DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we redesign redesign personal financial health & wellness for student athletes?
Athletes Excel at Sports, not Finance
Athletes – student, professional and amateur – set their goals on high levels of performance, improving their performance and endurance through practice, coaching and team member supports. While a small percentage of professional athletes earn significant wealth in their early career years, the wealth is rarely well managed, and leaves the athlete with significant financial challenges alongside their physical and mental conditions. As high school athletes are recruited into college sports, they now have the opportunity to grow and profit from their social profiles via corporate endorsements, subject to NCAA’s NIL: Name Image Likeness rules, as implemented by their chosen college’s rules.
Financial Health & Wellness, beyond Literacy
Discussing finance with trustworthy coaches and mentors is keenly needed. According to the NCAA’s May 2022 Student-Athletes Well-Being Study, finance is the third most source of stress for student athletes. In order for athletes to achieve and maintain peak performance, financial health and wellness is required. However, few college athletic programs offer a rigorous strategy for growing financial knowledge, whether in handling NIL, daily budgeting, reducing credit card and other debt, saving and investing or otherwise.
Normalizing Financial Dialogue, erasing Inherited Taboos
Student athletes come from different cultural and regional backgrounds, rarely prepared to manage the funds they earn through NIL, college stipend or otherwise: Low income, middle income and higher income families “protect” their children by shielding them from the larger challenges of handling finances on a life-long timeframe. The taboos of avoiding discussing finances represented a ripe Design Challenge, first for student athletes, and ultimately for the general society.
STUDENT DESIGN WORK
Four student teams embarked on the design challenge in the Spring of 2023. 55 experts, student athletes, and stakeholders collaborated regularly with our Redesigning Finance students to focus on real-world systemic issues associated with student athlete financing and design solutions for them.
The objective was not to deliver something finished, but rather insights for where to start. Below you will find their work and we welcome you to build on their insight and/or follow up with the students and teaching team directly.
GamePlan
TEAM 1
Until recently, student-athletes were only compensated with scholarships and barred from direct payment. This left them torn between their sport and education. Even successful pro-athletes face financial struggles, with 80% of former NFL players going broke within 3 years of retiring. Since July 2021, student-athletes can profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL)…
TEAM 2
Credit Guard
How can we bring forward the moment when students feel they must learn personal financial skills? How can we incentivize learning and put those skills into practice before individuals start their careers, start managing bills and start weighing up short-term vs. long-term financial decisions? How can we help student-athletes learn despite their time-pressed schedule…
TEAM 3
Entice
The capital commitments made by leading corporations toward DEI initiatives have been substantial and undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but there is more that can be done. The pervasive challenges faced by minority entrepreneurs are consequences of deeply-rooted structural barriers to access: access to financing, access to…
TEAM 4
Score, Save, Slay
Our group focused our interviews on current female student athletes at Stanford. We were interested in exploring the personal finances of women athletes specifically because women’s sports are generally under-resourced and women often feel less equipped to effectively manage their own finances. So, we hope our proposed solution – Score, Save, Slay…
PRINCIPAL PARTNERS
Athletes
Stanford Athletics Department
Bankers & Financial Experts
Current & Former Student Athletes — Oakland High School Athletes - Anne & Dihini
Notre Dame Athletes — Amir Carlisle, Kaylin Hsieh, Will Schweitzer, Paris Thompson & Chris Tyree
Stanford Athletes — Ashten Prechtel, Agnes Joan Emma-Nnopu
Former Stanford Athletes — Andrew Luck, Chris Owusu, Jamal Robinson, LaSalle Vaughn & Michael Thomas,
Michael Jenkins, Lift Us Foundation
Meredith Basil, Associate Dean of Academic Advising
Kristen Azevedo, Asst. Director for Student-Athlete Development
Katie Bridge, Assistant Director, NIL Services
William Winter, Assistant Director Compliance Services
Angela Amarillas, Mind Your Money
Noah Francis, J.P. Morgan Chase Wealth Management
DeMarcus Williams, Silicon Valley Bank Startup Banking
LaSalle Vaughn, Bestow Life Insurance
Lupe Lucero & Colleague, Stanford Federal Credit Union
Jennifer Tescher, Financial Health Network
