RJS Panel #1: Equity for the BIPOC Athlete
Leslie Allen
Leslie Allen is a barrier-breaking athlete, sports executive, and dynamic Win4Life coach. A product of Title IX, she is an ATA, NCAA, and WTA champion who achieved a career-high singles ranking of # 17 in the world.
Unheralded as a junior player, her tennis dreams blossomed thanks to Title IX. In 1973, as a Glenville HS senior in Cleveland, she successfully sued the Ohio High School Athletic Association to become the first girl to play on a boy’s team. She was a walk-on at the University of Southern California and helped the Trojans win a National Championship. She graduated with honors, a B.S. in speech communication, and plans to join the WTA Tour.
Allen knows firsthand the complexities of navigating a world not designed for her. As a Black female tennis pro, she redesigned the tennis world and maintained a top twenty world ranking. When Allen won the singles title at the Avon Championships of Detroit in 1981, she made history as the first African American woman to win a major pro tournament since Althea Gibson’s 1958 US Open victory. In a decade-long career, Allen won a combined nine WTA singles and doubles titles and was a French Open Mixed Doubles finalist.
Off-court, Allen has worn many hats: Vice President of the WTA, women’s tour global Event Manager, WTA Tournament Director, Top 20 Player Board Representative (securing equal prize money), Television Commentator, Director of Development and Public Relations for the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and Division I Head Women’s Tennis Coach.
Joining trailblazers and personal mentors Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King, Leslie Allen broke barriers and overcame adversity when the odds were stacked against her. She believes wholeheartedly in the importance of having impeccable life skills to succeed on and off the playing field. Through Win4Life Enterprises, she works with corporations, colleges, nonprofits, and individuals, sharing her passion to inspire, empower, and lead. Allen is an International
Tennis Hall of Fame honoree and a member of the Eastern and Midwest Tennis Hall of Fame. In 2002, she founded the Leslie Allen Foundation to introduce youth to the careers behind-the-scenes in sports.
Allen lives in Morristown, NJ, and has been a real estate professional for the past decade. Her daughter is the Gettysburg college assistant volleyball coach. Leslie enjoys thrift store explorations, yoga, and (shh) pickleball.
Neena Chaudhry
Neena Chaudhry is Vice President and General Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, where she provides in-house legal advice and representation to the NWLC, NWLC Action Fund, and NWLC Fund LLC. Prior to becoming General Counsel, Ms. Chaudhry worked for over 20 years to protect the rights of women and girls to be free from sex discrimination in school. Ms. Chaudhry has served as counsel on several key Title IX cases before the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals representing girls who have experienced harassment and girls who have been discriminated against in athletics; she also engages in public education and represents the Law Center in the media on these issues. Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Chaudhry clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Dr. Kendra Greene
Dr. Kendra Greene was appointed to the positions of Senior Associate Athletics Director for Internal Operations and Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) in July 2019, and was promoted to Deputy Athletics Director for Internal Affairs in July 2022.
In her role, Greene serves as Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) and Title IX Coordinator, and oversees compliance, academics, financial aid, budget and finance, housing, travel, contracts, community engagement and student-athlete development, and NCAA reporting.
Greene joined NCCU with more than a decade’s worth of experience in similar roles at four other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), including two other Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) member institutions. She most recently served as Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and SWA at Florida A&M University for the 2018-19 academic year.
In that role, she oversaw all aspects of the compliance office and served as a member of the department’s senior leadership team with responsibility to all aspects of gender equity and student-athlete well-being. Greene oversaw the Rattlers sports medicine and strength & conditioning units and was a liaison with student health services and counseling services. Some of her other noteworthy duties and accomplishments at Florida A&M included being a sport supervisor, serving in the capacity of director of football operation with planning and facilitating team travel for the 2018 season, liaison for NCAA Accelerating Academic Success Program (AASP) and creation and implementation of a mandated athletics sub-committee.
Greene spent nearly two seasons from 2016 to 2018 as Senior Associate Athletics Director for Internal Operations at Alabama State University. Her leadership and management responsibilities included serving on the executive leadership team, overseeing compliance, academic support, sports medicine, strength & conditioning and equipment. Greene collaborated on the operational budget for the Hornets and was a sports supervisor. She served as the department’s senior compliance official and in business operations regarding travel and purchasing.
In her first stint at a MEAC institution, Greene held the title of Associate Athletics Director for Compliance for over two years (2014-2016) with another Hornets program at Delaware State University. As the leader of the day-to-day operations of the Office of Compliance, she monitored the institution’s adherence to NCAA legislation, including the area of recruiting, initial and continuing eligibility, athletic grant-in-aid, awards and inducements, and Title IX.
Prior to DSU, Greene transitioned back to athletics in her five years (2009-2014) at University of the District of Columbia. She started at UDC as an academic advisor and eventually became the Firebirds Associate Athletics Director for Academics and SWA for nearly three years. She monitored all aspects of student services for the student-athlete community from the recruitment and orientation to the university, the administering of academic support services, and the monitoring of student retention and matriculation to graduation.
Greene has more than 15 years of intercollegiate athletics and higher education student services experience. She spent three years at the University of Maryland as Program Coordinator for Student-Athlete Academic Support and Career Development Unit and two years at the University of Oklahoma both as a Special Events and Facility Management Coordinator.
The native of Michigan graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and a focus in pre-law in 2004. Greene then earned a Master of Education in higher education administration with an emphasis in intercollegiate athletic administration at Oklahoma in 2005. She completed a postgraduate certificate program from George Washington University in brain injury education and transitional services in 2010, and earned a doctorate of philosophy from Concordia University of Chicago in 2023.