How Sports Build Better Citizens
with Coaches Eric Reveno and Joe Kennedy
What can a basketball court teach us about being a citizen?
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa is joined by two people who have had a huge influence on civic engagement in college athletics: Coach Eric Reveno and Joe Kennedy, co-founders of The Team.
Their work began exploring how student athletes could practice civic engagement in a way that empowers them and others to create the future they want to see.
For Eric, or Rev, that question came to life in 2020, when a conversation with his players led him to launch All Vote No Play, an effort to give student athletes time and space to vote. Joe soon joined the effort, bringing his background as a college basketball coach and former Obama White House staff member. Over time, Joe, Rev, and Lisa created The Team, an organization focused on integrating nonpartisan civic and community engagement into college athletics.
In our conversation, we talk about:
Why being a great teammate can be a form of civic practice
Why athletes and coaches have a unique ability to act as trusted messengers and civic leaders on their campuses and in their communities.
Examples of accessible civic engagement, like a tailgate, pizza, and a competitive game of rock, paper, scissors.
When you don’t know exactly what to do next, sometimes the best thing you can do is just try something, and then go to the next play.
Listen to the full episode to hear how two coaches turned one simple idea into a growing movement and what sports can teach all of us about getting in the game.
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Joe Kennedy: We felt we could really engage athletes across the country to understand how to become a great teammate, how to lead, what that looks like to be a great leader, not just on the court, but off the court and in the community. Then ultimately, to be an engaged citizen and to really step into the process to try to make a difference. You don't always have to think of it as you're shifting at such a macro level. Through a lot of the programming we've done, it's really about what do you care about? What are those small steps that you can immediately take to make a difference, maybe in your locker room, on your campus?
That's really important.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
Today, we're continuing our season on Civic Futures by exploring the relationship between sports and civic engagement with Coach Eric Reveno and Coach Joe Kennedy. Eric and Joe are the co-founders of The Team, an organization working to make civic and community engagement an essential part of college athletics. I started working with Rev and Joe super early on this effort in 2021 to scale their work nationally.
As a futurist and former student-athlete, I couldn't help but recognize the impact that student-athletes can have on influencing stronger ties and connections. Over the years, our programs and resources have reached hundreds of thousands of student-athletes, and it's some of the work I'm most proud of. Rev is currently the men's basketball coach for Brown University and has previously coached at Stanford, Georgia Tech, and the University of Portland. Joe is the director of athletics and sports leadership at the Obama Presidential Center and former men's basketball coach at the College of the Holy Cross.
In our conversation, we talk about what sports can teach us about being good citizens, why being a great teammate might be one of the most important civic skills we can learn, and why meeting people where they are can be more powerful than telling them what they should care about. There's a lot of optimism and energy in this conversation, and I'm so excited for you to learn with Rev and Joe. Let's jump on in.
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I'm here with my coaches to talk about civic engagement, student athletics as part of Season 5 of How We Future, focused on Civic Futures.
The two of you are really just my huge inspiration for really becoming a civic catalyst, staying involved in civics, reimagining what civics means, and the work you are both doing to help athletes, coaches, the systems understand really what's possible when you bring civic engagement into the locker room is truly extraordinary. I'm absolutely thrilled to be talking to Coach Eric Reveno today, head coach of Brown University's men's basketball team, Coach Joe Kennedy, who is the director of athletics and sports leadership at the Obama Foundation.
The two of you are co-founders of The Team, which I have been very proud to be a part of, and we're going to talk about all of that and more. Welcome to How We Future.
Eric Reveno: Thanks for having us. Joe and I were just saying how you always make us sound-- we're always nervous after talking after that because your excitement and energy about who we are always feels like we're going to let you down, but we appreciate it.
Lisa: Never. Hasn't happened yet.
Joe: Absolutely great to join. It's been so much fun to listen from afar and now have a chance to be on.
Eric: To be on How We Future is big time.
Joe: This is awesome. Putting the band back together too for a second here, which is always fun.
Lisa: I love that. Putting the band back together. Okay, let's talk about when the band began, Joe. That's a great start.
Joe: When the music started.
Lisa: Yes, when the music started. Rev, as we love to call you, take us back to 2020 and what started your civic journey into this whole realm of getting student-athletes to flex their civic muscles?
Eric: Just like everybody else, we were watching the George Floyd trials during COVID. Not the trials, but the protests. We were watching everyone respond to that. We had this Zoom call, this Georgia Tech. I was at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Really amazing place to be during that time. I feel so fortunate to be there and see it unfold there. There were riots going on every night at CNN downtown, about three miles from my house where I lived at the time. Every morning I'd wake up, and I'd want to do something. I felt like, "Gosh, maybe I'll go clean up."
People like myself were going to help clean up every morning and stuff. Then it would happen again. On the second or third night, we had a Zoom call with the Georgia Tech players. We had a great moderator that went around the room and let everyone speak. Then they got to Malachi Rice, and they asked him, what do you think? He said, "I wonder all these guys, all these comments and all this stuff, who votes? How many of you guys actually go and vote and try to influence who our sheriff is and what's the laws around these things?"
It just moved me at a level that surprised me a little bit in terms of just my heart was broken for these players having to be concerned with things that maybe teammates of mine had to deal with. The biggest, most heartbreaking thing for me was the idea that they were going to have to then tell their children, as African Americans, their children how to handle a police stop different than I have to tell my kids. During my lifetime, 20-something years at the time in coaching, I hadn't done anything about it. I really just went to sleep just overwhelmed.
I woke up, and I said, "We've got to help these guys vote. We've got to help them engage." I woke up, and I got on Twitter, as I did at the time. I got on Twitter, and I put, "We need to have election days be off. Election day off for student-athletes. Give them the space to vote. Sign this Google sheet." I found out what a Google Form was at the time. Still don't have it down smooth. I figured it out, and I got them signed up. Over 2,000 people responded and signed up and said, "Yes, let's do it." Then that's when Joe reached out.
Joe reached out to me and said, "Hey, coach, I got a little bit of background in here." I'll let him explain that, but he-- "I got a little bit of background in this stuff. Let's try to get this organized." I think Joe knew I was a loose cannon with it, but I was really just motivated. It was motivated by me just trying to be a better coach and a better teammate. I didn't care if it worked or not, but I swore to myself, and I told the guys through tears almost, I said, "I'm going to do something." I decided to do something. That's where I started.
Lisa: It's such an incredible story in so many ways, and a lot of what we're trying to highlight here in this season on Civic Futures is that you don't need a background in civics. You don't need to be a politician. You just need to be moved by something. Rev, your story about having this close connection with the guys on your team, giving them space to talk about who they were outside of the court and what was happening around them and how it was affecting them, and leading in being like, "Wait a minute, I can do something here. What can I do?"
Without even realizing what would come after, you just took a chance and just courageously put yourself out there. I give you so much credit. Coach Kennedy, you answered the call. Tell us about that. What was it like for you?
Joe: I was up at Holy Cross at the time coaching. Like Coach Rev and hundreds of other locker rooms across the country, we're having these conversations with our guys that are very real and raw in the moment of what they're seeing and talking about things. We weren't too sure what the season was going to look like yet, and all of those things because of COVID. We're talking about not X's and O's and pick-and-roll defense, but much deeper conversations. I think, just like Coach, I was moved by those personal connections.
Then I was moved when I saw both coaches tweet and the reaction to that from many others saying, "That's right, we do need to get involved this year." In terms of the fall of 2020, "We do need to get off the sidelines and do something." I was really moved that he put himself out there, gave him a call, said, "Coach, I spent some time in the campaigning space, in the political space. Here's a few things I've learned. Here's some people I know. There seems to be some real energy here. Why don't we try to bring in some other people to see if they can point us in the right direction?"
I had been very fortunate. I played college basketball at Northwestern. I had an opportunity to do an internship. In 2006, the coach that coached and recruited me into Northwestern, Craig Robinson, we had a conversation, and he helped mentor me to take some opportunities that were in front of me through Northwestern to go and intern then up at the Hill in DC. I interned for Senator Obama. Then that led to getting a chance to join his campaign in '07, right after we lost to Michigan State in the Big Ten tournament. Then I did two years on the campaign, mainly in the Hawkeye State out in Iowa.
Then two years in DC, working at the White House, handling our sports outreach for the White House. I had this chapter of my life before I came back to basketball and came back to coaching, of being out in the community, being an organizer, being in the political space. When Coach and I connected, I say, "I would love to bring any way my resources, some of my experiences, some of my connections." I was getting calls from buddies in the space that had a lot of questions about, "What does early voting mean? How do we vote by mail? How should we deal with our athletic director?
Are there other resources on campus?" I think we eventually, to your point too, Lisa, just putting our heads together and saying, "We're not entirely too sure what the next few steps are, but let's get going. Let's try some stuff. Let's take some action." I think collectively we decided, "All right, let's do it and see where it goes."
Lisa: Yes, I love that, Joe, because I think you were unique in having a foot in both camps. You had some experience on the Hill. You had some experience working with, at the time, Senator Obama, and then later on in the campaign, and of course, your experience as an athlete and a coach. Rev, back to you. I feel like one of the big things you learned early on was, there's this huge world of athletics and this big world of civics, and they don't talk at all. A big part of your early work was just getting them to talk to each other and helping them understand why each side needed each other, but then also being a translator between the two of them.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that was like for you, once you had that epiphany, to be like, "Okay, let's go." Then you looked around and like, "Who's going to help me?"
Eric: The epiphany and the powerful piece for me was just the idea that I did not know where I was going, but I didn't care. I just knew I had to do something. Peace of mind was going to come from me knowing I just tried this and did it, and then the blessings just came forth in terms of meeting people like yourself and Joe, and just the opportunities to actually have an impact. I just felt very fortunate. No, it was amazing because the whole process, I saw myself as a target audience. Me as a player, okay, target audience.
I was engaged, I read books, I read the news a little bit, I wasn't out of it, but I wasn't too engaged voting. Then, me as a young coach, I was a young coach who cared about the stuff, but I didn't do anything because I was so wrapped up in winning. I was so wrapped up. I wasn't my job. It wasn't like I wasn't thinking about it. Then me as an older coach, I wasn't mentoring the younger guys. I wasn't teaching, so I just tried to dive in at all phases of those, like, "How do you help these people?"
Then I realized all the resource-- even on a campus, the most frustrating thing to me is how much these people and resources exist on campus that aren't connected with athletics. It blew me away. When you reached out to those people like you, and I started doing, you started calling it the cold e-mail, just e-mailing people, they were responsive, and they said, "Oh." Next thing you know, I'm at Georgia Tech, and they're putting me on a presidential committee because getting athletics involved is a big deal. I'm on a faculty committee all of a sudden just because I cared.
I didn't have the title. I didn't care that I didn't have the title. I'd go around and grab people, and people started coming to me like I was in charge of this area, when it was nebulous who was in charge of this area. I didn't care, and didn't ask questions, and just went. Then you guys have done a great job, always have. I always have come back to because I tend to focus a lot on getting coaches to be better, but you guys do a great job of including the student-athletes, and making sure-- I deal with them all the time, so my guys are my team, are the guys I worry about that way.
You guys were always really good about trying to include the student-athletes. Their energy just multiplies whatever you give them. You can both tell stories about special athletes, and how they just helped us move things forward. They moved the whole thing forward through the NCAA. It was an amazing process.
Lisa: I think you're talking a lot, Rev, about how the system wasn't set up to support someone like you coming in and being like, "Wait a minute, you just have to add value here," and people really focused on where they were. You really enlightened that there was an opportunity. Then I think that other piece of saying, "Where's the leverage? Is the leverage in getting coaches to teach civics?" Which was a big part of what you and I were talking a lot about, but also, "How do we leverage the energy and the excitement of the athletes too?"
I want to fill in the dots, and then bring you into how The Team got started from this initial effort. Initially, Rev, just bring it back, the idea was, "Let's start with taking Election Day off from practice and play. Let's give time for the students to vote. Let's make it a thing. Let's make it a mandate. Let's call it out." You had this petition that 2,000 people signed. Then the student-athletes at the NCAA level, they took that, and they ran with it. Can you talk a little bit about what happened next?
Eric: The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, SAAC, at the D1 level, actually had a pretty significant voice, and they probably still do. They got behind it, and I pushed behind it. I got in touch with the guy who was a liaison between them and the NCAA, figured out when they were meeting. I reached out to the conference leaders of the SAAC. I was on Instagram and doing-- The first time I got on Instagram, I was doing messaging and stuff, and I was the creepy guy reaching out, calling. Then they realized I was okay, I guess, but the kids, these young leaders, got behind it, and they made it their own.
They made a rule pass. It just got its momentum on their own, and it was a rule that says, "Hey, we're going to take a day off from playing competition and have a day of civic education." They moved it because of Election Day, and every Tuesday, Election Day of every year, lecture or not, that Tuesday, they're going to take a day off to have civic education.
Some schools like Stanford, where I've been, they really embraced it, and they had a day of democracy, and so other schools and people have leaned into it differently.
I think it just comes back to just being engaged to just having-- You talk so much about designing your future and having agency. You've taught me so much about that, but that's all it is. It's like if you want to create a life where, like, for these African American athletes to tie it back to my guys on that call, if they want to have a future, if I want them to have a future, forget them. If I want their kids to have a future where they don't have to worry about police stops different than my grandkids do, then I need to do something. We can control that.
We need to get engaged to do that. That was my motivation the whole way and still is. It's just that even in these turbulent times, we can still create a future that makes our lives better. I think sometimes it's even selfish, but you can create the future that you think is going to work for you.
Lisa: By the way, I think it's great to be selfish. It's great as we learn from our mutual friend Alison Levine, working with Coach K, great to have some ego. Meaning you care about it and you want to bring your best effort forward in that, not you're always right, but you're going to try. I will say, Rev, I've designed a lot of things in my life. One of the things I'm most proud of is the Civic Drills Playbook that you and I created together, together with our buddy Sam Beskind, who we've talked about. Former student of mine.
Member of the Stanford men's basketball team, who I brought in to put student eyeballs on it to help us co-create something that would make sense to athletes. I remember saying to Sam, I said, "Your number one job is just to tell me if this bores you. If this bores you, we're done." Just because I think there's something in innovation where you say, "Fresh eyes can bring a whole new perspective," so we are aligned on what we cared about, helping these young people have agency. We were able to come in to say, "Let's just design this like a drill.
They know what a drill playbook is." You know how to drill shooting foul shots and dribbling. Coach Kenny, you really came in right on 2022. I remember you gave me a call probably about this time, and you were like, "Lisa, midterms are coming up. It's an opportunity to engage athletes. I want to get involved." Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to get deeper involved and even maybe the journey from this kind of movement that had a lot of decentralized interests to really turning it into the preeminent organization that is supporting civic engagement across all student athletics at the college level.
Joe: I think we were so fortunate. You and Coach Rev connected, and we were able to recruit you into this movement in 2021 and 2022 to start putting a whole different lens on it with your background as a futurist and your work at Stanford. You were also deeply connected to athletics and sports, and so you got the space. You were teaching student-athletes as well and could add a different level that we probably hadn't thought as much about in terms of some of the framing, and some of the language programmatically, and how to test certain things.
I think to the things that Coach Rev and I learned in our early conversation with you is the importance of designing backwards. Just having that sense of where you want to go, and then we can design backwards programmatically as well. Then also we want to design for and with the student-athletes. You're designing for and with coaches throughout the process. I think we were all at different institutions at the time. You were at Stanford, Coach Rev was at George Tech, I'm at Holy Cross.
I remember that summer of 2022 really thinking about an opportunity here, that this movement had been around for two years, put some amazing wins on the board, including organizing a call that you were so deeply involved with Stephen Curry, and Cam Brink, and Coach VanDerveer. I think we all agree we were on to something. There was real energy here. There was a need in the marketplace. No one was thinking about athletes and coaches 365 days of the year to be folks that could be civic leaders, that could be civic catalysts.
Everyone was always thinking every year, how do we try to reach young people? How do we try to reach folks that are not in the traditional political ecosystem? Not to lean in a particular direction, but just to get off the sidelines and get involved. I think as we were all wrestling with the best ways to do that, I had this thought of, "You know what, we have a moment here to put some real energy into building an organization from this organic movement. Otherwise, it might lose its steam." I feel really grateful that both you and Coach Rev, who I talked to that August and September, gave me a ton of confidence to say, "Let's take the leap of faith."
I'm not too sure exactly how to get all the steps there, but I'm going to design backwards from the idea that we want to create a nonprofit organization that supports athletes and coaches as the premier resource in nonpartisan civic and community engagement. We want to make sure that civics is a life skill that's embedded in all 2,000-plus athletic departments across the country. That's where we want to go. We want to be the other organization. We want to uplift coaches and athletes in particular to become civic leaders on their campuses.
I thought there was a great opportunity to fill that void and try to build something. We took what we had learned and took a few months to get a lot of feedback from student-athletes, Chase Griffin and Elizabeth Ford, some amazing folks, Sam Beskind, that we had all encountered and worked with, and decided to launch an organization called The Team.
It was still that central mission of how do we integrate nonpartisan civic engagement into college athletics? We thought a lot about three main pieces here, that was teammates, leaders, and citizens.
What we had learned in the two years of doing this work was that the power of being a great teammate, and how critical it is in sport, and how critical it is in our community, how critical it is in our democratic process. That we could develop programming and resources, and pathways for athletes to really practice becoming a great teammate. Then it was the idea of leaders. How can we inspire athletes to become leaders on their campuses? How can we inspire coaches to become more engaged and be leaders?
How can we inspire athletes to want to stay involved with community and civic opportunities and lead beyond their sport so when they get done playing and they're on that next stage of life, that they take this experience with The Team when they're a student-athlete, and that keeps them motivated to be a civic leader down the road. Then lastly, the citizen piece, which people don't always make that connection. They think of sport. They understand teammate a little bit. They understand sports and leadership, but I don't think folks always connect citizenship to it or the power to really take civic action.
We wanted to make that connection in our work and in our resources and our programs to really empower citizens to create the future they want, to give them civic agency, as you always talked about, Lisa. Through programming, through resources, we felt we could really engage athletes across the country to understand how to become a great teammate, how to lead, what that looks like to be a great leader, not just on the court, but off the court and in the community, and then ultimately to be an engaged citizen and to really step into the process to try to make a difference.
You don't always have to think of it as you're shifting at such a macro level through a lot of the programming we've done. It's really about what do you care about? What are those small steps that you can immediately take to make a difference, maybe in your locker room, on your campus? That's really important.
Lisa: Joe, I love adding that kind of language and vocabulary around it so people can wrap their head and also starting with where they are. Rev, this is something I really learned from you that captured my imagination when we talk about, "Oh, we're so partisan right now, and it's really hard to have conversations." We say words like "citizenship" that really can be off-putting, or "democracy" that can feel really abstract. Rev, you were like, "They're doing it every day." This idea of being a teammate, of having to work across difference, working for a purpose beyond yourself, having to come back from failure.
The idea that you have to put in reps to get better, that it takes an ecosystem to bring out your best, and that there's all these rituals involved with sport that are very much, Joe, citizening. We thank the reps. We thank each other. All these things that are happening every day that are not yet called out for the kinds of practices, Joe, and then to your point, like make people better employees down the road. Make them better parents. Make them better community members.
It turns out, Rev, you and I, because we were so early on, we were scrambling to find research, we were like, "Oh my gosh, a disengagement leads to more successful lives and that you're happier. This is a good thing." Rev, I want to bring you back in. Talk to me more. You've really continued to hold on to the importance of teaching people to be a good teammate. Tell us about some of your passion for that and some of your work around that.
Eric: I think my passion is beyond passion. It's like an obsession. I feel like the movie, like, I see dead people. Like I see teammates. I see, like, "Oh, he's being a good teammate. Oh, he's being a good--" Everything I look at, whether it was your-- Like Angela Duckworth, I think about situations and like, "Oh, that's like picking your team." Everything I think about in terms of teams and teammates. That's why I'm a coach and what makes me passionate about coaching and coaching college players.
I think the main thing is, even if you're not crazy like that, for coaches to be making that connection that Joe's talking about. Sometimes I get frustrated. I'm like, all it is is teaching someone and reminding someone not to be a schmuck. It's like, "Don't be an asshole. Be a good person, be a good citizen, be a good teammate. Support somebody else, lift them up." Could you make me look better? I could try to make you-- Not look better, but be a better person. You guys are great. Then that helps me. Then I can be a good teammate, and you want to give energy back, and all of a sudden we're a good team.
Could be selfish, and maybe it's not. To get to your goals and to be successful and to be happy, they talk about connectedness of old people and being connected to people and your friends and whatnot. That's being a teammate. People that have community and are engaged in things. I get excited about it. Then the study that you and I talked about once, this research that shows that people that are sports fans are better citizens. Basically, they're more likely to give blood. They're more likely to engage in difficult conversations.
All these things. Versus people that go to church or versus people that are fans of a team, because you go sit in a communal area and you engage with people. Like you're talking about Dolly Parton and people that go to Dollywood. They go to Dollywood. Kara Swisher was talking about how everyone who goes to Dollywood gets along. That happens a little bit at sporting events, people get along. I think universities are a great place, and as nonprofits, I think it's an obligation to pool in community and for our players.
I think, as a teacher and an educator, I think to be about winning games and connecting players and making them play connected is so powerful, but then also helping them see how that connects to the rest of the greater thing. 21-year-old male brains, not fully developed, they're focused on what's now. Once in a while, as the mentor, the adult in the room, so to speak, to broaden them and say, "Hey, a lot going on out there. How can we help? What do you guys care about?" I'm really big on asking them what they care about, where their team is, who they affiliate with.
I can get excited about teams. Being a great teammate is the highest compliment someone can give someone, in my mind. It's just a beautiful thing to be a great teammate.
Joe: I just want to add, I think one of the things that we've learned during the work of The Team the last couple of years, as we've worked on over 400 campuses and worked with nearly 300,000 athletes and coaches and administrators, is that student-athletes and coaches and teams have an ability to model that behavior in a way that's really unique in society. It's also unique on college campuses that the ability to have athletes feeling comfortable to step into their platforms, whatever that might be.
Whether that's an in-person platform or it's a digital platform, and say, "No, this is what I believe in. This is what our team believes in. This is why we're doing this service project. This is why we're going to get registered to vote. This is why we're going to support this cause." I think it is really powerful they can model that behavior. They can model the behavior of, "Hey, we're a bunch of different people from different backgrounds on a team, and we can have a shared goal. We can work together. We can work across our differences and bring all of these backgrounds together.
Yet we can move in the same direction and have this shared goal." All their abilities to model that, it's been interesting as we've done more in this space. Others are really intrigued and wanting to partner with us and try to get connected to athletes and coaches more because they can see, "Boy, this is a great model, particularly if you want to reach young people and reach young people where they're at." Athletes and coaches have a really unique platform as trusted messengers to do that.
Lisa: Totally agree with that, Joe. I'm so glad you brought that up. That was another thing that really captured my attention from both a futures and a design standpoint. So much money that goes into getting people to register to vote and all the rest. It's like eyeballs are already on these athletes. Rev, you've been huge in getting the men's basketball team to wear vote and to really use their platform for good, but not in a transactional way. I think going back to that comment I made earlier about being selfish, what I mean by, it's good for them.
College athletes are under so much pressure these days, especially with all the changes in college athletics that's really focused on individual performance and all the rest that's with NIL. To give them an opportunity to build a sense of purpose for themselves, to connect to their values, that's this idea of optimistic offense, because there's so much defense that's going on around helping student-athletes when they're not doing well. To give them the resources, like, "Why not get ahead of it and give them even more fortitude and more ways to build resilience?"
I think, Joe, that modeling can really lift all boats just because of where they sit within the campuses. Joe, I think you are collecting, and The Team is collecting more case studies that I just can't wait to get out in the world to take it down to the individual level. Maybe even we can start with one of my favorites, which is Elizabeth Ford, who was at the time the captain of the volleyball team at Penn, super passionate about civics. Again, found herself like this connective tissue. No one would really listen to her. We gave her a little bit of support.
Next thing we know, she's going into the men's basketball team. She's organizing athletes to help on Election Day to get people to the right voting places. My favorite was when we got her connected with the City of Philadelphia to speak at Vote Early Day with the mayor. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joe: Yes. What a fun day that was. I think a great example of, is it just giving a little bit of support, right? Just a little bit of that connective tissue. Here's Elizabeth Ford, who's undergrad student at Penn. She's at the biggest Vote Early event in Philadelphia, helping to hand out Wawa sandwiches, gets a chance to introduce the mayor. We got the mascots there from the Big Five. It was also such a day of fun and joy and a way that-- that's what being engaged in civics and community should look like. That should be part of the equation of these really powerful, joyful moments.
Here's Elizabeth as a student-athlete, who's been on the big stage before in her own career. She walks right up there, and is confident, and does just an amazing job introducing the mayor and stepping right into this moment. I think it was an aha moment for all of us to say, "Wait a second, Elizabeth's a rock star, and she's fantastic, but you know what? There's Elizabeth Ford's all over the country. If we can figure out ways to provide them pathways to make a difference in their community, we can't fly them all to Philly to give out Wawa sandwiches, but there's other things in their backyard. I wish we could."
There's things in their backyard where they can step in and be a leader and to be a great teammate and to elevate these moments. There just hadn't been this kind of thought process to make those connections. Elizabeth's been great. We've been so fortunate to keep her part of the team because her experience and her perspective, again, wanting to really have that student-athlete voice at the table, she's helped to build our flagship program, the Engaged Athlete Fellowship.
One of the things that's embedded in that program that we really took, from her work, from Sam Beskind, from some of the others in 2020 and 2021 was that athletes are also great by learning by doing. You give them a chance to get some reps at doing something, to get hands-on experiences, they're going to really learn how to make a difference. That was something we took and embedded in that program was that all of our athletes go and execute a community or civic project during their year in the leadership program, and they have a great opportunity to learn by doing and to see they can make a difference.
To take that step, just as Coach Rev shot the tweet out into the universe and said, "I'm going to start a Google Form and figure this out. I'm going to take a step." I think trying to empower more of the Elizabeth Fords across the country to take that step and just give them a little help, or maybe point them in the right direction, has been really powerful to see. That day in Philly will always stand out.
Lisa: Yes, that was amazing. Amazing. Joe, can you say just a little bit more about the fellowship? You just completed your third year. Now you have a little data on what some of those students have gone off to do, but tell us a little bit about what the experience is like for them. Maybe give some examples and what happens and their capstone of their experience.
Joe: This has been just such a joyful program to build and to really see the impact and to hear the impact from the athletes each year of executing the program. By the way, just as you should do as a coach and a team, we're constantly learning by doing, and getting the feedback, and adapting the program. Taking that model from what we learned with Elizabeth, this program, athletes apply to the program. We've had about 900 student-athletes apply for the program the last three years. We take roughly 40 a year.
It's really built on a few key buckets. These athletes will be engaged in virtual leadership development based on the curriculum that you utilize there at Stanford. We're so grateful to have your support and giving us that framework of how to think about leadership and how they should embrace this journey throughout the course of the nine-month program. We'll also want to get them in front of other successful individuals in the business world, in the sports world, in the nonprofit space through some virtual professional development.
I think it's always powerful for a current student-athlete to hear the journey of someone else who's a little ahead of them and to hear how they went from being on the court or on the field to where they are now in their career. Then I think a big unique part of this program is that learning by doing, that we support and mentor each of the roughly 40 athletes in the program to go do a community and civic project on their campus with a lens towards, like Coach Rev mentioned earlier, what do you care about? Where do you want to make a difference?
Is it food insecurity, and you want to do food drives across games? Do you care about wanting to provide more students with mental health resources, and you want to curate a series of panels over the course of the year? Do you want to do youth clinics for underprivileged schools near your campus? A voter registration push as well. We've had, I think, a very broad sense of civic and community involvement there that the athletes lead the charge about what they're passionate about. Then we just try to coach them on the best ways to execute an event.
Then third, as you mentioned, which we thought would be really special. You have this virtual program. We build a team across these calls and across the phone opportunities to mentor them, to then get them together in person. This has really been where some of the magic has been moving to see. I don't get a chance like Coach Rev to walk in a locker room every day and work directly with athletes, or you, Lisa, in the classroom every day where you get a chance to be with young people and track their progress on a daily or weekly basis.
For me, the opportunity to get three and a half days in DC with the student-athletes is really, really magical. We get them together, and they get a chance to meet each other in person, which is powerful. They all get a chance to do a five-minute TED Talk on what their project was, and why they chose that, and what they learned. They get questions from their teammates here. We get a chance, came up to the Hill to meet with members of Congress. We do events at some of our great partners like NBC Sports, Deloitte.
Then we hold a public forum where we get an opportunity to get a group of leaders together in the business, sports, and civic space and get a couple hundred people together to hear directly from these athletes. The whole trip, it's about the athletes being able to step into that space with the CEO of a company, or the head of government relations, or the head of a sports organization, and share their story and ask questions. Everybody gets blown away with meeting these student-athletes, which are from all different types of institutions, Division I, II, and III, HBCU institutions, Power Four schools, you name it, and everything in between.
Yet they all have this common trait that they care. They really want to make a difference. They understand what it means to be a great teammate, and they're willing to take civic action and take a step out into the universe.
Lisa: It's so cool, Joe. As you're talking, it's still early days, but I'm thinking like, "This is like the Rhodes or the Fulbright, but for athletes." Listen, employers listening to this, they should be diving into all those fellows, hire them immediately. They have more reps. They understand how to work across difference. They understand how to move something forward. What's so cool about it is that so many are building institutional programs that then they could pass on.
I know, Rev, that has always been a bit of the route that you and I have worked hard to figure out how to do, and why I know you're so passionate about helping coaches, because the students do move on, but the coaches are there. If you can change the mindset of the coaches, that this will help their players be better. This will help their teams operate more just at a higher level, and that they should build that in just like, Rev, you said, "Look, at some point we, coaches had to learn how to teach their players how to do good nutrition and financial management. We should be thinking about civics at that same level."
I wonder, Rev, if you could share just some advice for anyone listening to this, that is a coach, either formally or informally. I know a lot of parents, they're AYSO coaches or others. What's just some of your advice? Or if you could wave your magic wand of what all coaches would do in some capacity to raise the bar of some of this work?
Eric: My first advice would be just doing something you'll have an impact, you'll inspire others. Like Joe picked up the foot, you'll just do something. If the program doesn't stick or it doesn't leave-- it feels like a rock in the water that doesn't make ripples, it doesn't continue. I've done some things like that. I tried to start a Georgia coaches association and struggled with that. Different things that I've struggled. I think that's number one is just do it. Try to not tie an outcome to it. Secondly, I would say, and you and I have talked a lot about this, of being creative with the power pathways.
They're not always traditionally-- if you're on a campus, I imagine this is true in companies. You want to deal with people that give you back the energy. The three of us, one of us calls, we're going to try to do something. There's good energy. There's a lot of "want to" going on here, but when you get a call, or you send an e-mail, and you send two e-mails, and you don't hear back, move on. Go to somewhere else, go to somebody. You don't need that negativity. Even though they might have the right title, just don't get frustrated. Go to the next play. You miss that shot, go to the next play.
Shoot high first and whatever. I think that's my advice on that. I'm just thinking about Joe and the fellows. Those fellows, just them doing these programs, showing these athletes, and they're doing it. Some of these programs have stuck, I'm sure, and some are continued by other athletes, and some maybe don't. It gets athletes thinking. I think that's just the idea of doing something. I think coaches seeing this as our role on a community, on a campus. Then the other thing to tie back in what you said is just doing it. Just these fellows doing these activities, they exercise that muscle, as Lisa says.
Every one of these things I've tried to do on campuses since 2020 and tried to do, and I'll do it this fall at Brown. I got ideas, and I'm doing stuff. What I'll try, it makes me feel better. It gives me more confidence. I can walk in. It just gives me confidence, and it makes me a better person, less of a schmuck. [chuckles] It's just doing your part.
Lisa: Yes, just the courage to try. You're bringing me back to that very first All Vote No Play Day. We hosted at Stanford with our mutual friend who's been a previous guest, favorite guest on How We Future, John Tanner, the Stanford women's water polo coaches, who just embodies all the things we've been talking about and more. By the way, has 10 NCAA titles. It's not at the expense of winning, quite the opposite. It allows him to recruit better, and to keep his players, and to celebrate what they do beyond their sport. We just invented it. We just invented this day.
Thanks to your hard work, all these athletes had the day off. We didn't have classes because we were at Stanford. Like, "What do we do?" We hosted basically a big civic tailgating party for these athletes. We got Senator Cory Booker, a former football player, to give us a video talking about democracy is not a spectator sport. We got the tree, the mascot to show up. JT got tailgating by the sports cafe over there, Jimmy V's. Just like one thing after another, we were just almost giggling. We're like, "They said yes, and now it's happening." We had over 200 athletes there.
I think we had the largest game of rock, paper, scissors tournament ever. Definitely at the d.school, pound for pound, the most athletic people we've ever had at one time, from wrestlers to football players to fencers to sailors. It was good for them. They were just coming back from COVID, and it was amazing.
Eric: Because you did that, and you muscled that thing through, and you guys had fun, and John Tanner supported it, and he paid for the sandwiches, I think, or you guys just got it done, Stanford Athletics paid for the last one because you did that first one. Now that's become something at Stanford that they think of it as All Vote No Play. The sports part of it is part of Democracy Day at Stanford, and they've got high expectations. Now different people have stepped up in different ways to get that going. It just takes that first effort.
I think you did such a great job, your optimism, and making it fun, and just trying to make it fun. That's where Joe and I talked about trying to meet these athletes where they are. Sometimes the default of going to a PowerPoint and heavy dose on the information. We had this, the all-in college campus democracy folks. If I said that right, Joe, I still don't get it right. Anyways, the great people there. Those folks, all of a sudden, they got all this information, you want to give it to them. Athletes are moving in small bite-sized things as students.
Anyone who has a college student just knows how busy they are. Meeting them where they are, designing things for where they are. Again, I listened to your other podcast with Angela Duckworth about just designing it so that instead of asking them to be tougher and more this or more that, but just design a situation for them where it's easy, it's fun. Then all of a sudden they're engaged a little bit, and they're seeing the benefits, and they spark that interest. I think it's great.
Lisa: Super powerful. It has viral impacts. That, of course, inspired the next year when we did the virtual tailgate, Joe, as you were talking about with Cameron Brink and Coach Tara VanDerveer, and we got Stephen Curry and others. The thing that was so cool about that, first of all, a student run, which was amazing. The other is that we then telecast it, and we had Pizza to the Polls donate pizza to all of these team watch parties. That was another invention that we put on the map that didn't happen before. Then the next year there was like 10,000 students.
Just extraordinary that you have to be a little courageous, a little creative, and then it takes off on itself.
Eric: Sam Beskind pushed that one through, right? Sam called Dr. Rice and all those things.
Lisa: He did such a good job. He really did. Maybe that's a great segue, Joe, to one of the last questions I have for you, which is we're intentionally doing this during what will no doubt be another busy fall of civic engagement, and we're wanting to put bright spots on there. Tell us some of the plans that The Team has for this fall, and how you're excited to engage athletes, and what's to come.
Joe: Every year we are executing different programs and events and wanting to continue to curate resources that are connecting with student-athletes. Certainly, in what we would think of as these even-year moments, they become even more magnified as we think of particularly voter participation and the opportunity to get more young people engaged. We know that registration rates are not as high as some other cohorts. The participation isn't as high as some other cohorts, and yet so many decisions that get made in our democracy through our representative process, you're electing these leaders to represent you and to help make these decisions, and it's going to affect their lives in such a big way, right?
So many of these future decisions. I think there's great opportunity for, again, these athletes to model the behavior and to use their platforms and to be trusted messengers. We really think of it through three main lenses, that we have athletes as leaders, athletes as organizers, and athletes as influencers. Our fellowship program, which is our flagship every year, is an opportunity for athletes to develop those leadership skills, which is, even though it's a year-long program, they'll be doing a lot this fall across campuses, and we've got another cohort of 39 fellows from across the country.
If we think of athletes as organizers, we'll be organizing another virtual all-star meeting this fall, so we'll make sure to share that out with folks here that are listening in to the podcast. We get it out to campuses across the country, still hammering out the details, but likely in late October around early voting. We'll have an opportunity to curate another national moment, the civic tailgating, hundreds of campuses coming together for pizza and a chance to have a positive hour, to hear from other athletes and coaches and folks.
Give their perspective on what it means to get in the game and to get off the sidelines. That'll be a fun moment for organizing. We're always thoughtful around organizing around All Vote No Play Day and providing free resources. That's the other thing we've tried to do through the work of The Team, is what we provide out to the college athletic space, it's free. It's there for the taking. It's for folks to utilize, and to, as you would always say, Lisa, how can we have it be hit the easy button? This is the simplest path to take here, and yet we're going to support them across that journey.
Then third is athletes as influencers. Athletes have a platform. Particularly in some of the changes that have happened at the collegiate level, their platforms only continue to expand. Wanting to support athletes that do want to lean in with that positive message, whether it's around what's on your ballot, get registered, do you know in your state when you can early vote, here are some great Get Out the Vote resources. All of those important moments. I think we want to be strategic and working with some other partners in the civic space to make sure that athletes and coaches at the collegiate level are at the table.
They have a platform. They've got a voice. Part of our theory of the case is they can drive civic action, particularly on college campuses in a way that others just can't do. They don't have the capacity. They don't have the reach. They don't have the platform. It isn't just thinking about at those major schools. It's across college campuses. Division I, II, and III. Big, medium, small. Athletes and coaches can model that behavior. They have that platform. They are a trusted voice. I think this falls another great opportunity to empower them to drive civic action.
I think I'll finish that with a few years now of doing programming and seeing the growth of some of the student-athletes that have come through our fellowship, or seeing where Elizabeth Ford is and her trajectory and others, it gives me confidence in the future. If we've got more former student-athletes walking the halls of Congress, we've got them in local government. We have them running nonprofits, leading businesses, and in those different spots across our society where those student-athletes can take those experiences they had in the locker room, those experiences on the court and field, and translate it to make a difference in these other sectors.
I'm so excited to see the future of where these athletes go and how they continue to be those changemakers that we've already seen during their journey with The Team. That's something that gives me a lot of optimism and confidence about our future is we're going to hopefully support, in any small or big way, a whole new generation of great teammates, and great leaders and empowered citizens through this work, and that gets me excited every fall.
Lisa: Oh my gosh, what's not to be excited about that, Joe? Thank you so much for sharing that. Coach Rev, Coach Kennedy, I am just so glad that you joined us for this Civic Futures conversation. What you're doing is so resonant to why I started How We Future to begin with, that we can all future with hope, with hype, with gratitude, and that we all have it to bring. Once we feel it, it becomes just magnetic. We want more of it. We want to share more of it. It lifts all boats. It's exciting to see the kind of investment that you both are making in our next generation of citizens, of teammates, and of leaders.
I'm just so grateful for your friendship, for your effort, and to be a part of this journey with you.
[music]
Eric: Oh, thank you. Always great to be with you.
Joe: Thank you so much, Lisa. So grateful for all the work you do and for the friendship and mentorship here. It means the world.
Lisa: I always have such a blast with Rev and Joe, and I'm so inspired by their dedication to using athletics to create more engaged citizens and leaders. I also really love the idea that being a good teammate is, in and of itself, a form of civic practice. Here's an invitation from this conversation. Think about where you already have a team and think about what you already know how to do. Then ask yourself, where could I bring those skills to my community? Be sure to check out all of the actionable, amazing resources we've created at theteam.org, including the Voter Captain Guide we talked about.
I'll include even more links on my How We Future Substack, so be sure to subscribe. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share with someone and leave a comment or rating. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and I'll see you next time on How We Future.
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