Episode #118

Athlete: Keia Clarke

“Becoming President: Keia Clarke, President of the New York Liberty”

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Stef  Welcome to the Voice in Sport Podcast's new exclusive series, Becoming President, where we are bringing you more visibility to the challenges and opportunities the top women in sports faced while earning their way to the president's office. This new series will showcase the path of several presidents across the sports industry and how each one is uniquely different.

In this episode, we speak with Keia Clark, Keia Clark is the Chief Executive Officer of the New York Liberty and the WNBA. Where she leads all business aspects of the Liberty organization, including oversight of the P& L, business operations, and strategic planning. Clark is in her 14th season with the New York Liberty, having previously served as the Liberty's Chief Operating Officer, Vice President for Team Business Development, Director of Marketing, and Marketing Manager.

Keia began her career at the NBA and the WNBA league office prior to joining the New York Liberty franchise.

Among her many awards, Keia was named to Adweek's Most Powerful Women in Sports list, Sports Business Journal's Game Changers Class of 2023, and most recently CNBC's Changemakers Inaugural Class of 2024. Clark attended Canisius University, where she was a four-year member of the women's basketball team, graduating in 2003 with a bachelor's in marketing. She went on to earn a master's in sports business from NYU in 2006, and in 2022, Keia graduated from Harvard Business School upon completion of the Advanced Management Program. 

Additionally Clarke serves on the boards of Sports Innovation Lab and the Ladies of Hope Ministries. Keia resides in New Jersey with her husband Brian, daughter Avery and son Gavin. In today's Becoming President episode, we're diving deep into her rise to the top.

Keia Clarke  I wish I could tell you this was my dream and this was my goal and I planned it and this was the blueprint and I executed perfectly. That is not the way it happened. I said it, I really wanted to be a VP of Marketing. and not necessarily at a WNBA team. Like when I was in college, that was the pathway or, just very loosely what I saw for myself.

And I think it's an important point to make, you may not know exactly what you want to do. There are some people who I meet. And they say, I'm going to have your job one day. Or they say, I'm going to be the GM or I'm going to be the commissioner or I'm going to be a lawyer. And I wasn't one of those people. I said, I wanted to work in marketing  literally and it happened the way it needed to happen for me. It was gradual, it was palatable, and it worked within my own pace, and it worked within my family structure, quite frankly. I  realized that I could,  and quite frankly should, be in a leadership position at a WNBA team because of the projects

Stef Before we get started, if you love this podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to our community at voiceinsport. com if you are a girl or woman in sport. Keia, welcome to the Voice in Sport podcast.

(background music ends) Welcome to the Voice in Sport Podcast. We're so excited to have you with us, Keia. This is such an incredible series and an important one because women like you need more visibility and today we're going to go deep to learn all about you. So welcome to the Voice in Sport Podcast.

Keia Clarke Thank you so much for having me.

Stef Let's start a little bit with your journey. Everybody's journey to becoming president or in your case, CEO is a little different. And we'd love to hear your background. Before we get started in your chapters, your five chapters of breaking down your experience and your path to CEO, tell us a little bit about your upbringing, where you were born and what school you went to.

Keia Clarke Sure. So I was born and raised in a small town in Connecticut, Meriden, Connecticut, about 30,000 people. I went to college at Canisius University in Buffalo, New York where I majored in marketing. So I have a bachelor's degree in marketing. And I was also on the women's basketball team during my four years there on a full athletic scholarship.

So as a student-athlete I think of it as the best of both worlds where I was studying academically and something that I was really interested in, but I also had the chance to play collegiately. After Canisius, I actually went to grad school at New York University, NYU, and pursued a master's in sports business.

Stef Amazing. Okay. So how would you describe yourself as a basketball player?

Keia Clarke I'd describe myself as someone who peaked a little bit too early. I played my best basketball, I believe junior year of high school but somehow was recruited on potential tenacious defender decent three-point shooter, high percentage free throw shooter. But my, my special part of my game was locking people up. Picking up full court and trying to just pester and stop a scorer.

Stef That's incredible. Tell us about how you would describe yourself as a person then.

Keia Clarke Oh, as a person, I would say I'm pretty easygoing. I love to laugh and joke around. Rarity, if I'm not having a silly moment even if the moment doesn't warrant silliness but I like to have fun. I love sports, mainly basketball, incredibly family-oriented. I am an only child to a single mother. So I talked to my mom a couple of times a day. And yeah, love my husband and kids and like to spend time just enjoying life.

Stef And tell us about your kids, how many kids do you have?

Keia Clarke I have two children. My daughter is 12 years old, going to 7th grade, and my son is 10 years old also heading to middle school, which is 5th grade in my town.

Stef Wow. We're right in the same zone there with our kiddos. It's a big reason why I'm passionate about building Voice in Sport is my daughter and my son, actually, I think both of them love sport and I've already seen the difference in the experiences that they're already seeing at such a young age.I really think that being a mother makes you a better leader. Would you agree?

Keia Clarke Absolutely. Absolutely agree. And even the way our family has adapted to me being a leader on a professional sports team it's a family thing now, and I've watched them almost from infancy become just the raging, most seafoam-attired Liberty fans that can exist. And I promise it wasn't forced. We let it come organically. We let them fall in love with this team, and it's just been a really special experience for our family.

Stef Amazing, okay well, let's dive into sort of your path and how you got to become president and CEO of the New York Liberty. So we're going to start right after you graduated and tell us about this first chapter. What is it called? And what's the key story and lesson that you learned during that time in your career?

Keia Clarke Yeah, I would call chapter one ‘Sports Adjacent.’ My undergraduate degree, as I shared was in marketing and I had recently finished my collegiate athletic career as a part of the women's basketball team, and my first ever role that I landed was at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Entering the workforce as an account executive. Hence sports adjacent. As a former athlete as someone who grew up nearby, I had attended the Hall of Fame just as a kid with my family and was in love with the history of the game. But then I was, in a professional setting cold calling people.

And it was sports adjacent, but what my biggest learning was, is that it forced me outside of my comfort zone. I never saw myself as someone who would be in  customer service, fan facing dealing with rejection but also having some wins when you have a sale, when you land a big group, that's going to come to the museum. It was incredibly gratifying, but there were definitely some hard days and Not a ton of training that went into that first role. Just out of college.

Stef What advice do you have for young women who maybe go into their first job and it's maybe not exactly what they studied in school and yet they maybe have an idea of where they want to be. But this is definitely not it.

Keia Clarke Yeah, I, it sounds a little bit cliche, but I would say trust the process. The person or the people or the organization that gives you that first shot absolutely see something in you and it's up to you to discover what it is in that part of the journey that you're supposed to learn.

And for me it was to learn to get outside of my comfort zone. I was just to learn to come out outside of my shell. But most importantly, it was the commercial value. Selling tickets to a museum is not something I had thought about when I was when my mom was buying tickets to that museum. How does a company make money is what most companies are going to be focused on. And it. It put me in this mind space where I had a different focus and a means to an end. So making calls and picking up the phone and getting out and meeting with people became just par for the course.

And that's super early in my career to learn that, but something that continues to be a part of what I do every single day.

Stef Yeah, when you're running a team like you are today, ticket revenue is one of the most important things that you have, right? One of your most important line items.  So it's amazing how moments like that, even though it's a, wasn't a sports team, it was a museum, can really help prepare you for then being the incredible leader that you are today.

Keia Clarke Absolutely.

Stef Okay. So that wraps up chapter one. Let's go to chapter two.

Keia Clarke I would call chapter two ‘Welcome to New York.’ I'm from Connecticut. I mentioned the small town and I was accepted to NYU for graduate school. My focus was in marketing and media. And while I was in grad school, I actually worked full-time. So I don't think there's any. better entryway to the city of New York than to not only be a student, but to also have a full-time job that happened to be at Four Times Square.

So I literally had to walk through Times Square every single day to get to work. I worked at Condé Nast the huge magazine conglomerate. I worked for a sports magazine actually a collection of sports magazines, which was Golf Digest. At the time they had a weekly title called Golf World and a women's bi-monthly issue called Golf for Women.

And I was afforded the opportunity to work on all three of those magazines first as an executive assistant and second as an analyst. I've got my my big time job or so I thought in a high rise, I'm in the same building as all these other big-time magazines. As I said, I'm walking through Times Square, but it was really during that time that I learned about the difference on how advertisers in a magazine were sold against the Golf for Women magazine versus how they were sold against Golf Digest.

And I just fell in love with this concept of women's sports. It's kind of weird that it took me till my second job to figure this out as a former athlete. But, just from a professional landscape. It was at that time that it dawned on me, this is a whole separate world of the fans, the advertisers, the people reading the magazine the people who worked on the magazine. There were some shared staff, but there were some people who only focused on Golf for Women. And they happen to have three associate publishers that were all women. And I was so inspired by them and their story and their work ethic that I started to hone my thoughts around I needed to know more about women's sports. I needed to dig deeper in that area.

Stef So you mentioned that there was some differences in like how the advertisement was being sold in and what the approach was. Do you remember what those were and does it still hold true today? 18 years later? 

Keia Clarke Yeah, I'm not super focused on the publishing world anymore, and I think to a certain extent, given the timeframe that social media wasn't as prolific as it is today. Even websites at the time weren't as robust as they are today. But the advertisers that were listed or that would show up on the pages in the women's magazine were luxury, as you can imagine, for a sport like golf: affluent, luxury high-end. But the Cartier's of the world, they're donning diamonds and, really cute golf skirts and women-focused golf shoes and it just similar brands, same brands, but totally different offering. And that's really what I was paying attention to. My job was actually to measure attrition or measure how many advertisers year over year, each of the titles was losing. So it was also a focus on, the commercialization of the business which really was interesting to me and something that I took back to my studies at NYU.

Stef Amazing. Okay. So that concludes your first job in New York. What is your chapter three?

Keia Clarke Chapter three was almost like we set it up as a layup. I would title it 'Entering the W.' The W being the WNBA. During my time, still working at Golf for Women, Golf Digest. I actually as my final project wrote my thesis on the WNBA. I wrote about its target marketing. Dare I say, or lack thereof, which is what my research showed at that time. This is 2000, end of 2005, 2006 ish at the time. And that thesis, that paper that I wrote ultimately landed me in informational presentation at the WNBA league office. I had connected with one of my former coaches who knew someone very well, who worked at the league office. And I went in and I got to present my paper.

And it's actually my most cherished and favorite story about my entire journey because while most of my classmates we all had an option. You could be in a group project for that final assignment, or you could write your own thesis. And I chose to do it on my own, call it being an only child, call it being a control freak. But I needed to do this paper and I needed to do it alone. It worked out and it paid off in dividends because shortly after that meeting where I presented my paper, I kept in touch with the executive that I met with during that time. And she ultimately hired me to work at the league office in an entry-level role.

So I worked and began my sports career officially, no longer adjacent Just after the 10th anniversary of the WNBA. So the league was 10 years in and I showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to learn everything I could about the WNBA. I worked in a department called Team Marketing and Business Operations.

And I happened to, although it was an NBA role, I focused 100% of my time on WNBA teams. And what they were doing and what their best practices were and what was working in different markets that we could share with other markets whether it was New York where I was, which I spent a lot of time with the then leadership of the New York Liberty, which is also a little bit ironic in my story all the way to, L. A. I was just of what was going on in the WNBA at that time, and it was in my first ever role in pro sports. I got to sit in on super high-level meetings. I attended team president meetings. I attended Board of Governors meetings, mostly to take notes, mostly to be someone who was editing PowerPoint, but I found my way in that room to hear about what was happening with this fairly new league that was born out of the success of the 1996 Olympics. And where were we going to go in the next 10, in the next 20, in the next 30 years?

Stef That's so incredible. And I love the fact that. That project landed you a position because we have a lot of interns that come that I've managed in my career at Nike and then Rag & Bone and then now Voice in Sport and I can see the difference between the students that are taking it seriously and owning their work and then the ones who are just phoning it in.

And, I think that those opportunities that you like, you took that opportunity, you've made it your mission to do something really important and valuable. And then you got yourself in the door. I just think that it's so incredible. What's like the biggest, when you look back on that now, like the biggest lesson that you have for other, early career women out there?

Keia Clarke Yeah, I would share this actually about when I think about all of the papers I had ever written in my life. I always tried to write about something I actually cared about or cared to know about. And if that meant I had to get, be really creative about the assignment versus what I wanted the outcome to be, I would go that extra mile.

And I always encourage any student that I ever meet with or any intern who's asked to do a project. Do it in something that you could actually bring to fruition, that you could bring to life, should you get the opportunity. And the opportunity might be, within the next month, or it could be within the next decade. I actually have had that opportunity. That executive who hired me asked me if I still have the paper. And I said this is an artifact of my life. Of course, I have the paper. It was really bad by the way. And we laugh about it now. I really, she's you totally crushed us. Like you tore the WNBA apart.

And I said, I know, I didn't know what I didn't know. I, it was a mission for me to learn. And if it happened through an academic paper. So be it. But it was absolutely, taking something as mundane as writing a paper that could have just been another check off the box and move along. But, it just so happened to be a change-maker in my career.

Stef That's so incredible that you still have this paper. And it's like one of those things, like when you do something that far back, you look back and say, wow, that was terrible. But in the moment, you're like, this is amazing. So I'm sure that there's some truth and maybe some not, some stuff that didn't turn out in that paper. Do you remember like one thing that still really holds true? And then one thing where that you really got wrong?

Keia Clarke Ooh, it's a really good question. What I do recall about the paper and I haven't looked at it in some time The focus was on the target marketing of the WNBA and My thesis was really, here I am literally an audience of one, right? I played basketball since I was eight years old, straight through to division one scholar athlete, and I'd never been to a game and that bothered me.

So my research was. strictly on how does the WNBA market itself? And what I remember most is there not being a lot of data points for me to even base the project on, I was. Not even googling. Guys, there was no Google back then. There, there were search engines. like Google That's how long ago it was.

But I found a couple articles and interestingly enough and I remember distinctively writing about that, and I thought I was so sophisticated. And at the time of writing this paper, the only, the most current article that I could find was about one of the most prominent players in the league coming out as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, which I found like astounding because the inclusivity of the WNBA today is the special sauce that makes our league head and shoulders like so progressive. We've always been here. But at that time, I almost. judge the league for only having that. And, if I'm thinking through, it was probably the off-season. I wasn't finding scores there. It just, it was an off cycle time for me to be talking about the WNBA, which is the limited media that existed then.

And I'm so proud of where we've come and how far we've come, but it's also a reminder don't let your foot off the gas. Like we have to continue to grow. We have to continue to keep this moving. If the paper could ever serve as just a little zinger, a little reminder, don't be complacent. I like to pull it out once in a while,

Stef Alright, well that's an incredible entrance into the W for your chapter 3. What happens next? Chapter 4.

Keia Clarke Yeah, what happens next it gets a little crazy. I would call, I would title this 'Drinking from a Fire Hose.' This chapter included all sorts of highs and a couple of lows and a lot of personal movement. Fast forward, I actually left the WNBA league office and I was offered the role as marketing manager with the New York Liberty. Five days before the first preseason game is when I started my role, and at the time the Liberty played at Madison Square Garden. That was our home arena but unfortunately, The Garden was going to undergo a three-year renovation, and the Liberty, we're relocated to Newark, New Jersey. So I'm five days in and I'm now not at The Garden where I interviewed and thought I took a job. I was now going to operate and run the marketing side of the business at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. So we're relocating fans, we're relocating game presentation, we're relocating locker room and team. So it was immediately a shift thinking back to that discomfort of, being outside your comfort zone in that first job, run it back again, because we're going to do everything and we're going to start over essentially in a new building temporarily. So I was not only learning my job as the marketing manager at a team and not the league, but I was also doing it in a different space. I had recently gotten married. I was probably married a year and a half and we began our family at this time.

So both of my children were born during those three seasons in Newark. I had a commute from New Jersey into the city and then back to New Jersey on most days and post babies, my responsibility, my tasks. What I had purview over just began to move at a rapid rate. So I started as the marketing manager Avery and Gavin are born. we're approaching moving back to The Garden and I'm promoted to Director of Marketing. We get back to the garden. We have a stellar 2014, I'm promoted to Vice President of Marketing. We're starting to see dividends. We have one of the best records in the East and the 2015 season, 2016 season. I actually moved out of marketing and I became the VP of Team Business Development.

So this is my first foray into the operations side of the business. I had that marketing degree. I dreamed about being a marketer. I dreamed about being a Vice President of Marketing. And then I found myself taking a different path and moving into operations and having a more 360-degree view of the business. Not only just to focus on marketing, but also a focus on how are we growing tickets, and what are we doing in the community? And how are we working with our corporate partners, our sponsors? And for the first time, I'm starting to do exactly what I'm doing right now. Talk about being a part of the New York Liberty as a spokesperson for the team from a PR standpoint. So now I went from, marketing and creative and promotions to sort of everything. And this is like I said, the highs and lows of this chapter, it felt like drinking from a fire hose because my career path was moving very swiftly and anyone who has a kid or kids or has a younger brother or sister or niece or nephew knows that part of life moves very quickly too from, age zero to seven or eight, which is the phase that we were in.

Drinking from a fire hose at work and drinking from a fire hose at home. But gold doesn't become gold without being in the fire. It was super fast-paced. It feels like a blur even to talk about it and think about those years. But it was preparing me for, what was next. I didn't know that at the time, but it was preparing me for what was next.

Stef Yeah, I think let's talk about that pivot, right? And that time period that you're talking about in this chapter number four, of drinking through the fire hose from that sort of marketing manager, director, VP, and then the switch, the pivot to operations. Super important pivot when you are, If you have a goal of becoming a CEO of a company, it's important to understand all aspects and functions.

It doesn't mean you always have to go do all of them, but I do believe that when you have the best CEOs, they have that experience and a couple of those functions. So was there a moment in time where you were like, I want to be the CEO of the Liberty and I'm going to go do this thing? This specific function to get better experience or did somebody approach you? Tell us about that sort of pivot.

Keia Clarke I wish I could tell you this was my dream and this was my goal and I planned it and this was the blueprint and I executed perfectly. That is not the way it happened. I said it, I really wanted to be a VP of Marketing. and not necessarily at a WNBA team. Like when I was in college, that was the pathway or, just very loosely what I saw for myself.

And I think it's an important point to make, you may not know exactly what you want to do. There are some people who I meet, and they say, I'm going to have your job one day. Or they say, I'm going to be the GM or I'm going to be the commissioner or I'm going to be a lawyer. And I wasn't one of those people. I said, I wanted to work in marketing literally and it happened the way it needed to happen for me. It was gradual, it was palatable, and it worked within my own pace, and it worked within my family structure, quite frankly. I realized that I could, and quite frankly should, be in a leadership position at a WNBA team because of the projects that I worked on and building trust with my manager, with the woman who hired me, and by the way, the woman, the executive who hired me at the WNBA also hired me at the WNBA at the Liberty. So we had a reprise of our working relationship. And I still, Kristen Berner, I still count her one of my most intentional and most thoughtful and closest mentors. But it was the trust that we built up for each other that really gave me the empowerment to say, okay, like I don't have to limit myself to marketing.

There is more here. And it came in bite-sized pieces. you know, It was, you're in charge of game day. Okay well, you're in charge of the Olympic break. I need a whole plan for the strategy for next year. And that's really how it happened. It would just be like these first small steps, and then these giant steps, and then ten steps at a time, to where I was confident enough to feel like, okay, I can do this. I can do this. Now, I won't say I was, I did not even apply for the job with some trepidation. I can't say that I didn't have some stumbles and falls, especially in the beginning. And I wouldn't even sit here and tell all of you that I don't still learn on a daily basis. Like I'm still a work in progress. I'm still learning, but definitely at my pace and when it was supposed to happen is the way it happened.

Stef Okay. So you try a whole new function. You're starting to gain experiences in different parts of the business, which is super critical. And then what happens next in chapter five?

Keia Clarke So chapter five is essentially sort of where we are now in the continuation. I would title it ‘Point Guards Lead from the Front,’ not the back. If you've ever seen kne of the greatest movies of all time, Love and Basketball. It's what Monica's coach says to her at a practice. Or I think they were running the mile and she was coming up the rear. She wasn't leading and she was a point, I'm a point guard. The team actually was acquired by Joe and Clara Tsai after a brief stint in Westchester. Where the team played their home games for two seasons we moved to Brooklyn. We moved to Barclays Center as our home arena. And that's what we're, in the middle of right now. We're seeing incredible growth, incredible dividends. I think it's super fortunate that the entire women's sports world is rising at this time and we're right in the boat rowing along. But we want to lead and we intend to lead and The team is in first place right now. My, my purview, my oversight is of the business and just fan engagement, seeing the joy on people's faces, the groove in them jamming during a Liberty game. Is everything that we were positioning ourselves to do. And I'll add one other note, when I say point guards that's me and our general manager Jonathan Kolb is also a point guard and this was sort of a pact. I have a teammate in this. This goes back to my years as an athlete.

I have a whole team of teammates here, but he and I had this understanding that although we were in an unfortunate circumstance playing in a smaller building restarting the business, restarting the basketball team that we would get our way. We would make our way back to first, we would make our way back to the front of the pack and we would make our way back to giving New York City fans what they deserve and the legacy of this team.

I'm proud. We're not done. There will be a chapter six. There will hopefully be a chapter seven, eight, nine, ten. But, I'm incredibly pleased with how this chapter has gone. I mentioned my kids growing up with this team. And there were times when, it was a toss-up, like, you're working during a game, so who's going to take Avery to the bathroom, because there weren't family bathrooms at one of the buildings that we played at. So we've gone from like that, to the kids choose their outfit for a game. The kids are calling me to get the Amazon Prime login, or, texting me, what channel is the game on when we're away, so it's like It's now become a part of us, and it's not a struggle anymore in that regard and I really, I get to do this and the famous words of Jess Sims on the Peloton Rise, 'you don't have to do this, you get to do this. I get to do this for a living,' and it's so cool.

Stef It's amazing. And your journey is really inspiring, from like how you started into the field of women's sports to climbing the ladder all the way up and being dedicated to the New York Liberty. I want to know a little bit now, like the hard stuff, because that was just all so good.

So let's talk about the challenges because we know they're there. We all have ups and downs and jobs we don't like, or jobs we get into where we have leaders that are really tough or situations like that. So I'd love to unpack your top challenges. Like when you reflect back on all those chapters, what has been the hardest? Most challenging moments for you.

Keia Clarke I think I've alluded to it a couple of times. And as you say, I'm positioning it as this is great and it's good. A person who is a mom, but also works in a really fast-paced, demanding career. This includes a lot of office hours. It includes a lot of events and dinners and games. I attend every single home game. I attend a certain portion of away games. I will be at All-Star. I will be at all of playoffs, and that's a lot of time away from home. And that, as I mentioned through the years, has been a challenge because It's a little easier to text or phone a 12 and 10-year-old, but when they were five and three or three and one those were difficult days, to walk away and to leave home knowing you're coming back, but just knowing you might miss something or going and choosing to be at a school recital or a graduation and knowing you might miss something at work.

So I don't refer to it as balance. I don't think it's balanced. I think there's a series of trade offs and I used to beat myself up about it. What I've learned is to give myself grace and to show up super large at home when I can. I have good days. I have bad days. I let people down, work or home. multiple times in any given week. I don't let it define who I am. I can't let it define my success as a parent or my success as a leader. It's just, this is where we are and you're going to get the best of me when I'm with you.

Stef It's such a great perspective to have now. I have that as well now as an entrepreneur and have two kids. And I love what you said cause I also don't really agree with the balance question. I would never ask that. That's why I'm glad it's glad you just said it. But that's not how I always was. You know, I remember early on when I had my first kid, I was like, frightened. In fact, at Nike, I kept telling my husband, Oh, let the after the next promotion, I'll be ready to have a baby after the next one. And after the next one, finally, we're like, wait a minute. If I keep saying that we're never going to, we're actually never going to start a family. So I definitely didn't have that mindset when I was in my late twenties, to your younger self, that's maybe considering to have a family, but still is very passionate about their job and wanting to succeed in the corporate world.

Keia Clarke Sure, yeah. And I have had similar feelings as you. Like I said, this is my vulnerable point. This is the point, this is the part that I still work on. And I'll also share younger professionals women who are contemplating starting a family or wondering how their career is going to affect their ability to have a family have come to me and I feel so fortunate that they come to me, but I always preface it with, this is not perfect.

This is just my experience. I can't tell you how to do it, but I will say. Even though I talked to all that trash about wanting to be first and leading from the front, I absolutely positively want every single person on my team to prioritize their family first. And if that means your family, your parents, or as a caregiver, your family, your grandparents, because I want to spend time with them, your family, your spouse or partner, you want to start a family, have a kid, or you have one, that's they should be first. Even at the sacrifice of what we're trying to do over here, I would never hold that against someone in terms of their growth within the company. It's more about being open and honest and working through. What does success look like? What does growth look like? What does moving forward look like?

And so my advice would be to have an open conversation with your manager, your supervisor, HR, about laying out a plan for what it looks like to be able to have a little bit of congruence in that I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot. I'm not going to stop my growth here because I'm honoring this thing that's very personal to me. And quite frankly, an employer that doesn't respect that. And if you hold it super high, you might be imbalanced on where you work. I'm not advising anybody to go out and quit their job. I'm just saying ask and know, ask for data points, and then make an educated decision.

Stef Yeah, it's it's such great advice, and I wish I would have had those conversations earlier too. I think what you said about showing up in the workplace though, and giving it your all when you are there It's super important. And that is the balance part is making sure that you show up in big ways in both places, right? They don't always have to be at the same time.

Keia Clarke Absolutely. Absolutely. I do want to caveat, it's hard to have that type of conversation, I think, with anybody and everyone in an organization. So it's also about building relationship, rapport, and trust with someone who is that person. And I mentioned people have come to me. They're typically people who don't work anywhere in my vertical or my department. They're confiding. They're seeking me to find out because they know a little bit about my journey and that's a safe, maybe that's a safer space than like literally knocking on your boss's door. Hey, I want to have a baby next week.

So what are we going to do? I'm not suggesting that. I'm not suggesting that at all. What I'm saying is someone within your circle, within your trust circle who can give you some advice or some guidance would be helpful if you don't know where to start. Absolutely.

Stef Okay. So that was your biggest challenge. Do you have any other ones? That you'd like to share with our audience.

Keia Clarke I do. I do. I think one of the challenges that I've had, especially when I was a new leader and faced with building out a team or hiring, not one or two people at a time, but hiring for several divisions at a time was finding the right talent and attracting top talent.

In an area of the business that years ago, we're not here anymore, but a lot of folks who wanted to work in women's sports specifically were few and far between. A lot of people who came to women's sports, sometimes, not everyone, was looking for an opportunity of foot in the door so that they could get to the men's side. Oh yeah, I'll take this WNBA role and I'll do it for two years so that I could get over to the NBA. I'm so excited and happy that's actually not the case so much anymore. And it's also become a mission of mine and it's forced me to have to build out my own network and get it in, build a bench and have conversations with people within this world so that we're cultivating top talent.

I don't have to settle for a second tier, any role, any area of expertise anymore, because we can attract top talent in women's sports. And I couldn't say that a decade ago. I probably couldn't really even say that five or six years ago, but now there are people. leaving careers to come to women's sports and call them bandwagoners. But if you're excellent, I will have a conversation.

Stef Bring on those bandwagoners.

Keia Clarke Bring them on. As long as you're genuine and it's an authentic need to be high performing, that's what we want and it's going to make all of us better. So I would say though, that was a challenge. Like even if I'm being super transparent, like working with HR departments and like coming up with comp and looking at resumes and being told like it's going to be hard for you to get that because. It's the WNBA and now it's it's the WNBA though like people are really enamored with where we are heading and where we stand today.

Stef That's amazing to see that shift. And it's so exciting. So when you think about that whole journey, Kiea, of your leadership, you talked about leading from the front a little bit at the end of your last chapter. Let's talk a little bit about leadership. It's such an important point. For anyone, regardless of gender. But we do know that there is a tie for young girls who play sports and their ability to lead in corporations. There's a strong tie, which is why we're at Voice in Sport trying to keep girls in the game, partnering with the W, partnering with your team to make sure we're mentoring these young women so they stay in sport.

Because we know that incredible benefits it will reap later in life when they, get into positions where, maybe they're the only woman in the room to begin with or in an uncomfortable job or high-pressure situation at work. So when you reflect on your own leadership style how would you describe yourself as a leader? And is that changed over the course of your time, growing up in the women's sports space?

Keia Clarke Yeah, it's something I think of often. I would describe myself as a leader who leads with empathy and accountability, equal parts of it, because I can empathize with you. I can show empathy toward a situation that may be challenging.

I can hold you accountable. But it's always going to be authentic and it's always going to come from a place of I want you to be good for you and I want you to be good for us. And I used to think that was so soft to say out loud that I'm a leader. Empathy. I'm being completely honest. Like it didn't seem like a trait that people, especially in males, valued.

And I actually think it's. It's the thing that makes me. It's the reason why I have been able to have some amazingly talented people, but just some great people. People with great hearts work with me. And I don't even really like to say for me, like we're all working together on this, but I think it's like me taking the first step of being a little bit vulnerable to say I remember when I was trying to get promoted and I didn't, it took me four and a half years to move from this to this, or I remember when no one cared about the product that I worked on and that's, people can identify with that, but then it's like accountability then. But what are we going to do next? And how am I going to hold you to what your word or what we decide as a goal together or what we're going to set out to accomplish together? How am I going to be able to hold you to that? And then it won't feel mean.

It won't feel micromanaging. I don't, I don't, I never want it to be that person. It's more no let's get this done. And I think that directly is attributed to me always wanting to be on a team as an athlete. Like you want that feeling and you always want that feeling of we did this, not, I did this.

Stef I love that. Did you always have those skills or is that something that you developed over time?

Keia Clarke I think I've become stronger at articulating them and demonstrating them differently. But again, I was maybe even hiding it because I thought it showed weakness as a leader to say that you lead with empathy. Perhaps you call it experience, right? But I also don't want to be the one in the room saying, and this is the way I did it. And now you should do it this way. I actually challenged my team often. That's I'm like, look, I've been here on this team for the longest. I don't want to do things the way we always did them.

I don't want to be talking about it. When we were at the garden, we always did X. It's no, we need innovation and we need new thinking. We need creativity. And if something is going to push us to the next level, then I want you to speak up. I want you to say something about it. And to better answer your question. I had to find the words. I had to find my voice.

Stef I love that. I definitely feel like very similar where I had it in me, but maybe it wasn't always expressing it in the way that I wish that was maybe best for the people around me, at least early in my career. And then that really changed over time. So, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I want to talk a little bit now about mentorship to I guess wrap up like our conversation here a little bit. Keia is like at the end of the day, Mentorship is what we do at Voice in Sport where a mentorship platform. We have this incredible partnership with the WNBA and the change makers to support young girls, getting access to the incredible players across the league.

But part of like reflection and thinking about our own careers as women in sports. for it is thinking about the people who helped us along the way. And also just what that advice was, you wish you would have heard back, when you had your first job and you were a first intern. So I'm going to give you that opportunity to give yourself a little piece of advice at each one of those stages.

So starting with kind of this mindset of hindsight's 2020. Can you share with us a mentorship tip for women and specifically young women who are about to go into the first one is thinking about the experience of college. What advice would you give them? If you could go back to your college self and say, you know what, here's one tip, what would it be?

Keia Clarke And I'm glad you prefaced this with what you wish you had, because I didn't, I did not have a lot of mentors I'd never, I didn't seek them out and I have so many right now. But to answer your question, college Keia I would say don't underestimate or devalue how beneficial the scholar-athlete life can be.

It felt dreadful. to me at the time to travel to away games and do individual workouts and have regular practice and then have pool workouts and then run the mile and then do weight training and then mandatory study hall. Shout out to Canisius University that made study hall mandatory unless you had, I think it was a three, eight, a 3. 8 GPA. So I worked my way out of study hall a couple of, semesters, but I wasn't truly like living in what that pace of life was going to mean for my future because no doubt that endurance is why I can do the job that I do right now. My organizational skills, my resiliency after a loss, like all of those things were born as a, college student.

I was just going through it. I won't say suffering cause I had a lot of fun and I love my roommates. Just not underestimating, but rather leaning in. Like athletes become C-suite leaders often, but athletes start somewhere. Someone may see something in you because of your experience as an athlete or even not an athlete, just your discipline as a college student. But just embracing the experience for what it is letting it teach you those skills in that discipline, I think is super important.

Stef Amazing. Okay, going back and reflecting to your first time, you had your first internship. First of all, tell us what it was, and then what would be your piece of advice to yourself?

Keia Clarke I'm actually slightly ashamed to say this. I never did an internship. No, wild. I'm just old enough where there weren't, they weren't mandatory for graduation. I did an internship at NYU, so technically that was my first, but I was an adult and studying for my master's and my internship was actually that job at Condé Nast at Golf Digest.

So again, this is hindsight 2020. And I've had dozens of interns at this point. Like I've hired dozens of interns and I would say an internship is a tryout. There's no guarantee that you're going to make the team. I know that's obvious, but this is your chance to showcase your skills. And you should go at it and run at it at full speed, at full throttle.

There is no such thing as playing cool to me on an internship, this is your shot. And if you're going to go you got to go because you never know who's going to be able to say your name in a room in which you are not standing. And more often than not, that comes from that tryout. The tryout, which is synonymous with an internship. Said

Stef Everybody listen to that one. Let's listen to this podcast, all right. What's your one tip for your first time managing a team?

Keia Clarke First tip for, first time managing a team. Oh, this is purely from experience. Learning to bend and mold your style to meet people where they are. Not that I would ever come in with an iron fist, but I had this thought that like a staff meeting and if I said it, it is done and it is and that is not true at all. And the amount of one-to-one group setting, some people like email, some people on my team, I have learned they need a text. Some people need to come to me and need me not to be overbearing. I'm a chameleon. The leader is the chameleon. It is up to you to really get the best out of the people who work with you. So it is probably up to you. It is likely up to you to be the one that's a little more fluid and a little more malleable. It doesn't mean that you can't have your own style, but you're operating within what others react to best.

Stef I love that. Such an important lesson to learn. And that's why I asked about the style, right? Like what's your style? But then this is such an important lesson that you have to be able to adapt to the people that are working with you. And that is such a key thing to being a great leader, regardless of your style. So I love that. Okay, last one. When all of our listeners become the president or the CEO, what is your tip for them on that first day?

Keia Clarke First day in the seat. It's a little tough for me because I've been in the same company for a really long time. Actually, no, I moved buildings though. I moved to a new organization. So I would say, talk to everyone you can in the company. not send emails, Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Pick up the phone and, meet for coffee and meet for lunch and establish relationship connection rapport with the people at various levels that work within the company that do different jobs within the company. Because day one is you need people to trust you and buy into your values and your vision. And no one really does that with a stranger.

Stef Well said. Okay. So reflecting back on this experience that you've had so far, your chapters, your challenges along the way. How would you describe your path to becoming the CEO in three words?

Keia Clarke This is going to sound nuts. Believe it or not, it still feels like it's ‘only the beginning.’

Stef Fair. Love that. Okay. Tell us more. Why?

Keia Clarke Just because the measurement of success. in the bar at which I hold myself to. I think so much of the journey was about like getting to the right org, the right team, the right situation. The right skill set and having all of those levers moving at the same time, that then it's okay, now it's game time. And make no mistake, obviously I've gone through seasons and budgets and we've had full W's and lost columns, but like where this can go and what this can be. And when I say this, women's professional sports and my role in that, it still feels like there's so much upside still.

And this is like a launching point for me now. And I wouldn't take, I don't take any of that for granted that has been these last less than 20 years, because 20 sounds too long. But it's almost 20 years. But it's we're just getting started. I use this and it's not ironic, but it's useful that my first role was at the Basketball Hall of Fame because I learned the history of the game.

Like at its bare bones, like when this thing ever started and like to what it's become in terms of entertainment and just people's hearts and people's entire livelihoods The 28th season of the WNBA in that, when you look in like it's, that's not really super long. So it still does feel like only the beginning, especially when we're often compared to men's sports and the men's sports are 50, 60, 70 years older. So yeah, to a certain extent, like I hope I'm a little old lady talking about when the became a juggernaut and my team has heard me say this before. I'm like, yep, I'm going to be like, all bent over. 

Stef Let's come back to this podcast in another like 30 years and we'll do like a, part two.

Keia Clarke Let's do it. Let's do it.

Stef Okay. When you reflect back On your experience, Keia, what would be your advice, your final advice you have for any women out there that want to work in the sports industry and they want to get to your spot someday? What is your advice to get there on how to get there?

Keia Clarke Yeah. I so I think, Spilled the beans in my internship answer, but to give your best in every internship in every role no matter whether you think it's a fit or you're taking it because you need money or you're taking it because someone in your mentorship circle said that you should take this role you never know where it might lead.

You may just get that thing that is your thing because you were attentive and you were diligent about what was handed to you. I had said, there's no way I'm going to cold call people and ask them to come to a museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you, Stef. And that was my initial reaction, but Something felt I needed a check. I needed to land my first role out of college and prove to my family that I'm an adult and it's time. And I wanted to move out of the house. There were other motivating factors and I had no idea where it was going, just never know.

But to go at it with, like I said before it may create an opportunity that you cannot imagine.

Stef Amazing. Thank you for sharing your story. Like it's really inspiring. And I think so many young women out there, we want to get them in your seat someday. So I appreciate you taking the time and thank you so much.

Keia Clarke My absolute pleasure. And I plan on seeing them in this seat.

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Stef  This week's episode was produced and edited by VIS creator Elizabeth Martin. Keia Clark shared her remarkable journey from marketing and business operations to becoming the president of the New York Liberty. We talked about career growth through unexpected opportunities, innovative leadership, stepping outside our comfort zones, and how she sustains family life and career growth. Reflecting on her career journey, she articulates how leadership isn't about just having the right plan, but about building trust, embracing growth, and learning along the way. Through her experiences, Clark reminds us that success is often gradual and shaped by persistence, adaptability, and the willingness to embrace new challenges. 

Please click on the share button in this episode and send it to another athlete that you think might enjoy the conversation. And if you liked our conversation with Keia, please leave us a review and rating on Apple or Spotify.  

If you are logged into the Voice in Sport platform, head to sessions and filter by topic sports and mentor type. You can take a look at all the incredible WNBA mentors that we have on the platform. If you're interested in more VIS content, you can head to our feed on voiceinsport.com, search basketball or WNBA and find interesting articles like Satou Sabally's guide to integrating yoga and pilates into her training or playoff preparation with Kia Stokes. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode on the Voice in Sport podcast and see you next week. 

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