RISE CEO Diahann Billings-Burford: 100 Influential Black Women in Sport

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Courtesy of Diahann Billings-Burford

Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx highlight the diverse journeys of black women in sports — from veteran athletes to rising stars, coaches, executives and more — in the series She-evate: 100 Influential Black Women in Sports.

Diahann Billings-Burford is not an easily intimidated woman. Not now. And not in high school either.

In the mid-1980s, when race relations in New York City were tending towards an inflection point after the 1989 murder of 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins, she was the only black player on the Brooklyn Poly Prep field hockey team. . Let her tell herself, she was pretty good with a stick, a natural obstacle to the sweeper. But her life almost changed after a play. “It was against that Staten Island school,” Billings-Burford recalled. “This girl was trying to get a quick break, but I got to prom before her. Her teammate said, ‘Don’t even try that Aunt Jemima n—–.’”

Things quickly turned around. She stopped play to confront the young girl, drawing a yellow card. The benches cleared and the altercation between the teams spilled over into the locker room and also sucked in some spectators. But what’s holding her back, aside from her ignorance of her outnumbering, is the unquestioned support of her white teammates and coaches. “Without even really knowing what had happened, they were like, ‘This is not cool,'” Billings-Burford said. “In retrospect, I could see that having those real relationships with people, and especially being part of a team with people, that can bring us to that point of unity on issues of race and racism.”

It’s a moment that sheds light on his current role as CEO of a diversity and inclusion concierge resource for amateur and professional sports organizations called the Ross Institute in Sports for Equality (RISE). The Ross here is Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins owner whose decades-long friendship with Donald Trump was met with dismay from black NFL players who thought the then-president was racist. In 2015, Ross created RISE with the goal of eradicating racial discrimination in sport through education and empowerment; five years later, it committed an additional $13 million over the next four years.

Chump changes to a powerful big problem, some might say. But Billings-Burford says pushing Ross for less help is what will ultimately make RISE more effective in the long run. The organization’s current transition from a private foundation to a 501(c)(3) charitable organization is not only a critical step toward independence, but broader membership as well. “We really believe that this effort must come from a coalition that transcends race, gender and sport,” she said. “We need people to understand that this is an urgent issue.”

Another high school sweeper might be able to trace Billings-Burford’s oath from Poly Prep to RISE in one pass. But it’s her work in the education and service communities that is the real focus of her career, and it hasn’t been the most direct. After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Yale and a law degree from Columbia, Billings-Burford alternated as a college preparatory school counselor, corporate lawyer, and charter school grant writer before moving on to finding a home in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration as city leader. duty officer. Subsequently, as Time Warner’s Executive Director of Cultural Investment and Vice President of the Time Warner Foundation, she led the company’s college internship program, oversaw its community engagement activities, and led the grant-making operations.

All of these skills come into play at RISE, which has a multi-faceted approach that ranges from general awareness campaigns to strategic planning to real courses on diversity and inclusion. The RISE Board of Directors — a who’s who of industry heavyweights that includes NASCAR Chairman Steve Phelps, MLB Chief Rob Manfred and NFL Commissioners Roger Goodell and Paul Tagliabue — gives the organization (which claims nearly 500 partners in all sports) a broad and powerful and deep reach.

When Jerry Richardson was stripped of his stake in the Carolina Panthers in 2017, after SI revealed that four former employees had received “significant” financial settlements due to his sexually inappropriate and racist behavior in the workplace, Goodell wrote a memo making diversity training mandatory for all 32 clubs, recommending that they work with RISE.

Although Billings-Burford says RISE’s collaborations with NFL teams have been well-received by senior executives, they still aren’t appealing to team owners. And after yet another round of training that has eliminated all but one black coach from the league, it is team owners who stand to benefit the most from lessons on “implicit bias” and other RISE sessions.

But RISE can at least count on the support of board members like Tagliabue, who helped draft the Rooney rule and sees the gap between league politics and the owners’ implicit bias as something that doesn’t. can only be filled with difficult lessons and difficult conversations. “He’s like, ‘Diahann, sure, it’s less effective; it’s obsolete,” Billings-Burford says, citing the ex-commissioner’s take on a nearly 20-year-old affirmative directive. “‘They have to come up with something that the current owners own, the same way we owned the Rooney Rule.'”

Purging racism from sport is a noble goal. Some might say it’s almost impossible. At the very least, it’s daunting work. But Billings-Burford doesn’t blink. On the contrary, she rolls up her sleeves and pushes into battle.

Andrew Lawrence is a contributor for Empower Onyx, a diverse multi-channel platform celebrating the stories and transformative power of sport for Black women and girls.

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