HENDERSON, Nev. — Sandra Douglass Morgan wasn’t sure what to say. As the population grew in Las Vegas in the 1980s, her school district rezoned and she had to move to a different elementary school. During the enrollment process, the school asked for her race for its records. She looked to her father Gilbert, who’s Black, and her mother Kil Cha, who’s Korean, for insight on how to answer. They each gave the same response.
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“Both my parents were like, ‘You’re Black,'” Douglass Morgan said in a sitdown interview with The Athletic last month. “We didn’t create the laws that talked about one drop of Black blood makes you Black, right? I do identify as Black, but I definitely love and support my Korean heritage. What both of my parents taught me was, obviously, the importance of hard work and resilience.”
Gilbert enrolled in the Air Force in the 1960s, a decade defined by racial strife, and Kil Cha immigrated to the United States as a first-generation Korean American. As much insight as Douglass Morgan gained from learning about their respective experiences, she was also impacted by the challenges she observed firsthand.
Douglass Morgan saw what Gilbert went through as a Black man navigating a country that continued to be plagued by systemic racism. She also saw people assume Kil Cha couldn’t understand what they were saying and talk down to her just because English wasn’t her first language, and question how Douglass Morgan and her older sister Sonya could be her daughters. Their response to it all, and their advice to their daughters, was poise.
“Just ignore them. Don’t listen to them,” Douglas Morgan said. “Those are things that I think definitely resonated with me as a child to make sure that I wouldn’t be treating people differently.”
Douglass Morgan was raised to believe people should be judged for who they are, not what they look like, how they sound or where they come from. That carried with her throughout nearly two decades of work as an attorney and businesswoman. She didn’t live that way in pursuit of a reward — she just wanted to be a good person — but it’s something that’s helped her elevate in her career.
Earlier this year, the Raiders found themselves in need of someone with her blend of acumen and character to take over as their top executive. In May, owner Mark Davis fired former president Dan Ventrelle after he reported the franchise to the NFL for wide-ranging accusations, including a hostile workplace environment, financial irregularities and racial and gender discrimination. That came just 10 months after former president Marc Badain was forced to resign in July 2021 due to financial irregularities, so the Raiders had parted ways with two presidents in less than a year. In July, Davis hired Douglass Morgan to replace Ventrelle as president in an effort to steady the ship.
HERSTORY.
The Raiders have hired Sandra Douglass Morgan as their new team president, the team announced.
She becomes the first Black female team president in @NFL history.
📸 @Raiders https://t.co/N82PlyqcGB pic.twitter.com/t0UAlx3o7R
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) July 7, 2022
“In any business, especially in this world of football and sports, stability is so important,” Marcel Reece, the former Raiders fullback who now works as the team’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer, said in a phone interview last month. “We had that for a long time with Marc Badain and we have it again with Sandra Douglass Morgan. She is stability. She just has that way about her, that presence about her, that aura about her.”
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Douglass Morgan also made history as the first Black woman to become a president in league history. It was met with a fair amount of praise, but also skepticism about whether it was merely a public relations move to draw attention away from the issues that Ventrelle raised. The Raiders reject that notion.
“My thought never went to, ‘Oh, she’s the first Black female president,'” Reece said. “My thought was, ‘We just hired the best person.'”
“We talked to a number of qualified candidates,” Davis said at Douglass Morgan’s introductory news conference in July, “but one person kept coming to the top of the list.”
Others pondered whether Douglass Morgan was qualified for the job as someone who’d never worked in the NFL. In response, Douglass Morgan drew back to the lessons her parents instilled in her.
“You just can’t listen to the noise. You really can’t,” she said. “What people don’t realize is most of the time it’s the reverse: If you are the first, that means that I’ve probably been vetted by more people than most because they know it’s going to bring more attention. And I’ve also worked very hard to get to where I am. You see some comments about, ‘Oh, this was for some other reason.’ I’ve been underestimated my whole life.
“It’s a shame that someone thinks because you look a certain way that you must not be qualified, not realizing that usually I work twice as hard just to even be given an opportunity. I’m no longer wasting time or energy trying to defend myself. My obligation is going to be to the Raiders and to Mark Davis and to the fans, and that’s what I’ll focus on.”
Douglass Morgan was born on Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Mo., but Las Vegas became home when her father was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in the early 1980s. Her father was in the military, her mother worked in the gaming industry and her older sister went on to pursue a career in education, but while she did well in school — she earned a spot in the United States Presidential Scholars Program — she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do when she enrolled at the University of Nevada in the mid-1990s. She majored in political science and communication, but she was more focused on figuring out who she was as a young woman.
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“I think it’s just a process,” Douglass Morgan said. “Thinking about what I stood for. What was important to me. How was I being treated in a predominantly White institution and community, especially at that time. What I wanted to fight for. Who I wanted to advocate for. Who I wanted to align myself with, right? That all happens during your collegiate years.”
As an underclassman, Douglass Morgan felt like an outsider. She stuck to her close-knit group of friends and didn’t do much besides go to class. Entering her junior year, though, she felt the need to make a change. In an effort to make Nevada more inclusive, she joined the programming board, helped found a chapter for Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority, and coordinated with Black students, athletes and organizations to improve their experience.
“There were some things there that I didn’t like, and I didn’t like hearing about or seeing,” Douglass Morgan said. “It wasn’t until my junior and senior year of college where I was like, ‘OK, if we’re not happy or feel like we’re not being seen, we need to be a part of the process.'”
That’s also when she discovered what was next for her. Her interest was piqued in a constitutional law class and, after lengthy conversations with UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law dean Frank Denard, she enrolled there in 1999.
Three years into the program, she landed her first job as a clerk for the Parker Nelson law firm. After graduating in 2003, she made a rapid climb: She was hired as the litigation attorney for The Mirage casino resort in 2005, and became the North Las Vegas city attorney in 2008, which made her the first Black person in Nevada history to have that title.
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“Those three instances are all very different,” Douglass Morgan said, “but they’ve all allowed me to grow my skill set, learn more about people and learn more about organizational culture, which I think eventually led me here.”
Getting here also required Douglass Morgan to diversify her portfolio. In 2016, she left her city attorney position to enter the business world as the director of external affairs for AT&T. She also joined the Nevada athletic and gaming commissions and, in 2019, stepped away from her role with AT&T when she was appointed as the chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which made her the first Black person to hold that position.
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After helping navigate through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, she resigned from her position in the fall of 2020 to serve on boards for various businesses, including Caesars Entertainment, Fidelity Investments, Allegiant Airlines and Cerberus Cyber Sentinel. In 2021, she became legal counsel for Covington & Burling LLP law firm, started her own consulting service and was named vice chair of Las Vegas’ committee for Super Bowl LVIII. She feels the blend of legal, business and political positions on her resume made her a more well-rounded individual.
“I was able to gain a little bit more experience on why decisions were made and what makes businesses more profitable,” Douglass Morgan said. “And then definitely as I got more into board service — as I serve on some public company boards right now — it gave me greater insight as to looking at the financial obligations of a company and how to raise revenue and different audit requirements and making sure that the risk is low, but we can still have good return on investments.”
With her success growing, Douglass Morgan leaned on her family and friends to keep herself in check. With their help, she ensured that she remained the same person.
“Look, we all have to look ourselves in the mirror every day, right?” Douglass Morgan said. “So, it’s making sure that you’re making good, ethical decisions, not only for your day job but for your family as well.”
Shortly after her most recent transition, Douglass Morgan met Mark Davis last year. As the Raiders navigated executive turnover, they kept in touch. When Davis approached Douglass Morgan about the job this spring and she started to meet others within the organization, she made a strong impression.
“Right away you can tell she is a strong, extremely intelligent person and woman,” Reece said. “She’s the type of woman that demands your respect without ever saying a word.”
The Raiders were sold but, naturally, Douglass Morgan had some reservations given what had recently transpired with the franchise. Davis’ response ultimately made her comfortable taking the job.
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“He said, ‘Look, if there’s something that we’re doing, I want you to talk to people — current employees, former employees — and do whatever due diligence you think is necessary. And if there’s something that we need to address, then let’s address it,'” Douglass Morgan said. “So, his willingness to be so transparent about it and say, ‘We’ll give you what you want to look at, whether it be financial information or other allegations. Here. Go ahead and go for it,’ that was very refreshing.
“It could’ve been, ‘Well, that’s in the past. Let’s just focus on what you want to do in the future,’ but he was willing to say, ‘Look, I’m an open book. I’ll tell you what I know, but I also encourage you to talk to other people as well.’ That was a very good sign from the beginning.”
Before the season, Douglass Morgan attended an informal event the Raiders hosted at Allegiant Stadium for suite and season ticket holders. She’d already talked extensively about the significance of her becoming the first Black woman to be an NFL president, but the impact at that point still felt intangible to her. It didn’t register until a man at the gathering walked up to her.
“Hey, we’ve been season ticket holders in Oakland, we’re happy to be in Las Vegas and I’m just really happy to meet you because my daughter for the first time said, ‘Hey, I can be the president of the Raiders,'” Douglass Morgan remembered him saying. “At that point, even though it was just a casual conversation, it really hit me that this is much bigger than myself.
“It’s just giving people that hope and visibility and optimism that this is something that’s attainable. … And so, if me even talking to you today allows one person, one girl, one woman to think, ‘OK, I didn’t know that was a position that’s something that I could strive for,’ then that’s the goal I think in life: To continue to pay it forward.”
Reece, who has a daughter, is someone else who appreciated Douglass Morgan helping pave the way for women everywhere. Additionally, he thinks it can have an impact within the league and the business world collectively.
“When you have a society that is broken, you have to have positive disruption,” Reece said. “When the league is not hiring Black coaches and we get only a sprinkle of diverse general managers and all of the sudden we have the most prominent football franchise and the highest business executive position is available and the right person is of a diverse background and you make the hire with no hesitation, that is positive disruption to let the rest of this league and the rest of corporate America know that leaders look different.”
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Providing high-level opportunities to those from underrepresented groups isn’t new to the Raiders franchise. Late owner Al Davis hired Tom Flores, who’s Hispanic, as head coach at a time when there weren’t many coaches of color, period. He later made Art Shell the first Black head coach in modern NFL history and went on to hire Amy Trask as CEO. For Mark Davis, this is a continuation of a sizable part of his father’s legacy.
“Unfortunately, our society hasn’t operated that way or under those rules and guidelines for our lifetime, but the key to making that happen and making that the new norm is right at the top,” Reece said. “Once the top starts to look different, once the top has diversity and inclusion involved in it, then everything else falls in place. Because when you have someone that has been through things, that has been discriminated against, that respects others for their differences, then that gives them the ability to hire people that look different and that come from different backgrounds. Because diversity, equity and inclusion is so much bigger than just Black and White; it has to do with everything. When you start to be diverse at the top across all of society, not just at the Raiders, not just in the NFL, but across all of society, that’s when the rank and file will start to fall in place.”
Washington Commanders president Jason Wright, in an interview in May before the hirings of Douglass Morgan and Denver Broncos president Damani Leech, agreed that the issues go far beyond the NFL.
“It’s not like we see a bunch of Black CFOs and CEOs running around corporate America right now,” Wright said. “This is a more systemic issue that extends well beyond sports. It’s just especially stark because nearly 70 percent of the guys on the field are Black men. So, it feels more stark, but the reality is there is a pervasive disbelief in our society in Black intellect. You can run the ball, you can jump, you can sing, maybe dance, maybe do some art, maybe we can even be an academic or an activist, but do we have the intellectual capacity to run a business or shape policy or things like that? Eh, there’s a lack of belief there.
“And I think some of it is subconscious. Some of it is very subconscious. I don’t think people are sitting there like, ‘Oh, I think all Black people are dumb.’ But I do think that mindset is there because I have felt … that there’s a double burden of proof on you as a Black executive. You have to prove your intellect twice as much as other folks and your bona fides and your resume actually has to get you in the door rather than get you the job. That’s a real thing. Most of us are overqualified for the roles in which we take because that’s how hiring practices typically work. So, I think it’s a bigger issue. … It’s the same way anybody starts to drop their biases: They encounter an example that is contrary to the bias. And if we are successful as a business, we will counter that bias.
Douglass Morgan doesn’t just want to be a symbolic figurehead; her aim is to become a funnel that spreads diversity throughout the business operations side of the organization of which she’s now in charge. On that front, the Raiders were already in a pretty good place. Of the four highest-ranking business executives underneath Douglass Morgan — general counsel Justin Carley, chief sales officer Qiava Martinez, chief financial officer Michael Crome and Reece — three are minorities. On the lower levels, Douglass Morgan hired two more in vice president of events Priscilla Almeida and vice president of human resources Heather DeSanto. She’s also created an open position for a diversity, equity and inclusion director. And it’s not just for the look: It’s all part of her plan to build the best operation possible.
“I’m not looking at them because of their race; it’s because of their skill set. Knowing that people of color weren’t given as much of an opportunity, I think it’s great if I can help encourage that throughout the organization,” Douglass Morgan said. “It’s not just a, ‘Oh, we’re going to hire people of color,’ or, ‘Oh, we’re going to focus on hiring women.’ I wish that people understand that. I think people in that DEI space understand that it’s really about looking at the organization as a whole and seeing what other opportunities there are throughout to make things better.”
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Douglass Morgan’s other focuses include culture building and avoiding repeating past mistakes in that area, aligning the organization on the same page, expanding the Raiders’ sponsorships, partnerships and visibility, and continuing to weave the Raiders into the fabric of the Vegas community going into their third calendar year in the city. It’s been a lot to juggle, but Douglass Morgan, her husband and former NFL player Don Morgan and their children, Dylan and Dana, are enjoying their new place within the Raiders family.
“Every day is something different, you know what I mean?” Douglass Morgan said. “The family definitely knows that Sunday or game days is something that we’re all going to participate in, which they all love. And I’m lucky for that. My husband’s an athlete. My kids love sports. So, that’s something that we can definitely do together. … It’s just been great to have a good family that can support this.”
Douglass Morgan is only five months into her tenure. She’s understandably still figuring things out, and she’s still soaking in that she’s made it to this point in the first place.
“I don’t think it’s really hit me yet, to be honest with you. When the announcement happened, I was like, ‘Wow, this is happening,’ but I almost felt like I was watching myself go through it,” Douglass Morgan said. “I know I’ve been asked, ‘Was this a dream come true for you?’ And it is now, but it wasn’t a dream that I could even think could be imaginable. Not even attainable, but imaginable because growing up in Las Vegas there was never a professional sports team.
“So, the ability to lead and be the president of a sports team — not any sports team, the Raiders — is something that is quite surreal. I’m still kind of pinching myself every day that I’m privileged to have it.”
(Top photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today)
