Her Story
About Shaniya
I'm currently serving as the assistant to the athletic director at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, where I'm also the Director of Basketball Operations for women's basketball. This is my second year in a NCAA internship position funded through the Pathway of Excellence Grant (previously called the Ethnic and Women Internship Grant), which provides Division III schools with two years of support. My day-to-day work is never typical in athletics because you never know what's going to come up. I work closely with sports information, making graphics and writing stories when needed. I support the athletic director with whatever she needs, and during basketball season, I'm coaching the girls, recruiting, looking at film, and breaking up film. In the off-season, I work on various administrative projects like our upcoming athletic banquet. Before landing this role, I completed a six-month internship at Wake Forest University in athletics, working with the annual funding side under the development department. I've also gained experience as an assistant boys basketball coach and working at the YMCA. My journey into athletic administration wasn't straightforward. I'm a former college athlete who competed in both basketball and track, and I initially had aspirations to be a physical therapist. I even worked as a CNA in healthcare, including in mental health, which I believe has made me more well-rounded and helped me transfer valuable skills into college athletics, especially given how important mental health conversations are in sports now. Getting into college athletics is hard, so just getting my foot in the door and achieving this position as assistant to the athletic director is an achievement in itself, especially considering the work I put in to get here. My end goal is to become an athletic director at the college level, and every position I'm taking is pushing me toward that goal.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Shaniya
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say the support from my family. I'm a first-generation college student, so that just explains a lot in itself. I'm the first one in my family to go to college. Just like with everything I've achieved so far, none of it would have been possible without the sacrifices of my family. For me, my family is part of my purpose, seeing how hard I can work or seeing how far I could go to potentially help them one day. That's part of what keeps pushing me.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received, which I've heard repeatedly at conventions, is to never shrink myself in bigger rooms. Being young in this career, I've learned not to be afraid to speak up. That's probably the main piece of advice that stands out to me and that I hear repetitively.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to keep going and don't give up. I feel like a lot of people, even in conversations I have with some athletes now, talk about just being tired, overwhelmed, or sometimes wanting to quit. I would just say keep going, and you have to find that one thing that will drive you and give you purpose. If you feel lost right now on what your purpose is, I feel like that's just what's going to keep pushing you. Like, for me, it would be my family and seeing how hard I can work or seeing how far I could go to potentially help them one day. So that's part of my purpose, and that's part of what I would tell them. Especially coming from a small town, where usually everyone just stays home, I want to give younger women of color that confidence to continue to venture out and work hard to get to where they want to be.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say the biggest challenges are adjusting to the new generation. Sports, even college sports and high school sports, is just so different now than it was even just a few years ago, mainly because of NIL being employed. It's affected sports in a good way, and some people think it's affected sports in a bad way. The mental health part is also a big topic, because back then, that wasn't really a conversation in sports, or athletes weren't comfortable speaking up about it, but now athletes are. So I feel like the mental health aspect with the NIL are two hot topics that are always arising. On the opportunities side, I would say the progression and how everything is continuing to grow. Nothing in sports is staying stagnant. We're having a lot of younger people get into director positions, so they're bringing fresher experience and viewpoints.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Faith, loyalty, and respect have to be my top three, in that order. These values guide both my work and personal life.
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