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Sage Hill Alumna Nets Career in NHL Team’s Back Office
Mara Chemerinsky ’16 found her way to working as a business strategy and data analyst for the Carolina Hurricanes, the NHL Ice Hockey in Raleigh, N.C., but it wasn’t a straight path from Sage Hill.
As the daughter of two nationally recognized legal scholars, Chemerinsky expected at an early age that she would follow in their footsteps.
“When I was in high school, I was determined to be a lawyer and I was lucky enough to intern for two federal judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California and I loved it,” she said.
But as the younger sister of three older brothers, including two who became attorneys, Chemerinsky said a friendly sibling rivalry motivated her to trailblaze a new path.
Chemerinsky entered Skidmore College as a Biology major but quickly realized she didn’t gel with her pre-med classmates. As a competitive equestrian, she was more at home in the barn tending and training her horse than at MCAT study sessions.
She ultimately switched to Economics in part because of how much she enjoyed learning the subject from her former Sage Hill teacher, Mr. Anderson. Around this time in college, Chemerinsky also taught herself the basics of coding.
In 2020, Chemerinsky spotted a job listing with the Calgary Flames ice hockey team. She was in the final round of interviews when the league, along with the rest of the country, shut down due to COVID-19.
After a miserable stint of remote graduate school classes during the pandemic, she revisited a pathway in law as a paralegal at Greenberg Gross LLP helping represent survivors of child sexual abuse for two and a half years.
“It was really powerful to sort of give them a voice, especially because most of my clients were adults who had been abused as children,” Chemerinsky said. “Getting schools and churches… to change their policies was really incredible.”
But she also longed for the certainty math offers.
“You can always argue your way to the right answer,” she said.
She applied and was accepted into the Master of Applied Data Science program at University of Chicago. As a graduate student, she was lucky enough to work briefly with the Ottawa Senators and the Chicago White Sox. Chemirinsky ultimately found her way to her dream job with the Carolina Hurricanes in June 2025.
As a business strategy and data analyst, Chemerinsky crunches data to discover patterns in hockey fans’ behavior and team operations, translating those insights into strategies that boost revenue and efficiency. By combining analytics with business context, she helps executives make informed decisions that move the organization forward.
Despite all her interest in the business of ice hockey, Chemerinsky admits she’s not a strong skater.
“When there's family skate night here in the winter, it will be interesting,” she said.
Looking back on her time at Sage Hill, Chemerinsky recalled enjoying the small class environments and the freedom to independently explore interests in between schedule blocks. She also fondly remembers experiences that gave her perspective outside of the classroom through Service Learning and Spring at Sage.
“The amount of opportunities I had there were just so incredible,” Chemerinsky said. “I never took that for granted. And I think the teachers did a really great job telling us and reminding us how fortunate of a position we were in.”
As a competitive teenage equestrian, Chemerinsky got caught up in her own head when tournaments didn’t go her way, she said.
“I had teachers tell me, ‘you know, there's more to the world than this.’ It didn't feel like that at the time but to have really stepped back and listened to my teachers — as opposed to being so internal — that would have really helped me.”
Sage Hill School
A college preparatory independent day school for grades 7-12.
20402 Newport Coast Drive, Newport Coast, CA 92657
Phone: 949.219.0100 | Fax: 949.219.1399
20402 Newport Coast Drive, Newport Coast, CA 92657
Phone: 949.219.0100 | Fax: 949.219.1399
Sage Hill School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. The School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship programs, and athletic and other School administered programs.