50 women who have made a positive difference to me - Danita Johnson

2022 - On the?50th?anniversary of Title IX, I have been and will continue to shine?a?light on?50?women who have been amazing teachers, thereby affecting my?sports?career as well as the careers of other?women and men in sport.

Danita Johnson:?Ticket sales can lead to the top. ?

When I started recruiting in the late 80s, the best candidates for major league team leadership positions were people who successfully sold tickets for minor league teams, particularly those located in major league markets.?The theory was that if they could sell tickets for minor league clubs, then they could certainly generate a lot of money for major league teams in the same geography. ?From there “the sky would be the limit.”

Danita Johnson was the first woman to prove this out, and I was privileged to watch it happen.

Danita and I first got together in 2013.?She had been diligently honing her craft for nine years in the minors.?Danita had jumped between teams in the WNBA and the NBA’s development league, managing both community relations and ticket sales. ?When we met, she was the Director of Ticket Sales for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, which shared an arena with the Washington Wizards.??The WNBA’s LA Sparks, another women’s team in the shadow of a men’s NBA team, then hired her as Senior Vice President of Business Operations.?And then our paths crossed again.?The LA Clippers asked Danita to be a “Director of Business Development working on special projects and overseeing the Team President of the Clippers’ NBA Development League team”. ??I asked her “What the devil does all that mean?”

Maybe it was the job’s ambiguity or maybe it was because she was within the eyesight of Gillian Zucker, another woman president who has risen from the minors to the majors, but Danita came to life before my eyes.?We met to discuss candidates for her search for her G-League team president.?As we touched on her own career and ambitions, Danita produced voluminous notebooks with her own performance evaluations and the ideal character traits for success.?As I departed the meeting I thought “Wow, this woman is impressive!”

In January 2019 the Sparks called Danita again, this time offering her the Team Presidency.?She made the Sparks the WNBA Franchise of the Year as well as the WNBA Marketing and Ticket Sales Organization of the Year.?As a result of Danita’s success with the Sparks, in 2021 DC United asked her to be their Team President, Business Operations.?She was the first woman/person of color as President of an MLS team and I believe the first woman president of any team to come from ticket sales.

Danita follows a long line of team presidents who cut their teeth in ticket sales before moving to the top – Chris McGowan, Nic Barlage, Jake Reid and Jake Reynolds, to name a few. ?But I think she is the first woman who served as a team’s VP of ticket sales and then became a team president. ?Danita’s success has opened the door for more women to make “the sky the limit” and to become presidents of MLS, NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL teams … Thank you, Danita!

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