Former WNBA participant runs franchisee Flynn Wendy’s

However 85% of the league’s gamers aren’t chosen as All-Stars—and regardless of the rising sponsorship alternatives in ladies’s sports activities, many gamers nonetheless should determine what comes after their skilled careers. Rasheeda Clark is a former WNBA participant who has discovered excellence off the courtroom, in a really completely different subject: fast-food franchising.

Clark performed D1 basketball at Pepperdine, performed for USA Basketball, and was drafted within the WNBA’s third spherical in 2001 (she’d been anticipated to be a first-round choose, however suffered an harm her senior yr). Between 2001 and 2003, she performed for 3 WNBA groups—the Portland Fireplace, the Charlotte Sting, and the Connecticut Solar. Her time of play coincided with a change in fortunes for the WNBA as groups started folding following monetary restructuring of group possession. Of these three groups, solely the Connecticut Solar continues to be round—though Portland’s new WNBA franchise will begin play in 2026 with the identical title in homage to the town’s first.

Clark’s accidents—and the WNBA’s low participant salaries, round $37,000 on the time, she says—finally led her to depart the game. She began trying elsewhere for the satisfaction she bought from basketball’s teamwork and management alternatives. As an athlete, she felt she was generally at a drawback breaking into the enterprise world; whereas her fellow college students have been interning and exploring job gala’s, she had been coaching and touring for video games. She bought into retail operations, after which was chosen for PepsiCo’s famed administration coaching program, which helped her achieve extra formal expertise—her enterprise model of “coaching camp.”

Right now she is the president of Flynn Wendy’s, the Wendy’s phase of the biggest franchisee operator within the U.S. She oversees greater than 300 Wendy’s places, nearly 10,000 workers—and $724 million in annual gross sales. She’s one among seven presidents throughout the Flynn Group, which additionally runs franchising operations for Applebee’s, Arby’s, Panera, Pizza Hut, Planet Health, and Taco Bell.

Put up-retirement, at the moment’s athletes are pursuing a variety of paths, from podcasting and sports activities commentating, to investing and startups, to teaching and group possession. Gamers are anticipating extra former athletes to work in league places of work, too. For Clark, that didn’t really feel like an possibility on the time. “It was nearly like I needed to cleanse my system of it,” she remembers. “I’d have continued to attempt to be on a group or go, ‘Perhaps I’ll give it yet another shot.’ For me, it wasn’t an possibility. However these are very viable avenues for present gamers.”

She urges companies to acknowledge athletes’ distinctive ability units—serving to those that want to enter new industries to make the soar as she did. Athletes have a “die-hard mindset,” she says. On the identical time, they know that “nobody victory is received by the person effort of 1 participant on the group,” she says. “You’re all the time collaborating, studying the roles of different gamers on the courtroom to be able to achieve success.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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MOVERS AND SHAKERS

Disney president of worldwide promoting Rita Ferro is now chair of the board of administrators for the Advert Council, succeeding YouTube VP, Americas Tara Walpert Levy. 

Lyft appointed Dana Rasmussen as chief folks officer. She most lately served because the chief folks and tradition officer at Sew Repair.

March Capital, a enterprise development agency, appointed Melissa Montan as vice chairman of platform and advertising and marketing. She most lately served as senior vice chairman at HSBC Innovation Banking.

Zum, a scholar transportation supplier, employed JoAnn Covington as basic counsel. She most lately was the chief authorized officer at Glydways.  

ON MY RADAR

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PARTING WORDS

“I don’t not care; I simply don’t carry.”

— Singer Lizzo on how her self-worth has advanced as a public determine 

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