Soon after he left his role as a senior vice president at HBO Sports two years ago, Kery Davis sat down with his wife to identify the goals for his next career opportunity. He wanted to stay in sports, work with young people and make a difference beyond a balance sheet. He found the intersection of all three at Howard University, which in September tapped him as its new athletic director. The job marks a new type of challenge for Davis, 57, who played basketball at Dartmouth, got his law degree from Cornell and then spent the bulk of his career negotiating fight contracts for HBO.
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When I grew up, Thurgood Marshall was my hero. He was the reason I wanted to become a lawyer. One of my first jobs was working at the National Urban League for Vernon Jordan. Both of those men got their opportunities in education from Howard. That drew me to the
school.”
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Photo by: HOWARD UNIVERSITY
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On the value of the D.C. media market: One of the things that attracted me to Howard was that it has tremendous assets that no other HBCU has. We just haven’t found the right synergy between the university and its media assets to truly take advantage of it and draw strategic partners to the table to help us move into the 21st century financially. That’s one of the things that I’m focusing on.
On opting out of MEAC’s apparel deal: The MEAC has a conferencewide deal with Russell Athletic. Russell has been a terrific partner, but the concept of continuing in a conferencewide deal and not taking advantage of Howard’s unique assets is something that we felt we could no longer participate in. When I go out and do an individual apparel deal and strategic partnership with a company like Under Armour, or whoever it might end up being, I want to do that based on Howard’s assets, Howard’s tradition and Howard’s effect on pop culture.
Tradition vs. today: I would never ignore the powerful history and tradition that Howard comes to the table with, but the present generation has grown up in an era where we’ve had a black president for the last seven years, so they don’t feel the impact of Brown vs. Board of Education the same way I do. They don’t appreciate that Edward Brooke, the first black man elected to the Senate, was another Howard grad. That’s fine. But we’ve got a black president now, so tell me how my child is going to benefit from a Howard education now. Tell me how I’m going to benefit as a company from a partnership with Howard now. My goal is to make those arguments.
All about the kids: Sometimes I wake up now and I feel like I have 400 new sons and daughters who I want the best for. With my four kids who are almost all out of the house, I wanted to be the best person I could be for them. I wanted to do the best job and work hard for them. Now, I feel that same way about the 400 [athletes] at Howard. They’re going to get the best of me, just like they were my four kids.
