The game of cornhole—built around trying to throw a bag (once stuffed with corn kernels, now with plastic pellets) through a hole in a board from a distance—may seem merely the stuff of county fairs. But it was professionalized about a decade ago with the creation of the Charlotte, N.C.-based American Cornhole League (ACL). Alicia Mullen ’03 has been its chief business officer since 2023. Mullen, who previously held positions at Major League Baseball for 14 years, says, “A former MLB colleague of mine was consulting for the ACL and brought the opportunity to me. I’d seen cornhole on ESPN, so I was intrigued.” She came on board primarily to “keep the train on the tracks, improve the scoring software, and increase awareness to folks not yet in the cornhole community.”

Now she oversees all of ACL’s business operations. She has learned cornhole minutiae, such as the fact that one side of the bag has a slick surface, used for speed, and the other side is sticky. “That’s for more finessed throws when you want to hit a very specific area of the board,” she says. And now she knows the meaning of “flat bag,” too. “It’s a throwing technique that allows you to keep the bag level while it’s in the air.” 

Mullen, who had to buy her first car when she moved to North Carolina after 16 years in Brooklyn, studied medieval and Renaissance literature at Brown. How does Chaucer connect to cornhole? “Studying literature allowed me to articulate myself more clearly,” she says, “which ultimately makes me a stronger leader.”