ACBL Leader Guided By A Passion For Bridge

 Bronia kept playing. She was luckily paired with good players and when she returned to MIT, she joined its bridge club. During the next summer, at the same internship, she began to study the game and was mentored by some veteran players. Following graduation, Bronia built an impressive leadership career in finance but kept playing bridge as an ACBL member, locally, nationally, and internationally. 

Only one thing could push aside bridge and that was raising children. For nearly a decade-and-a-half, Bronia focused on raising her two kids. She realized that working full-time was not possible, and while she still played bridge, she chose spring break ski trips and Thanksgiving with the family over bridge tournaments. But one day in early 2023, with her kids graduated from high school, with a job search underway and with bridge play once again part of her routine, Bronia went to the ACBL website to look up her score. 

A job posting at the top of the page caught her eye – the ACBL was looking for an Executive Director. 

“I could do that,” Bronia said to herself.

Bronia breezed through the job description and walked away from her computer, allowing the idea to drift away. Already deep in discussions with two finance companies about job opportunities, Bronia had never considered the idea of actually working in bridge. She was a player. 

But she loved the game, and loved how it brought people together. She quickly applied for the job, and got it!

The Grouper Gazette recently talked with Bronia about joining the ACBL, growing the game of bridge, and how bridge is a driver of social connection. 

Bronia, where did you grow up?

I was born in France and lived in Paris until I was six. From six to 10 I lived in Montreal, then went back to France for two years from 10-12, and when I was 12 we moved to San Diego. My parents still live in San Diego. I do go back to France often, we have a lot of family there. 

Was it challenging to move around so much when you were younger?

For me it was reasonably easy to move to a new place and adapt to a new culture. I’m pretty adaptable. Other than learning English, which I had started in Canada and obviously continued when I moved to San Diego, I loved learning and I never felt overwhelmed by the content.

Where did you go to college? 

I went to MIT for undergrad and got a Mechanical Engineering degree. I had an engineering internship the summers after my sophomore year and junior year in North Canton, Ohio at Timken Roller Bearings. That’s where I learned to play bridge. I had been a card player my entire life and this set me on my life journey.

Please tell us more about this internship and learning to play bridge!

I was the sixth alternate for that internship and obviously the first five choices didn’t take the job; I interviewed for the job but obviously I didn’t interview very well. But nobody took the Timken job, so I took it, I went there, and I worked in the manufacturing plant. I was 19 years old and everybody who worked there was in their forties, male, married and I had no friends and no way to make friends. I was not 21 so I couldn’t go to a bar, and I was the only intern. 

So I found a bridge club. I drove around until I found a bridge club. I knew there were these things called bridge clubs, because I played a lot of cards in college. My first year in college, all I did was play cards and play pool. I never went to classes – at MIT, they did not accept Advanced Placement (AP) credits from your high school. I had taken all the AP classes in high school, but at MIT you had to take the AP classes all over again during your first semester. 

Back to the internship in Ohio, and discovering a bridge club.

Eventually I went into the YMCA and found a lady and she said, “My brother is the president of the bridge club, just call him.” So I called the guy and he said, “Just show up.” At the time, there were night games, which was critical because today, we don’t have night games – we don’t have bridge clubs that hold night games which is a big problem for getting new players. So I showed up and I was paired with a standby. A standby is a person who will play with a person who shows up without a partner. Another thing that is lacking nowadays. We don’t always have standbys at club games.

I showed up and had never played bridge in my life and they asked me some questions and I didn’t know what they were talking about but I acted like I did. I had a great time, I went back the next night and had a great time, and I went back the next day and they tapped me on the shoulder and they put me in the beginner game. I played two or three times in the beginner game and I said, I’m not playing in the beginner game, I’m either playing in the real game or I’m not playing. So I went back to the real game. 

At the time, there were a bunch of “blue hairs”, and I would play with the blue hairs, and after we played we would go over to the bar, and they would drink their Manhattans and I would have an iced tea, and we would go over the hands. During work I would do whatever I had to do at work but also read bridge books, and sometimes I would fall asleep on my bridge books. 

I started to make friends with more players in the Ohio bridge scene and some of the top players there offered me mentorship. I was invited to come back and live with the daughter of one of the bridge players. So I went back and got to play with great players.

After my sophomore year I joined the bridge club at MIT. I had a bridge partner in Boston who I’m still friends with and we would go around and play bridge everywhere in Boston. 

What does it take to play bridge?

A regular deck of cards and four people. That’s it. It’s a trick-taking game, you want to take tricks. Hearts is a trick-taking game, spades is a trick-taking game, pinochle is a trick-taking game, euchre is a trick-taking game. 

The ACBL’s website is a great resource for learning how to play bridge – the ‘Intro to Bridge’ program seems to be a big emphasis.

Intro to Bridge is an online synchronous class that you can take that introduces you to the game of bridge. The class size is limited so you can get individual attention. We have two future goals with Intro to Bridge: one is to offer an asynchronous program that people can self-drive, and the other is to offer many more synchronous classes that people can take that start more often, to meet the demand. 

We use live teachers and we have developed a curriculum. There are many ways to teach bridge. What I am trying to do with the ACBL is create online bridge games that don’t require teachers, one of them is called Bridge War, which is a combination of a hand of bridge and the game of War. You can play within 30 seconds of sitting down, you don’t have to take a math class to figure it out. It’s not bridge – it’s Bridge War. 

We have a program called the Ambassador Program where we go out in the community and teach people the game of bridge. When we go out and do these things we should go out and teach Bridge War. It’s fun and they play and they want to know more about it – I think this is a good way to connect with non-Bridge players. 

But if there is a non-Bridge player who knows that they want to play Bridge, they should go to the Intro to Bridge class, watch our videos online, find a teacher either near you or online; we have a database you can search whether you are a youth, a beginner, what kind of lessons you are looking for – a group lesson or private lesson or an online lesson or in-person lesson. If you know you want to learn to play Bridge, by all means go to our website and learn how to play bridge. 

How did you end up working with the ACBL?

I played bridge, obviously, and after college I got a job at an options trading firm. I worked in foreign exchange options as a trader. So I never worked in engineering – I went straight to the world of finance. [Years later], I realized at this point I had two little kids and was leaving early in the morning and coming home late at night. 

So I quit my job, got divorced, and moved to Florida with my ex-husband. I took a 14-year sabbatical during which I raised my kids. I ended up getting pulled into my kids’ school all the time, running some clubs, coaching middle school sports, teaching part-time, and was then hired as a full-time math teacher.

Then came 2021-22, my kids had graduated high school and I told the school it would be my last year. In 2022 I started looking for a job. I was ready to do something different, so I tapped into people in the finance world. At the same time, I am still playing bridge, not a lot, but in February of 2023 I’m still looking for a job and I was going to a bridge tournament and my boyfriend, Billy, is a professional bridge player, so bridge was still around in my life. So I opened up the ACBL website to look up my score and I saw a banner that said the ACBL was looking for an Executive Director. I had no idea what the role was but I clicked it and looked at the job description, I thought, “I could do that,” and then I closed the job description and that was the end of it. 

Then I went to a bridge tournament and I was talking to Jay Whipple – we had been friends with him for a long time, he is very involved in the bridge world also, and we were chatting and it became, “Of course you should apply for this job.” I already had my resume together because I was looking for a job, and a month later I had a job offer. I felt like I had to take this job because how could I not? And here we are. I started in May, 2023.

Can you talk about the health aspects of bridge, and how playing bridge and playing cards impacts mental health and social health?

Clearly, being with people, fighting loneliness, connecting through the language of cards, especially if you have social awkwardness – the ability to connect through cards allows really different types of people to be friends because they play bridge. 

It’s critical. They lose their husband or wife. They become empty nesters. They retire. They have slowed down on sports. What’s my next chapter? Your next chapter with bridge brings you your new best friends, and brings you a competitive environment. Competition is very important to some of these people. Think about some of these CEOs or people who were high-powered people in their jobs who are no longer working, this is something they can do. You have some very, very smart people and they get to the bridge table and, wow, it’s a challenge for them. You can see how much they love it. 

Can you tell us a particular story about a person who benefitted from the connection offered by bridge?

I used to play at the Vero Beach (FL) Bridge Club with my friend Henry. Henry was very old but this was the thing that he did, play bridge. He played a ton and I would go to the bridge club with him every day. Henry is like so many of the people who play bridge, it gets them out of the house. People who don’t play as much golf or tennis anymore go play bridge. 

And that’s the thing about golf, or bridge – what keeps you coming back are the cool things you do. Because a lot of the things you do are going to be bad shots or mistakes. When you are not a professional golfer or a professional bridge player, you’re going to make tons of mistakes, that is normal. What keeps you coming back is when you make that one good shot or you play that one good hand. 

The ACBL has an interesting tournament schedule, can you tell us about it?

We have three national tournaments per year, and it’s a very similar group that shows up to each. That’s one of the great things about bridge, it’s a very similar group, so after I had been out of bridge for 14 years when I was raising my kids, I ended up going to a tournament and there were the exact same people I had seen before, they were just 14 years older, though to me, they looked exactly the same.. 

It’s like camp for adults. What’s more fun than camp? We create camp for adults three times a year, and really every day of the year when you consider the regional tournaments we have.

The ACBL was one of the first large associations to partner with Grouper. Why?

What you do is exactly what we think should happen, which is, how do you connect older people with activities which are good for them? The concept is amazing.