JT BATSON

2001 Scholar

JT Batson was named CEO / Secretary General of the U.S. Soccer Federation on Sept. 26, 2022.

Batson fell in love with soccer at a young age. He played club soccer for Augusta Arsenal growing up in Georgia and later helped run the club while serving as a referee, a referee assignor, mowing and lining fields and working in coaching recruitment. He has coached boys and girls at the grassroots level and has been active in supporting his childhood soccer club as a member of the Augusta Arsenal Soccer Club advisory board.

A long-time member of the soccer community, he feels his experience in grassroots soccer helped shape who he is today, an executive who prides himself on doing the work necessary to achieve goals and create important bonds with employees and partners while also teaching and mentoring.

A strong believer in the power of teamwork, the first software he ever worked on was for the assigning of youth soccer referees for tournament organizers. He also paid for college, in part, by working soccer camps. He has described his young self as being a kid that didn’t dream of playing in a World Cup, but instead of organizing one. Like for many, the 1994 FIFA World Cup held in the USA had a profound impact on Batson and opened his eyes to the potential and global impact of soccer. It was a rallying cry to think big about soccer in the USA, and a watershed event for his generation, showing how big investment can impact the future while setting the stage for the 2026 FIFA World Cup to impact many more soccer fans of all ages.

Batson has spent his professional career at the intersection of media, advertising and technology, focused on solving challenging problems at scale through innovation and collaboration.

A former member of U.S. Soccer Finance Committee, Batson comes to the Federation with experience heading large companies. He previously served as CEO of Hudson MX, a 425-person NYC- and Atlanta-based software company, which he co-founded and where he will remain a member of the board, that focuses on workflow and financial software for the advertising ecosystem.
His previous work with U.S. Soccer led to him helping spearhead the creation of the U.S. Soccer Development Fund which raises money to support U.S. Soccer’s development of world-class players, coaches and referees, all with the goal of continuing to inspire a nation.

Prior to founding Hudson MX, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Greylock Partners and Accel Partners.

Batson began his career as an early employee of Mozilla focused on international growth efforts of the then-nascent Firefox browser. He subsequently joined the Rubicon Project pre-revenue where he helped scale the company to six countries as the EVP, Revenue and Global Development. He’s also served in executive roles at Mediaocean and Cumulus Media.

He is currently on the Undergraduate Cabinet at Stanford, from which he graduated with a BA in Political Science and where he won the JE Wallace Sterling Award, an honor that recognizes the graduating senior whose undergraduate leadership and volunteer activities have made the largest impact on the Stanford community.

As an undergrad at Stanford, he worked with the men’s and women’s soccer programs as a student assistant focused on recruiting, soccer operations, marketing, camps and fundraising. The Stanford men’s basketball teams took notice, and he also worked with that program, building a recruiting CRM system, managing dynamic ticket process and fan development. He also continued to referee during his college years, experiences that included running the middle during several scrimmages for the local professional teams.

Batson is a member of the board of the LGBTQ+ entrepreneur focused non-profit StartOut. He also serves on the board of directors for the NYC Ballet. Batson has guest taught at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and the Graduate School of Business.