How Jen Welter’s life has changed a year after making history

8:52 AM ET

TEMPE, Ariz. — Fifty-three weeks ago, Jen Welter was teaching aerobics and running boot camps in Dallas while coaching linebackers and special teams for a men’s professional football league.

She was working at both in relative anonymity.

On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of Welter’s introduction to the world as a training camp intern for the Arizona Cardinals — the first female coach in the NFL — Welter was in Los Angeles to speak on a panel about the influence of role models in sports at the Geena Davis Institute.

Life has certainly changed for Welter.

Jen Welter has become an ambassador and role model for women in sports a year after her month-long coaching internship with the Arizona Cardinals. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

“It’s completely different,” Welter, 38, told ESPN. “I did a little bit of speaking then, though I enjoyed it, and now that’s the majority of my business is speaking. So it’s completely different.”

Welter’s month-long training camp internship with the Cardinals last season didn’t land her a job in the NFL, but it put her on the map as a pioneer for women in sports. It also made her the face of women’s football.

By Welter’s estimate, she was on the road at least half of the past year. She spoke on panels, made media appearances and trekked to small towns across America and Canada to spread the gospel of women in football. She gave a speech in College Station, Texas, for the American Heart Association and traveled to Regina, Canada, to give a speech and put on a clinic for the football-crazed city that boasts more than 3,000 flag football players, 287 of whom are girls.

Instead of rubbing shoulders with her clients as a personal trainer, she spent the year hobnobbing with politicians, celebrities and athletes, including Billie Jean King and Cam Newton. The governor of Montana, Steve Bullock, called Welter to personally invite her to speak about equal pay. She was invited to be part of the White House’s United States of Women campaign, through …

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