Girl athletes from the Las Vegas Valley attend the 2023 Raiders Girls Empowerment Summit
The 2023 Raiders Girls Empowerment Summit kicked off on Friday at Intermountain Health Performance Center, inviting 80 girls flag football all-stars from various high schools in the Las Vegas Valley. The summit was opened by President Sandra Douglass Morgan, who seated the young ladies in the same seats that Raiders players use every day.
“To not let self-doubt stop you from trying to really achieve your dreams,” said Douglass Morgan at the 2023 Raiders Girls Empowerment Summit. “You’re not going to know if you like something until you try it. We’re really encouraging them to not look at what they don’t have or don’t know, but focus on what they can do to grow and learn and adapt.”
In addition to the team president, the young ladies heard from a panel that included Qiava Martinez, SVP, chief sales officer, Piper Overstreet-White, VP, government relations, Natalie Williams, general manager of the Las Vegas Aces. As a former college basketball and volleyball player before winning a gold medal with the United States Olympic Women’s Basketball Team in 2000, Williams could relate to the young athletes. She is currently the WNBA’s first female African American general manager.
“The thing that we try to instill in them is that anything is possible. Believe in yourself,” Williams told Raiders.com. “Know that there will be hard days here and there, but you can accomplish anything.”
Members of the Raiders advocacy group FIERCE also attended the 2023 Raiders Girls Empowerment Summit and helped showcase all the various departments that make up a team on both the football and business operations sides. FIERCE was founded to provide an inclusive environment for women of the Raiders to support each other.
“Giving these girls visibility into so many different amazing women and so many different fields in business and football, they’ll hopefully know that the sky is the limit,” added Douglass Morgan. “That they can be the president of a team, that they can be a chief sales officer or a general manager.”