind the scenes of the selection process with the FIFA organizing committee. How was Seattle selected, and what makes it a unique host city?

PT: I actually think there is a way to win these things. I saw it at the Olympics. If you’re trying to win something or get somebody to do something and all you do is talk about the benefits that you provide, then you will never get it. We’ve won against 40-plus cities. Every city has a claim on being welcoming; 11 of those cities said they’re the center of soccer. But everybody was talking about themselves. Ultimately, you have to think about what motivates the organization to select you: What are their needs and requirements? Of course, FIFA should want to select Seattle. We’re a soccer city; we’re a natural beauty. However, I don’t know any city that doesn’t think it’s beautiful. We had to figure out the Seattle difference. We focused on innovation and inclusion. We talked about the companies in our region: Amazon, Microsoft, Gates Foundation, Boeing, Alaska Airlines. We leaned in on building relationships with the most innovative companies in the world.

If you’re selling something to a customer and you’re not meeting their needs, they will not buy it. It’s as fundamental as that. Put yourself in the position of the people that you’re trying to do something with, and then you’ll have a better chance. That’s what we did.

WM: Speaking of the stakeholders involved, can you share some perspective on the complexity of hosting the World Cup?

PT: Our charter is to maximize the benefit of hosting the World Cup for our community. But in that process, we are also responsible for delivering the World Cup. And so there’s a coordination aspect, but there’s also a responsibility that we have taken on, which is to develop community legacy programs that will last well beyond the World Cup. We’re going for a 1962 World’s Fair-like impact for our region. The World’s Fair left us with the ingredients to become a major powerhouse in technology.

Now, with the World Cup, we’re featuring our region as the model of unity — how we bring the world together. There are nine fan zones across the state, so we’re bringing the event to the people. We have really incorporated our entire state as part of the World Cup. The most complicated part was making sure we could coordinate our resources from a local, state, and national perspective. That takes a lot of work.

WM: You mention bringing the world together. How did the state of global politics right now affect all this planning?

PT: Obviously there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world, but that’s literally why we exist. The beautiful thing about the World Cup is that it is about uniting the world. That’s the mission of FIFA. What I love about sports in general, and what I’ve learned in the last 10 years working in sports, is that it actually transcends politics. In any community, regardless of your beliefs, we come together to celebrate sport. We do that at the Olympic Games. We do it at the World Cup. We just had this here in Seattle with the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl. But we have teams that haven’t won in long periods of time that constantly are part of the community. People say it’s all about winning. It’s not, actually. It’s about representing your community and being proud about where you’re from.

WM: What happens after the World Cup ends? What will be the legacy of the World Cup for the city?

PT: We have created a “unity loop,” which is a walking path. Think Boston’s Freedom Trail, but for Seattle. We are the most walkable city in the nation. Then we’re going to launch Innovation for Humanity Summit as a legacy program. It’s going to be an annual conference that we hope will be on par over time with the World Economic Forum. If there’s one thing I hope that you get out of your time here in Seattle when you come visit, it’s that you feel like we’re the region for innovation.

And we partnered with the RAVE Foundation, which is a Seattle Sounders foundation that builds fields for kids. Seattle FIFA started a campaign called 26 by 26 — 26 fields in 26 communities by 2026, all in underserved communities. In 2024, we doubled that goal to 52 fields, and I’m proud to say we’ve delivered on 37 of those.

WM: Will you have a front-row seat at the matches?

PT: I don’t expect to see any of the matches. We’re going to be working behind the scenes to make sure everything is running smoothly in our city. When I joined the Sounders, the local press asked me: What is your unique qualification? I said to them, “My understanding is, to be considered an expert at something, you need to have 10,000 hours practicing it. I have five children. I have seen at least 2,000 hours each of them playing.” [Laughs] So I know what soccer’s not supposed to look like.