Red Sox senior vice president Raquel Ferreira, who became the highest-ranking woman in baseball when she was promoted following Dave Dombrowski’s departure in August, has three pieces of advice to young women who want to follow in her footsteps.
“Don’t do it,” she said last week. “No, just kidding. I always say three things.”
Before taking her advice, consider her remarkable credentials.
A 1992 graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s in communications, Ferreira was hired by the Sox in 1999 as an administrative assistant but quickly worked her way up.
By 2002 she was already the director of minor league administration. And by 2008 she was the director of all minor league operations.
In 2015, Ferreira became a vice president on the masthead, and in 2016 was promoted to the head of major league and minor league operations.
Now she’s one of the four people in the room when the Red Sox make their most important decisions.
“Be yourself,” Ferreira said. “Don’t pretend to be somebody you’re not because this game will expose you very quickly. Don’t come in saying you know how to operate a radar gun if you don’t, or you know how to write a scouting report.
“I always tell people to be accountable because everybody makes mistakes. That makes you human. Owning up to them earns you respect, whether you’re male or female.
“And the third one is I always say is dress for the job you want, not the job you have. My parents always taught me to come in to work and be professional, from the time you walk out of the house. What you wear, what you dress, I come every day like I’m coming to work, not that I’m going to a barbecue or a club. You have to have that professional mindset all the time. And as a woman it’s even harder because you’re judged very harshly.”
As Red Sox general managers have come and gone, Ferreira has been one of the steady forces to survive and thrive under new leadership each time.
Of the four acting general managers – Ferreira, Brian O’Halloran, Eddie Romero and Zack Scott – she’s been there the longest.
She was with the Sox when O’Halloran and Scott were hired as interns in 2002 and 2004, respectively. And she interviewed Romero when he was hired in 2006.
When the Sox plan important offseason decisions, the four of them sit in a room and talk. It’s that simple. There’s no vote, Ferreira said. They know how to communicate.
“We’ve all known what’s going to work and what’s not with this organization, so it’s been unanimous all along,” she said.
She’s only the third female to be elevated to vice president in a baseball operations department, joining Kim Ng, who now works for MLB after working for the Yankees and Dodgers, and Jean Afterman of the Yankees.
“Every day you feel the challenges,” she said. “You look around and you’re constantly the only female in the room. But I’m used to it. Let’s hope the landscape changes one day now.”
While the Red Sox plan to look outside the organization for their next leader, the ownership group of John Henry, Tom Werner and Mike Gordon told the acting GMs to make “whatever decisions you feel are best.”
“They really mean it when they say that,” Ferreira said. “They said, ‘you guys do what you think is best for this organization because you know it better than anybody else that would be coming in right now.’ So they entrusted us to do this and we have.”
Whether she’s promoted again or not, she’s made herself invaluable over the years.
She currently oversees the operation of the major league clubhouse, daily operations for all six minor league affiliates, and handles all minor league issues including contracts, transactions, payroll and insurance.
But she seems to have taken a particularly prominent role in leading the club’s player immigration program.
Shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who was signed out of Aruba as a teenager, said after he signed a contract extension in March that it wouldn’t have happened without Ferreira’s guidance.
Where the Red Sox go next is yet to be determined, but Ferreira is clearly leading them into the future with fearless tact, experience and an open mind.
“You always learn more from people who are different than you rather than those who are the same,” she said. “Baseball has a lot of white males in the game, let’s face it. So when we bring candidates in, one thing we do really well is our entire department meets with everybody. Whether it’s an intern, major league scout, whatever, because we all believe you have to completely buy into the process. We spend more time with each other than our own families and we know what it takes to be successful. So anytime we interview somebody, it’s collectively.
“There’s also a difference between diversity and inclusion. So you can have diverse candidates but if you include them, that’s something different. That’s what the Red Sox have done with me.”
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