Report: Patriots add to their staff, hire Maya Ana Callender as a scouting assistant

Callender joins long-time employee Nancy Meyer as only the second woman to work in the Patriots’ scouting department.

With the draft in the books, NFL teams are now in the process of making changes to their scouting departments. Among those are the New England Patriots.

As first reported by Neil Stratton, the club has added Maya Ana Callender as a scouting assistant. Callender is joining the Patriots after four years at Princeton, where she most recently served as director of football operations — becoming the first Black woman in school history to hold that title.

Per her bio, her responsibilities ranged from “team travel, team communication, player engagement, recruiting, alumni relations, compliance and camps” to being a “liasion with the team and NFL scouts.” Besides her job with the Tigers, she also gained some experience at the pro level.

Callender participated in the 2020 NFL Women’s Careers in Football Forum as well as the 2021-22 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Women’s Summit for Careers in Football. She also served as an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles, and was named a Nunn-Wooten Scouting Fellow for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2022.

She is now taking her talents to New England. Callender is joining director of scouting administration Nancy Meyer — the Patriots’ longest-tenured full-time employee — as the second woman in the team’s scouting department.

Callender starter her football journey at Utica College. Besides woking on a bachelor’s degree in marketing management, she also served as manager for the football team.

“I must have had every job with UC football. I was an office and recruiting assistant, videographer, equipment manager and operations assistant for all junior varsity games,” she told the school’s website in 2019. “No job is too small. If you work hard and are willing to learn, good things will come.”

After graduating in 2016, Callender became the interim director of football operations at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. Soon thereafter, she joined the Princeton staff and in July 2019 was promoted to her most recent role.