Twelve or more hours within Notre Dame’s Guglielmino Athletic Complex, the Fighting Irish’s football facility, is a normal day for Olivia Mitchell.
Recently promoted to Notre Dame’s assistant athletic director, football operations, Mitchell works on every aspect of the football program – from managing the day-to-day operations, to orchestrating travel arrangements.
While Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman and his coaching staff prepare the team on the field, Mitchell’s off-the-field efforts for the program have helped the Irish to their first 11-win regular season since 2021, and their first appearance in a football national championship game since 2012.
When the Irish face off against Ohio State on Jan. 20, Mitchell is responsible for overseeing 400 members of Notre Dame’s traveling party and ensuring they are cared for before, during and after the game.
“The role of operations in the football office is kind of like the glue of the program,” Mitchell told Andscape. “When you make it to this level, when you make it to the championship game, it’s all about just providing the best experience that we can with zero hiccups, or as little hiccups as possible, just so everybody can enjoy how special it is to get to this point.”
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For Mitchell, returning to the national championship is a full-circle moment after she interned for the 2017 College Football Playoff. The lessons she learned about being a leader that could fill in the gaps as necessary are lessons she’s applying to her current role with Notre Dame.
“It’s just gaining as much knowledge as you can and being willing to fill in and help your teammate as much as possible,” Mitchell said. “The other thing that is really helpful and advice that I would give [people] is communication is key in this role – knowing when to communicate, how to communicate, and even navigating different communication styles.”
For Mitchell, a Chicago native, working at her alma mater in operations has fulfilled a long-term goal for her. Mitchell spent her undergraduate years at Notre Dame as a senior recruiting assistant for the football program and as a cheerleader on game days.
Former Notre Dame coordinator of on-campus football recruiting Jaz Johnson remembers how reliable Mitchell was as a student worker. Johnson, now at Duke, has followed Mitchell’s ascent from student worker to head of operations.
“[Olivia’s] not a complainer, and she has a quiet confidence that carries throughout in a small little body,” Johnson said. “She’s half the size of a lot of the men she’s responsible for, and she has such a commanding presence.
“She’s always been someone who aims for perfection. That’s something that she and I have always bonded over, is our perfectionistic thinking and allowing the work to speak for itself. I think she’s done such an amazing job of holding space, taking up space, and leaving the door open for girls to come behind her.”
As a former student-athlete, Mitchell ensures that the operations team pays special attention to the needs of the student athletes, whether it’s extra help with sideline credentials or tickets, or just having conversation with them about football operations. Her work within the football program has made a difference for several student-athletes that have come through the program.
“She’s the unsung hero. If you ever needed anything, she was there to help,” Atlanta Falcons linebacker and former Irish player Khalid Kareem said. “There’s very little representation, so seeing a Black woman and someone you can call a friend in the office is huge. I love that for her. I want more Black women [and] just women in general to get into the college football world.”
Said former Notre Dame linebacker Jonathan Jones, who currently plays in the Canadian Football League: “Olivia was always good at what she did. She was always on top of everything and never showed signs of stress. She was also an encouragement to be around and you could tell she kept the well-being of the team at the top of her mind. Overall, she definitely gave championship service.”
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Serving under two head football coaches at Notre Dame has allowed Mitchell to experience professional and personal growth. Working in Notre Dame’s athletic department as a student taught Mitchell that the people within the organization wanted to help her growth within the program.
“I’ve noticed [Notre Dame] just wants the best people for the job,” Mitchell said. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, they just want to provide opportunities for people to thrive. I had so many people when I was a student here ask, ‘What’s your goals? What do you want to do?’ And I told them, ‘I want to work in football.’ They helped propel me to that next level. So I think just Notre Dame in general with the network that we have, with the opportunities they want to provide, and just knowing that it’s about being really good at your job, that’s what matters.”
Mitchell loves working for her alma mater and Notre Dame being an independent football program not attached to a conference has presented her with new opportunities each year to travel across the country playing different Power 4 programs.
“I always said that if I could do football operations anywhere, I would want to do it at ND,” Mitchell said. “So being able to come back and do that was really like the ultimate goal. [I] Never thought that I would sit in the director’s seat as fast as I did. I was 25 when I first got the job, but honestly, I wouldn’t look back if I even could.
In her new role, she’s the liaison between head football coach Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua.
“I think it gives us an edge because [Olivia Mitchell and director of player personnel Zaire Turner are] really good at their jobs,” Freeman said in July 2024 when asked about the women within his football program. “This wasn’t a decision that was made to create publicity. It wasn’t to do anything but to promote two people that really give us an advantage to have the best football program. Olivia’s done a great job, she deserves her promotion.”
Mitchell earned the directory of football operations position under former Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly, and remained in the position following Kelly’s departure to LSU. Jas Smith, the current director of football operations at LSU who worked with Mitchell when they were both student workers for Notre Dame football recruiting, knows a lot of success in the College Football Playoff is a byproduct of all the work Mitchell does behind the scenes.
“I think it’s always easier on the coaches and easier on the players when they don’t have to worry about the little things,” Smith said. “So because Liv works out all of the little things ahead of time, that’s not where their focus is. It’s on the game. It’s everything to a program to have all that stuff already figured out.”
Jaz Johnson
Mitchell is described by her colleagues as the only person within Notre Dame football who has the answer for every question regarding every major and minor detail of the program. Mitchell admits learning how to pivot from previous experiences has been critical for her. Despite the long hours, her daily interactions with students, student-athletes, coaches and administrators are the best part of her job.
“It’s all about the people. Coach Freeman is, hands down, one of the best humans that I’ve ever met,” Mitchell said. “I think the way that he runs this program, and the way that we come together as a team, coaches, staff, and our players is unmatched, and it makes my job a lot more fun because I get to work with such good people, and we have a lot of fun when we’re all together.”
At the time of her hiring to director of football operations in 2020, Mitchell was the second woman in Notre Dame program history to hold the title and the first Black woman in Power 5 football to hold that position. Before her promotion this summer, Mitchell and Smith at LSU are a handful of Black women to be directors of football operations for Power 4 programs along with the University of Michigan’s Erin Dunston and the University of Virginia’s Lindsey Morris. All four of them have a group chat where they continually aid and encourage one another.
“I have her to look at and say, ‘Okay, well, Liv, did this live? She did that. She was the first black female DFO in P4,” Smith said. “She had no blueprint. She had no one to look at and say, ‘Okay, this is how they did it. This is how they managed it.’ So it’s good to see her doing it. I would say empowering just watching someone be able to make it happen. I look up to that. I always tell her, she’s one of my best friends [and] is actually one of my role models.”
Mitchell has been happy to see the number of women in high level operations positions for college football grow over the last several seasons. One of the biggest lessons she’s learned and advice she gives to others is to bring authenticity within the role.
“When I first came into this job as a coordinator you just kind of want to fit in and kind of assimilate to the boys club and just put your head down and kind of not be noticed that way,” Mitchell said. “But I think as I’ve gotten older and kind of progressed through my career, it’s just about being authentic and being yourself. Because my touch on operations, my touch on what I can bring to the program and provide to our guys, is different than what someone else could do.”