Steve O’Brien, who has 13 years of progressive NCAA Division I athletics administration senior level management experience and success, accepted the position of deputy director of athletics at San Jose State University in July 2017.
O’Brien’s wide-ranging background in college athletics administration includes developing revenue-generating opportunities, sports supervision, facilities enhancement, compliance and academic support services, introducing life skills programs for student-athletes, enhancing alumni and student body relations, and NCAA committee service.
His San José State duties include future football scheduling, serving as the department liaison to the Women’s Tennis Association’s Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic and the Western Intercollegiate tournament coverage by The Golf Channel, and supervising the sports of men’s and women’s golf and women’s basketball.
He joined the Spartans after six years as a senior associate athletics director at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., two years as an associate athletics director at UC Santa Barbara and three years at his alma mater, Santa Clara University.
At Navy, he transformed the athletics department’s development activities and created new strategies for revenue generation. More than $76-million in revenues from contributions, pledges, ticket and suite revenues, corporate sales and other forms of income were attributable to his initiatives.
A 1998 Santa Clara University graduate with honors, O’Brien’s first position in intercollegiate athletics was at his alma mater from 2006 to 2009. He was an academic support manager and later as an assistant athletics director responsible for the operation and management of the Bronco Bench Foundation.
O’Brien was named the associate athletics director for development at UC Santa Barbara in 2009. He supervised sports, created revenue streams for facility improvements, and managed all aspects of athletics fund raising with an emphasis on major gifts and capital campaigns. O’Brien created The Gaucho Fund, which increased annual giving by 70 percent in two years, UCSB’s Living Scholar program in which the number of top-tier donors doubled and a multi-million dollar capital campaign, The Walk of Champions.
The San Jose native earned his juris doctorate from the University of Southern California in 2001. He worked as a transactional finance and real estate attorney for California law firms until 2006 when he began his intercollegiate athletics administration career. O’Brien still possesses his California State Bar Association license.
He begins service on the San Jose Arena Authority’s Board of Directors in August 2019. O’Brien recently served one three-year term on the NCAA’s Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct.
A men’s cross country letterwinner at Santa Clara University, he was named his team’s Most Inspirational Athlete in 1997. He, and his wife, Julianne, have two sons, John and James.
