Ariel Atkins’ on-court performance is worthy of praise. She’s a WNBA champion, an Olympic gold medalist and two-time All-Star who was the first player in WNBA history to make an All-Defensive team in each of their first five seasons. Set to become a key piece to the Chicago Sky this coming WNBA season, she also recently advanced the Rose Basketball Club in the Unrivaled Basketball League to the postseason.
But the former first-round pick of the Washington Mystics is far more than her statistics. She’s also a community member passionate about giving back, specifically to teachers and students in Washington, D.C. and soon, the Chicago area.
With her organization, the Ariel Atkins Foundation, the standout guard has found ways to contribute not just to the literal needs of classrooms — supplies and funding, yes — but also by finding ways to ensure students and teachers feel emotionally and mentally supported while in school. In an ideal world, they don't have to worry about where they’ll find their next piece of paper or pencil.
We connected with Atkins as a part of our International Women’s Day project to discuss the importance of giving back, community and supporting teachers so they can better support students.
FanSided is celebrating Women's History Month and International Women's Day by recognizing those transforming the sports landscape on and off the field and redefining what it means to lead and inspire. Check out thefull list here.
How did the Ariel Atkins Foundation came to be?
I’ve always done community work. It’s something that my mom has always just thought we should do. And my high school coach was very adamant about us doing it from freshman year all the way through senior year. She always preached that to us. She was like, these people support you. You need to find a way to support them, and it's just always stuck with me.
Once I got to D.C., I was able to find different organizations that really just took me in. And then I figured out that I wanted to create my own organization that could help more grassroots programs. A lot of programs with big national names get a lot of love, but I wanted to be able to support smaller programs, and so I figured a good way to do that was to start my own foundation and use my platform and my network and my resources for people who are just kind of overlooked.
It's nice when teachers get apples and gift cards and things like that. But I have educators in my family. It's important they don't have to use their paycheck to buy their classroom tissues. It sounds super miniscule, but it really adds up throughout the year, especially for kindergarten teachers.
So it's nice for them to know that they can rely on something and not have to dip into their paychecks that already aren't sufficient enough.
What’s the type of impact that you’ve seen firsthand from your foundation providing supplies and support for these teachers and schools?
The reactions are phenomenal. At first, we were thinking about Teacher Appreciation Day. They would always say, "You don't understand how much this means to us,” or “You would be shocked at how much I had to spend on pencils in one year.” That type of stuff. I just wanted to do something small to show them that we were thankful for them — I've had phenomenal teachers in my day.
It's hard because, in lower income areas, if schools do give out supply lists, a lot of their students aren't able to meet those supplies, so the teachers have to pick up the slack, you know? And it's not anyone's fault that they can't afford these things. This is where our economy is in some spaces. And so, their reaction to not only being able to take a load off of their paychecks, but to help their kids, is great. Teachers love their kids, and some of them go as far as taking them in, or doing everything that they can to supply their kids with day to day basis.
You don't think a pack of pencils could change someone's day, but it did.
How does teachers feeling emotionally and financially supported end up impacting students' lives?
We all know that poem, Cause I Ain’t Got A Pencil [by Joshua T. Dickerson]. It's one of my favorite poems to this day.
You partnered with a youth entrepreneurship program last summer. Talk about the importance of equipping students with the tools and the knowledge necessary to learn to work for themselves.
I come to DC, and my kids are like, I want to be an accountant. How do I make money? How do I invest? And these are fifth graders. So for me, they really stressed me because I'm like, "Oh, you want to know about money." And that just lets you know the way that our world is moving right now.
I was working with my team to figure out how we can actually support these kids and not just do something that they don't care about. We had a few classes about accountability and how to make a vision board and different things like that, and they were excited about it. They were like, “Oh, that's cool. I've seen something like that on TikTok. *But how can I make money?*”
And so that's when we kind of dug deep and asked about which organizations in DC were already doing this work, and how can we support them?
I'm sure that made the kids feel heard and seen.
That was the kids speaking up and us taking the time to actually listen. It's what they wanted. And we knew there was something like that out there already — we just needed to bring it to where we were.
The Youth Entrepreneur Institute did a phenomenal job with that. I want to say maybe four or five kids were able to actually continue to start their businesses. There were some kids who are already entrepreneurs. They had kids selling candles, creating crochet objects. We got kids who sell safety tools. A lot of kids were into clothing design. They were showing kids how to create their own clothing brands. And it was really cool.
I was actually in the midst of building my own clothing brand at the same time. So one of the coolest parts about it was that as they were learning, I was learning too, and we got to show them some places where we messed up and some places where we succeeded. So it was really nice to let them know: I'm doing this at 27, 28. You're doing it at 15! You've got 10 steps ahead of me, you know?
That's the name of the game right now. Everybody's like, how can I be an entrepreneur? And you'll never know if it's for you if you don't learn.
If you’re interested in providing support to the AAF, you can make a donation to the foundation onthe organization’s website, which is coming soon.