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When the writing was on the wall that Andria Johnson’s basketball career as a 5-foot-8 center would not progress beyond high school, she set her sights on working in the front office of a pro sports team or league. “I couldn’t shoot, and I couldn’t dribble, so I asked myself, ‘What can I do to still be close to sports?’” she says. In 2016, the NBA’s league office came calling, and took a job as a recruiter. “At the time, the NBA was getting more than 70,000 applications a year and was hiring less than 1 percent of those people,” Johnson says. In what became a three-year stint, she discovered a passion for human resources.
In 2018, Johnson attended an event where former Mavs’ CEO Cynt Marshall was a guest speaker. “I was enamored by her,” she says. A year later, the NBA team hired Johnson as its director of HR. Today, still based out of DFW, she is the head of people and inclusion with the NWSL, one of the U.S.’s fast-growing leagues. “Sports can impact change, and I don’t think we lean into that power enough,” she says.
The Owner’s Club
“When you’re looking at the women’s leagues, they’re often not profitable for a while. And most times, they’re 100 percent board funded. So, the first part of establishing a team is there has to be interest from some very, very rich people. Our investor and ownership circle includes Patrick and Brittany Mahomes, Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle Union, Alexis Ohanian, Serena Williams, and Aly Raisman. We’re very intentional about who we bring in because, for us, it’s about more than just making money. Yes, it’s about ROI, but we’re building a league where we care about our players, we care about what they think about, we care about causes that they care about, and we want to make sure that the people we’re bringing into that also share that same care.”
Inclusive Culture
“No other league is doing what we’re doing. It has taken about a year to create a collaboration encompassing every team in our league, but we just partnered with the USC Race and Equity Center. We are getting two to three people from each front office and eight to 10 leaders from our league office to participate in a six-month intensive course where we dive into inclusive leadership. It doesn’t matter what team you’re a part of; we want to make sure there is a thread that connects each of us as it pertains to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Participants will leave with a sports equity certificate from the USC Race and Equity Center and the USC Marshall School of Business.”
NWSL Coming to Dallas?
“The Dallas-Fort Worth market writes the business case for itself when it comes to sports. The return on investment of teams in North Texas is just great. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a NWSL team here. I was fighting hard for it. We have one in Houston, but the USL Super League beat us to get a women’s soccer team here. However, we’re still highly interested in getting a women’s NWSL team in Dallas.”
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