SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Content & Strategic Communications, Harvard UniversitySupporting a whopping 42 sports, the longtime Bostonian innovates broadcast in exciting waysBy Brandon Costa, Director of Digital Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 7:00 am
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The pool of production and operations talent in sports media runs much deeper than the national networks. SVG Campus Shot Callers spotlights the behind-the-scenes leaders powering the massive wave of college sports productions available to fans today. Across athletic departments nationwide, these administrators manage teams, oversee technology investment, mentor students, and ensure that hundreds of live broadcasts make it to air each year. This series highlights their journeys, philosophies, and the vital role they play in shaping live sports.
Few athletic departments in the country manage a content footprint as large or as varied as Harvard University's. With more than 315 ESPN broadcasts each year, multiple linear shows on NESN, videoboard productions in five venues, and a nonstop flow of digital storytelling across social, web, and archival platforms, Harvard Athletics operates more like a full-scale media company than a traditional communications department.
The group responsible for orchestrating that ecosystem is Harvard's Content & Strategic Communications unit, which merges multimedia, communications, and branding to preserve history and tell the stories of 42 (yes, 42!) varsity programs. Leading that effort is Imry Halevi, senior associate director of athletics, Content & Strategic Communications, now in his 13th year at Harvard and his third decade working in Boston-area collegiate sports.
Rising from director roles at Boston University and Northeastern to his current senior-leadership position in Cambridge, Halevi oversees the department's entire external content operation: web, social media, photography, creative video, live stats, historical preservation, and hundreds of annual broadcasts on ESPN platforms. Under his guidance, Harvard has become a pioneer in centralized-control-room design, IP-based production workflows, and student-driven broadcasting, enabling the Crimson to stream everything from hockey at TD Garden to rowing, skiing, and sailing events captured hundreds of miles from campus.
In this edition of SVG Campus Shot Callers, Halevi reflects on his leadership philosophy, the department's transformation into an IP-first broadcast operation, his accidental path into sports production, and why giving his staff permission to fail has become central to innovation at Harvard.
Halevi oversees media staff during a Harvard Football game this season. (Photos: Harvard Athletics)
What are the key responsibilities of your current role?
My current role is all about leadership. I no longer push switcher buttons, write stories, or take photos. I'm here to run interference for my team; to make sure that they have the tools, resources, and guidance to get their job done; and to make sure that I clear the road in front of them so that nothing gets in their way.
Our mission is to preserve our history and to tell the stories of our student athletes, coaches, and teams. That means that my role is to help my team connect all projects and content back to that mission.
My goals are to advocate, delegate, motivate, integrate, innovate, and celebrate. I want to have a well-integrated communications and multimedia team that is well-motivated, feels agency over their actions and decisions, and knows that I will always advocate on their behalf while celebrating their accomplishments.
Halevi's department on its Media Day set prior to the start of the 2025-26 academic year. Top row: (from left) Dillon Wall, Phil Tor, Matt Klinkenberg, Joe Franklin, Eddie Monigan. Bottom row: (from left) Natalie Descalso, Maggie Menoni, Lily Grazioso, Halevi, Olivia Cooke, Ford Leary
What is one core philosophy you try to live by when managing your team/operation?
We're not doctors. The risk, if we fail, is very low. So, let's fail. I give my team permission to fail. Try something and learn from it. It went well? Great! Let's do it again. It didn't go well? Great! We learned something, and now we know what not to do.
What is one key technology investment that your department has made that you feel has greatly improved your productions, workflows, or how your team operates?
Our move to IP has been, by far, our biggest transformation when it comes to broadcast engineering. We now use Dante for audio, NDI for local video, and LiveU bonded cellular for remote audio/video almost exclusively. That has meant that we can centralize all our productions in our control rooms for minimal investment. We no longer move equipment around from place to place. We no longer have to take gear weight and size into consideration. We built the best two control rooms that fit our needs, and we get all our production feeds into them.
That also means that we've been able to do some cool things: skiing productions from Vermont and New Hampshire, rowing from New Jersey, sailing productions from the Charles River, baseball from Fenway Park, and ice hockey from the TD Garden. All from within our control rooms. Location is no longer a big factor for us.
How did you get started in sports production? What made you want to pursue this career?
Like many people, I got into sports productions by accident. I had a part-time student job at Agganis Arena, the ice hockey, basketball, and event arena at my college. I mostly worked on graphic design and some very basic video editing. But then someone got sick, and I was asked to step in and help out with some in-venue Daktronics content control (play some of the in-venue video-ribbon content). Th
