Lending a Helping Hand

To Kevin White, Clemson University’s first Black deputy athletic director (AD), it’s about serving students. It’s about paying forward the good grace he received throughout his own career. It’s what drives him to keep working, he says.

If he can offer advice and guidance to younger folks in his field, he’s here for it.

Kevin White“I make myself available to folks. If they want time with me, then I want to make time for them,” White tells Diverse. “Because a lot of people picked up my phone call. A lot of people wrote me back when I wrote them letters and answered my emails. And so, I want to make sure that I never forget that. And I want to make sure I pay it forward to young people.”

For more than a decade, White has been involved in collegiate athletics. Starting out in his first full-time job in the industry at his alma mater, Georgia State University (GSU), White worked his way up from travel coordinator to associate athletics director for business operations and finance and chief financial officer for the athletics department.

White holds a B.A. in psychology from UNC Chapel Hill, an M.S. in athletic administration from GSU, and an MBA from Kennesaw State University.

Per the advice of a mentor, he picked being travel coordinator over academic adviser at GSU to get a better understanding of budgets and money and to have more doors in the sports world open to him.

He then proceeded to spend his career in several other high-profile roles in the field all across the country, from CFO and later chief operation officer for Southern Methodist University Athletics in Texas to deputy AD and CFO for Northwestern University Athletics in Chicago.