As she enters her sixth year working in tech for local company Madwire, Amy (Medina) Cooper is used to being in a field where there are many more men than women. While reflecting on the many years she spent as an athlete at Mountain View High School and later at Colorado State University, she thinks that perhaps growing up in a generation where Title IX was always around is something she just accepted and ran with.
“In the moment, I didn’t realize or appreciate the impact Title IX had,” Amy says now. “Even as a kid, I was saying I wanted to beat my brother’s (track) records. I don’t know if it’s just a combination of the coaches I had or the way I was raised, but I’ve never had the feeling that I couldn’t do something.”
Maybe that resolve and confidence is what led Amy, a four-year track and volleyball standout at MVHS, to earn a track scholarship to CSU, where she competed for all four years as a jumper, and won the Mountain West Conference Championship in the spring of her sophomore year.
Amy started doing track in middle school, but her love of the sport started even earlier, as she grew up watching her older brother Christopher race. Today she will tell you that the lessons she gained as an athlete are some of the most important she has ever learned.
“High schoolers have so many things they have to deal with, but sports helped me so much to be confident and responsible and not to care what people think,” Amy says. “The things you kind of take for granted now, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Many of my best girlfriends were in sports, and I had coaches who are still part of my life today.”
Amy also believes college would have been a much different experience without having track as part of her daily life.
“The great thing about track is it brings men and women into your life. We understood what each other were going through. I stuck to my little close-knit family.”
However, Amy is also the first to admit that being a high school athlete and competing at the college level were two very different things.
“It was tough, because you go from being kind of the big fish in a small pond, to being the small fish once you get to college,” she says. “It was so intimidating competing with juniors and seniors … seeing six-foot jumps for the first time.”
But an equally challenging transition for Amy was when she graduated from college and it was time to end her career as an athlete.
“That was both relieving and difficult. Being an athlete is hard on your body. So much mental and physical energy goes into being a collegiate athlete, so having that weight of my shoulders was wonderful.” Still, Amy found herself feeling a little unsure of her future after she graduated, and wondering what she should do next. It was while she was working at Starbucks that she found her path.
“Madwire was just down the street and people kept coming in the door and they seemed so happy,” she says. “At that time, the company was under 200 people. I just got the email and messaged the CEO, and he gave me a shot.”
And she has been in tech since then, once again believing that she could accomplish any goal she set her mind to and never questioning if it might be more challenging because she was a woman.
“I think that naivete made it so I never doubted it,” she says. “Women before me either had to fight for it, or didn’t get the chance to fight at all. I’m grateful for the women before me who fought for it.”
And with all of that gratitude, Amy keeps in mind she has a responsibility to pay it forward.
“I feel like I keep stepping into spaces where people paved the way for me,” she says. “My goal is to make a better space for those who follow me.”
