Risa Isard

Risa Isard (she/her) specializes in advancing equity with and for girls and women, LGBTQ+ people, BIPOC folks, and others in and through sport. Her career in sports spans pro and college teams, sports policy, and thought leadership. She has developed partnerships with professional ninja athletes, directed the premier national event for increasing access to youth sports, launched a first-of-its-kind online portal for community leaders, founded a farmer’s market at professional baseball games, hosted a celebrity soccer challenge, authored fortune cookies, and more. Risa graduated cum laude from Duke with a specialized degree in “Social Change at the Intersection of Culture, Gender, and Sports.” A long-time advocate of using sports for social change, Risa is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sport Management from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts. She has written for Sports Business Journal, AdWeek, Global Sport Matters, Quartz, espnW and elsewhere.