Lisa Lang - San Francisco 49ers Vice President of Communications

In 2005 the 49ers faced a dilemma. The team was unhappy with their current stadium and wanted a new one. However, 49ers management was not going to pay for a new stadium on their own - they wanted a subsidy city. But their current image was poor. The team was unsuccessful on the field and had been subject to a recent scandal regarding a diversity training tape that had been leaked to the press. Ultimately the negative press from the leaked tape lead to the resignation of their public relations director Kirk Reynolds.

So in order to improve their image to potential stadium subsidizers like San Francisco and Santa Clara, Lisa Lang was hired as Vice President of Communications. Reporting to her are the public relations director, community relations manager and the director of the 49ers Foundation. Lang got her start with Ms. Magazine and then moved on to corporate communications posts with Intuit and Pacfic Telesis over a career that has spanned more than 20 years.

But hiring Lisa Lang in 2005 wasn't necessary to get the politicians of the City of Santa Clara onboard with a San Francisco 49ers stadium subsidy. Because in the fall of 2004 - Kevin Moore - had been elected to the Santa Clara City Council. Moore had spent most of his adult life trying to get some kind of subsidized pro sports stadium built in Santa Clara. And after failing to get the San Francisco Giants in 1989 and the Oakland A's in 1999, Moore had now set his sites on the San Francisco 49ers as the team that the taxpayers of Santa Clara would subsidize. He began writing them in 2003 about moving to Santa Clara, a year before he was elected to the Santa Clara city council. In addition to courting the San Francisco 49ers, Moore founded the Stadium Five and is now second in command to Patricia Mahan who has taken the lead role in the Stadium Five's push for a taxpayer subsidized NFL football stadium in Santa Clara.