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Learfield courts minority talent

There have been times when L.A. Love, a fundraiser in the University of Massachusetts athletic department, felt like he was on an island. Being an African-American executive in the all-male, all-pale world of college athletics, Love can look around and see that there aren’t many people in his line of work who look like him.

So, just the fact that Learfield sponsored a weeklong academy designed to create more workplace opportunities for racial and gender minorities left Love inspired and appreciative earlier this month.

Andre Tunstill (left) and L.A. Love (right) flank Learfield’s Christina Meister and N.C. State’s Debbie Yow in Raleigh.
Photo by: MICHAEL SMITH / STAFF
“You just don’t see this kind of thing happen, period,” Love said after spending 90 minutes in a meeting with Debbie Yow, North Carolina State’s athletic director.

The meeting was just part of the Learfield Minority Academy, which the agency launched in 2014 to spotlight up-and-coming minorities in their field and maybe one day hire them. Now in its third year, the annual academy has become one of the few places for minorities in college athletics to hear from and interact with African-Americans, Hispanics and females who blazed trails before them.

Love was one of 12 participants out of 215 applicants for Learfield’s May 2-6 academy. He was joined at N.C. State by another academy participant, Andre Tunstill, a ticket sales representative at the University of Kentucky.

Together, they toured the Wolfpack’s facilities, went on sales calls with Learfield’s Wolfpack Sports Properties, and spent time with Yow in her office.

“Learfield stepped up and said, ‘There’s a legitimate concern and maybe this is the generation that can make change,’” Love said. “So they stepped out on a limb and took a chance by investing in racial and gender minorities.

“You just don’t see that happen. It’s huge.”

The 2016 class of the Learfield Minority Academy.
Photo by: COURTESY OF LEARFIELD
Learfield produces the minority academy in partnership with Minority Opportunities Athletic Association, the trade association for minorities in college athletics. They work together to select the participants and create five days of programming, some at Learfield’s headquarters in Plano, Texas, and some at a school that’s a Learfield client like N.C. State.

MOAA Executive Director Stan Johnson, a former NCAA executive, and Mario Moccia, athletic director at New Mexico State and the current MOAA president, work with Learfield on the content and scheduling for this month’s event.

Learfield established two primary goals for the academy. First, it provides Learfield with the chance to identify talent that might further diversify its business. A handful of past participants have been hired by Learfield. Second, it’s a way for Learfield to present networking opportunities for the minorities in the academy to strengthen their résumé and set of contacts.

“I think it’s one of the best and most unique partnerships in college sports,” Moccia said.

After the two opening days of panel discussions and networking at Learfield headquarters, Love and Tunstill flew from Plano to the Wolfpack’s Raleigh campus for two more days of shadowing sales executives and interviewing school officials.

The conversation with Yow, one of just three female athletic directors in the power five conferences, was honest and enlightening. They asked questions about Yow’s background, the culture she’s created at N.C. State and how to develop advocates. She shared many of the challenges she’s faced and bluntly told Love and Tunstill to expect much of the same.

“It does make you think about how the more things change, the more they stay the same,” Love said. “At times, you do feel like an EEOC check box, a token, even though you have the education and the experience. What tenacity she must have had.”

Tunstill and Love meet N.C. State legend and Associate AD Dereck Whittenburg.
Photo by: MICHAEL SMITH / STAFF
Those kinds of conversations with other racial and gender minorities were an important part of the experience, they said.

“What I took away more than anything is how you advance … and providing you with solutions for how to do that,” Tunstill said. “Sometimes it’s easy to have doubt and wonder if you belong, but [Yow] had the fortitude to overcome that fear. That’s powerful to hear.”

One of the panel discussions during the Plano visit focused on the brand side, which provided executives like Marques Jackson the forum to talk about how he advanced from the agency world to Coca-Cola and now MillerCoors, where he’s been for almost four years. Jackson, a sports and entertainment marketing manager with the beer brand, explained what it took to cultivate a set of mentors who will be your champion when it comes to personnel decisions.

“Obviously, there are not a lot of minorities in intercollegiate athletics, so nine times out of 10, you have to forge alliances with people who do not look like you and might have different skill sets than you,” Jackson said. “You need to have a diverse group of leaders who can advocate for you when the doors are closed. Ultimately, that’s where decisions are made for new hires or getting raises, and that applies to corporate America or intercollegiate athletics.

“The easy thing to do is latch onto a mentor who looks like you. But that’s not often the most likely scenario.”

The idea of creating a minority academy was in the discussion stage for several years until Learfield teamed with MOAA in 2014 for the first edition. The number of applicants in year one reached 150, and surged this year to 215. Of the dozen selected this year, their ages ranged from the mid-20s to early 30s.

The collegiate sports marketing agency expects interest to grow, although it is not certain if the number of participants will increase. Learfield picks up the tab for the event, including participants’ travel, so growing expenses would be a concern for the company if the program expanded.

“I think it’s making a real difference,” said Roger Gardner, Learfield’s chief cultural and communications officer and one of the architects for the academy. “Learfield gets to tell our story, talk about our culture and become more diverse. And one thing we didn’t expect is that our employees have a real sense of pride that we’re doing this.”

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