Wildcat Tracks: Saenea Williams ’15

For someone who ran track in high school and college, a career in football might not have been in their future plans — even if that someone is Saenea Williams, whose dad is Hall of Fame NFL cornerback Aeneas Williams. “Although my main sport in school was track, I’ve always had a love for football. I was a football manager at Westminster my senior year,” Williams says. “But I didn’t know I wanted to work in the sports industry until I took an internship with the NFL in 2017. From that point on, I knew that I wanted to pursue sports business as a career. I have been taking on new experiences within that space ever since!”

Williams credits her high school experience with helping to shape her into the person she is today. “I enjoyed my time at Westminster. I was able to form great relationships and learn a lot about myself throughout my time there.”

I am forever grateful for the people I met and teachers who poured themselves into me.

“I believe my senior year writing class with Jill Keith was the most impactful. I was not always a great writer, and although the class proved to be difficult, it turned me into a great writer.”

Williams currently works as a Strategy and Business Development Coordinator for the NFL. After graduating last May from Arizona State University, magna cum laude with a B.A. in sports business and a B.S. in management, Williams started working with a sports marketing agency in Arizona. When she heard about an opportunity with the NFL, she jumped at the chance to apply. “I am responsible for planning strategic key cross-organizational pipeline programming in connection with our HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) initiatives, supporting both player and personnel development,” she says. “I also assist in the creation of development, networking, and mentoring ideas designed to support the creation of employment opportunities for minority candidates within the NFL as a whole. On the strategy side, I focus on collecting football operations unit performance metrics and ideating innovative ways of improving the game of football overall.”

Williams has come a long way, from a girl who ran track to a woman who is making her way in a field that’s still relatively new for her gender. When asked about succeeding in what’s typically been an industry populated by men, Williams said, “Being a woman, specifically in the sports field, is always a unique experience. People will question my knowledge of football because, like most sports, it is very male-dominated. Having thick skin is something my parents instilled in all of my siblings — for me this has proven to be a great asset!”