Episode 181: Risa Isard on Intersection of Culture, Gender and Sport

Risa Isard is a sports industry veteran and policy expert. She specializes in advancing equity with and for girls and women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and others in and through sport. Her career in the sports industry spans professional and college sports, sports policy, and nonprofit thought leadership. She has developed partnerships with professional ninja athletes, hosted Billie Jean King in an on-stage conversation, directed the premier national event for increasing access to youth sports, co-authored and edited foundational research reports, established community-based partnerships to support sport leaders across the country, launched a first-of-its-kind online portal for community leaders, founded a farmer’s market at professional baseball games, run a baseball league for people with special needs, hosted a celebrity soccer challenge, authored fortune cookies, and more. She is the former associate director of thought leadership for national nonprofit KABOOM!, former project director for the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program, and former community relations coordinator for a minor league baseball team. She’s also been on staff at Brandi Chastain’s nonprofit organization, Duke University women’s basketball, and the Phoenix Mercury. Risa has presented at South by Southwest (SXSW), Spotlight: Health at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Surgeon General’s Innovation Summit, the University of Pennsylvania's Law School Sports Symposium, the North American Society for Sport Management, and elsewhere. She has written for Sports Business Journal, AdWeek, Global Sport Matters, Quartz, espnW and elsewhere. Risa graduated cum laude from Duke with a specialized degree in “Social Change at the Intersection of Culture, Gender, and Sports,” simultaneously receiving honors for her original research thesis on the pre-history and early years of Title IX (1969-1975). A long-time advocate of using sports for social change, Risa is a Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Inclusion and Diversity in Sport at UMass, where she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sport Management from the Isenberg School of Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @RisaLovesSports. Questions include: What sparked your interest in the study of sport and culture? What research topics are you currently diving into? Recently, you organized a panel at the Female Athlete Conference. Would you mind sharing with folks the purpose behind this panel? What do you believe are some actionable steps we can take to increase the participation of female leaders in sports as athletes and as women working in sports? We are currently in the middle of the Olympic Games and soon the Paralympic Games will take place. What do you feel we can learn about sport and culture through watching these athletes? In what ways have you seen teams and athletes use sport as a platform for bringing awareness to social justice issues? Why do you believe sport is an avenue for social change?