MY STORY

I’m a Chicago grown and New York-based former Division I Women’s Basketball player turned social entrepreneur, facilitator, podcaster, and DE&I advocate whose world crashed when I was forced to retire from basketball prematurely due to injury. Determined to prevent other athletes from feeling the confusion that I felt after it was time to leave the game behind; after graduating with my MBA in 2014, I began my career in collegiate player development where I worked to prepare student-athletes for lives of leadership and service beyond sport.

The lessons I learned and the people I met participating in collegiate athletics as an athlete and working in collegiate athletics as an administrator has shaped who I am as a person and as a professional.

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Throughout my career in player development, I held roles as the Director of Student-Athlete Affairs at Texas Tech University and as the Lead Athletic Academic Advisor at Loyola University Chicago where I was responsible for overseeing strategy development and the execution of their student-athlete services departments. In my role, I drove the creation and implementation of leadership academies, career combines, brand workshops, and civic service initiatives that were designed to provide student-athletes with the personal, professional, and financial resources they needed to thrive in life post sport.

After recognizing the impact that my work could have beyond the college campus, in 2017 I decided to start my company, Chicago Tribune Big Idea Award-Winning, Elle Grace Consulting, LLC.

Elle Grace was a consulting firm that worked alongside organizations to provide coaching, develop curriculum, and facilitate training designed to help athletes transition into careers in corporate America or into careers as entrepreneurs once their playing days concluded. 

I was fortunate to operate Elle Grace for a few years before ultimately making the decision to close the business and embark on a new journey.

Determined to accumulate the resources and knowledge necessary to impact historically excluded entrepreneurs not just in Chicago, but around the world, I ventured back into corporate America and leveraged my passions for DE&I advocacy, operations, and brand management to help one of Chicago’s largest contracting companies, Walsh Construction, develop and execute their first-ever M/WBE partnership strategic plan, which would be a key component for the $5BN O’Hare Modernization RFP, the largest RFP in the city of Chicago’s history at that time.

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During my time at the Walsh Group, I served as a M/WBE Business Specialist and oversaw the JV prospecting, brand positioning, and workforce development proposals of over 25 minority-owned-construction businesses who were all working to create work opportunities for over 200,000 unemployed Chicago citizens. 

After the O’Hare 21 Modernization RFP concluded, I moved to New York City where I combined my love for strategy, process improvement, and operational efficiency with my entrepreneurial acumen to earn my first job in the tech space. 

In 2020, I joined Oscar Health Insurance as the new Deputy Chief of Staff to the CEO. Oscar Health insurance is considered a disruptor in the healthcare industry due to its innovations in telemedicine, healthcare-focused technological interfaces, and transparent claims pricing systems. In preparation for one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of 2021, I was responsible for operationalizing the Office of the CEO, overseeing board-related initiatives and events, and driving multiple org-wide strategic workstreams.

Unfortunately, like so many other people, in 2021 I was required to pivot professionally as a result of the pandemic but was fortunate enough to be able to combine my love for media, process improvement, and diversity, equity, and inclusion advocacy into a new leadership role at Twitter, Inc., one of the largest public conversation platforms in the world.

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In my current role as the Lead for Curation Standards (Representation & Inclusion) at Twitter I’m responsible for creating and driving initiatives that help Twitter improve its global processes, policies, programs, and approaches to including diverse and underrepresented voices in its curated content (e.g. Twitter Trends, Moments, Events, etc.). More specifically, I support and advise Twitter’s global Curation team (which covers 16+ markets and 5+ languages) on content diversification and inclusion strategies while assisting with the development and implementation of training, coaching, and curation best practices, including the Curation Style Guide. 

When I’m not working, I’m active in my community as a consultant and facilitator and currently serve as the Lead Program Facilitator for Tech Town Detroit’s STEM Entrepreneurial Excellence Program (STEEP) and the Lead Program Facilitator for Tech Founder Academy’s “Five Weeks to Founder” program.

STEEP, sponsored by TechTown Detroit, is a 10-month business incubator program for Black/African American women entrepreneurs who are striving to increase growth, measurable sustainability, and capital investment in their businesses.

Tech Founder Academy is a virtual incubator experience that takes Black women tech founders at various stages of business development and helps them launch and scale their businesses.

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