Sandra Douglass Morgan, President, Las Vegas Raiders
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, Senior Writer, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune MPW Next Gen

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Taking The Field 

Conferences

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Taking The Field

Our final speaker for today made history last year as the national football league's first black female president, Sandra Douglas Morgan is no stranger to shattering the glass ceiling before her time at the NFL. She was the first black person to serve as the chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission. During her time at the gaming commission, she helped develop policies on harassment and discrimination and was responsible for closing and reopening casinos during the COVID-19 pandemic and it was Sandra Douglas Morgan who was hired by Raiders owner Mark Davis to reinstill a positive culture and value system for the team and franchise management. Today she is gearing up for her second season with the Raiders and preparing to host the 2024 Super Bowl. Let's welcome Fortune's Emma Hili and Las Vegas Raiders President Sandra Douglas Morgan to the stage. Thanks. Hi, Sandra, how are you, Emma? It's great to be here. I'm great. Uh Thank you for being with us. So, yeah, so as my colleague just mentioned, you are the first black female president in the NFL. How has that influenced your experience in this job so far? Whether it's how you approach the role or how others have perceived you in the role. You know, I, I knew coming in um that I would be the first black woman to, to serve as, as a president, but I honestly didn't understand the gravity of it on until I actually got in the role and met so many different women in sports and entertainment. Um that said, you know, they've been waiting, you know, for this moment just to even have visibility that other people that don't, you know, I look very different obviously than the other 31 presidents in the NFL. But still able to lead a team and understanding that it's not about selecting players, right? That's what the G M is for. It's not about coaching players, the head coach is for, but really running the business operations of an NFL team which the Raiders have done, you know, in my opinion, even before me moving to Las Vegas, an incredible job. We have a stadium that we're responsible for and making sure we're booking talent and obviously creating a good culture there. We want people to know that the Raiders is an amazing place to work. We have so many new employees that have been with the team for maybe less than 2 to 3 years since the relocation and obviously, you know, very long tenured employees and understand the tradition and the grit and the history of the team. And so it's just been, it's been a great experience. But as you know, a woman of color, you know, the way I was raised, my father is black and my mother is first generation Korean American, just making sure that people feel seen, feel valued and the the Raiders have always been um a great place to work for um and have always embraced diversity, equity inclusion. And so we're having a lot of new employee resource groups now and it's just a great way for people to connect with others. Yeah. You know, speaking of the experience of working for the Raiders, you came in after there was a period of time where employees spoke up about um with allegations of harassment and a kind of traditional boys club culture at the Raiders. You know, there's been an investigation, we can go into that a little bit, but I would love to hear about for you knowing that going in, knowing that that would be a challenge that would be part of your mandate to address and deal with the aftermath of. Why was this a job you wanted to take in a challenge you wanted to take on. You know, again, the Raiders have, have a rich legacy. I've worked at different companies that are small that are large. I've been an attorney for 20 years. So, you know, being involved in investigations or see them or I've been on a special litigation committee for a public company. Those challenges are not new for me, but for me, it was more personal knowing that the Raiders were going to be in my hometown of Las Vegas, a place where I was raised, my sister was raised, my Children were born and being raised and I knew the great impact that an NFL team could have on my community. And so that's why I definitely leaned into the challenge and I encourage everyone to lean into challenges. A lot of times, you know, my friends have often joked for me not to go back to the public sector because when I did, there was a recession in the pandemic. So I'm going to stay on this side. I was head of the gaming control board during the pandemic, which is an incredibly challenging time that had, you know, and actually was a commissioner during really the beginning of the me too movement which, you know, a lot of, you know, executives at different companies and different industries were being, you know, a lot of the attacks were being questioned whether they be settlement tactics or just the way people were treated at work. So, you know, the challenges are not new to me. I encourage people and definitely women to lean in and be part of those solutions when challenges kind of come to fruition. But for the Raiders, it was just such a historic franchise. It was really a no brainer in full transparency. My husband is a former player and when I even discussed the opportunity. He was like, what are we talking about? But really the conversation with Mark Davis saying, look, Sandra, we're in a new city. If there's challenges here, don't. So them under the rug, you know, we want to, I want to face them head on and hearing that from our team owner was definitely a huge factor in me deciding to take the position. Yeah, you mentioned your longtime ties to Las Vegas. What has the impact been on the city and its economy of the Raiders moving to Vegas? I mean, we talked about in addition to football, you hosted Taylor Swift. A couple of weeks ago, Beyonce is coming in September to your stadium. How is the team in the stadium influencing the city again like this. So I grew up in Las Vegas, my father retired at Air Force Base when I was, um, well, he worked, we moved there when I was two and maybe 400,000 people at that time. And, you know, we went to the strip when someone came into town, but for the most part, you know, everyone kind of stayed in their own areas. Um And so now we're in a city of 2.5 million. Um You know, my mother worked in the gaming industry. It was always kind of frowned upon major league sports wouldn't come there. And now we have, you know, obviously the Raiders, the Knights, the world champion Aces to be able to know, my Children are saying, what game are we going to this week? And that wasn't something that I grew up knowing about. You know, obviously we had the running rebels, which we're still hoping, you know, kind of come back to the glory days when they won the championship in 1990. But now there's just additional events, you know, Taylor Swift being there for two nights was seeing our stadium transform in a place where you had tons of swifties. But even people that maybe weren't, didn't every single word of the production was just amazing. So being able to offer that to the Southern Nevada community is just um really important. And even again, just look, having executives be there and looking at the stadium, whether it be soccer matches, we're gonna have Barcelona and Ac Milan. I don't want to get on like a promotion for now. But um and Manchester United and these events, you know, would not have been able to come if it wasn't for the stadium. Yeah, that's amazing. Um Well, I guess it is also set to host the Super Bowl next year. What does it take to prepare for that a lot? You know, we've done, our team went to Los Angeles, we went to Arizona and you know, the NFL, you know, really kudos to them because they have an amazing events team, they transformed our headquarters when we hosted the Pro Bowl. It's the second year in a row that Las Vegas hosted the pro bowl and this is the first time we're hosting the Super Bowl. And it's an interesting fact that more people actually come to Las Vegas than where the Super Bowl is hosted anyway. Right. It's because of the amazing experiences and activations we have. So it will be the first time where everyone's coming. Maybe you just have, you know, people that want to enjoy it and then people actually coming to the game. But you know, it's, there's so many, so many of the Raiders amazing partners and whether it be gaming properties and hospitality properties up and down the strip that are really committed to knowing that people will have a good time. If they come there. Even if they're not going to the game, there's always going to be concerts, events, different sporting events and we're also hosting F one, the city is hosting F one in November before then. And so I think it's really going to show Las Vegas on the grand stage and it's really great for the NFL to really embrace know Las Vegas as a, a real Super Bowl hosting um city team. And we're definitely hoping they come back. Yeah. Um I'll come to everyone for questions in a moment, so start thinking and raise your hand if you have any. But um you know, we've talked before about uh your goal to bring inclusivity to the sport into the team in a lot of ways, including the fan experience and welcoming more women as fans. You know, how do you do that? How do you make the Game Day experience? Something that more kinds of people are interested in participating in? Well, women are 50% of our fans, right? It's just that we need to lean into them and embrace them. And you know, we have a new social media and digital creator. Me being a woman looking at even our merchandise that we're selling. What does that look like? You know, every, we love our rats. They're amazing and auditions are happening now, but maybe everyone doesn't want everything to be bling from, you know, from head to toe and making sure that we're marketing to women of all ages and even a younger demographic, right? We, you know, we grew up where our maybe our parents had a team and that's the team that you embraced with the growth of fantasy football and sports betting. People identify with players. So how are we marketing to our younger consumers to making sure that we're highlighting our great pro bowlers. You know, we have Matt Crosby Demonte Adams making sure that we're, if that's your, that's your player, we're going to make sure that we, we want you to be a raider. Obviously, the digital experience is really important, you know, everyone wants everything now on their phones. And so when you go into the stadium, being able to, you know, get your food, get your beer, your drink and being able to do it mobilely is something that we really embraced in the stadium and honestly, as well, you know, encouraging people to sustain their seats, seats and be able to scan a QR code on the back of the seat and have that delivered to them. So we have great partners that we're working with um from our food and beverage teams that are, you know, making that experience a little more seamless. And initially we started them obviously in the upper decks just because there's more people there. But people even in the lower bowl, they want that experience as well. So we'll be activating those this season. Great. Did you have any questions for Sandra? Um Oh, I think we have one right here. Hi. Um Courtney Robinson. You speak so earnestly about your family and weaving the narrative alongside talking about your career and leaning into challenge and that really resonates with me. So I'm wondering when you stepped into this role, knowing how historic it was going to be. How did you weigh the considerations of how it would impact your family and um the work that you were going to have to do being a figurehead and someone who is the first to do this with all of those other things in mind. So I didn't know how impactful it was gonna be on that role. But I, you know, I, I have an incredibly supportive husband and my Children are amazing. They're 12 and 16 and um my parents live in Las Vegas as well. So that's incredible help. That's an incredible help. My mother in law as well and I have an amazing tribe of girlfriends that I've had for about 15 to 20 years that I tell you when it means just the world because we all go through different challenges where there with our Children or just job changes and things like that. So I really didn't know how, how it was going to affect me. And I'm still, I'm not going to be, I mean, I'm gonna be honest with all of you, you guys are all executives and leaders in your own, right? You know, you just have to take it day by day, but I try to do the best with what I do with the Raiders, with my family, with my marriage, with my friends. You know, every single day is something that I kind of intention have to wake up and, and know that I'm gonna try to give everything my own and some days it's not gonna happen and, and we know that the public side of it, I don't think you're really prepared for that until it actually happens. Um And, you know, every day isn't 100% but I, I wanna go out and make sure I make my team proud and make my family proud. And um that's what I just have to focus on every day and then just, you know, doing your best and giving, giving your own. Yeah, thank you. I think we have one more question back there. Hello, Najma Roberts. I'm with Democracy Fund and we're a grant making organization that gives grants for organizations to be more civically engaged. And in 2020 we did a training with a couple of NFL teams around voting and I was astonished at how many players were not registered to vote and just didn't really have a sort of civic or philanthropic individual or collective strategy. And I'm curious on how you're thinking about that um particularly for the Raiders and sort of grooming the, particularly the rookie players to come in and have that and what resources you may need to execute your strategy. That is um I, I so welcome that question. So me being from Las Vegas, it's important that we can be engaged in the community and part of that means civic engagement to me. Um For the first time, I hired a vice president of government relations for the team and we had an entire, not an NFL vote strategy but Raiders vote. And we were able to have players engage in that on social media, not only encouraging the community vote, but making sure that they were engaged as well. And we had all of our employees on the business side as well supporting that. You know, this is more of a support for the football team, but they just hired a new director of team growth and development that is really focused on rookie camp, obviously financial literacy and making sure that you're a good member of the community is important, but they're also having certain executives from the business side actually present to them and understand what, not just what does it look like after your career because he wants to think about that, right. But what does it look like to be a raider to be a part of this community? And we're also asking them, what are you interested in? We know our foundation has certain pillars that are going to be focused on mental health and youth development, military and veterans with us being a big military community. But we want to make sure we know what they're involved in because that's going to encourage them to participate even more instead of us just telling them to go to certain events. So, um excellent question. I'm really looking forward to working with our, our football team and our G M to making sure our players um want to be engaged instead of just, you know, making them and to do certain appearances. So, thank you. Thank you, you know, on the policy side as well. Um Given your background in Nevada and in the gaming commission, um what's your take on how the legalization of sports betting is changing the sport for better or for worse? You know, I again, growing up in Las Vegas, probably a little more desensitized to it because I'm used to just having gaming around. Mother worked in the gaming industry. I was on the commission and then chair of the board when the Papa was repealed to allow sports betting or at least to allow states to enact sports betting regulation. And it really comes down to, I think good policy and as being a former regulator, the integrity of the game is incredibly important and making sure people understand the policies and understand how it's the integrity is not. If everyone's not having a high standard of integrity, how it can really affect the game. And obviously the fan engagement, if people don't think they're looking and watching a fair game, they're not going to watch and responsible gaming is always going to be, you know, top of mind, I think we should care about not only as consumers but as mothers and as people that care about the community to make sure that our partners and all the Raiders partners have definitely have a responsible game plan and making sure people are aware of their limits as a regulator as well. I was encouraging when we get to more digital options for social gaming that there be an opportunity not only for the operator to set limits, but also for people to set limits for themselves when they're doing online gaming, you know, diversity and inclusion has been a priority for you and a theme of your priorities at the Raiders and your own appointment. But, you know, football is such a particular industry to be stepping into and diversity and inclusion in football is probably very different than what it might be in industries that we've covered on stage so far today. You know, you obviously have male players back off and front office with not that many women. And there's also the dynamics of ownership, mostly white owners and mostly uh black players. So for you, you know, what does diversity and inclusion in football looks like for you? Are those dynamics that have to change? Can they? What is true? D N I in football? Yeah, I I don't, I I'm saying this in all honesty is that the Raiders before D E N I was something that was discussed, you know, we had the first female CEO and Amy Trask, the first black head coach with Art Shell, the first Latino head coach with Tom Flores. So these were things that were done in the eighties before people were even talking about this, right? If you look at our fan base, if you look at our employee base outside of even the players, we have an amazing group called Fear. It's our women's er G 80 employees over a third of our employees on the business side are women. Um We have a new API er G group that's growing um with just amazing employees that are in every single part of the organization. And um you know, I'm just looking forward to growing those. So that is something that's important to me, but it's also been important to our team, which makes it that much easier to implement. So when I'm working with hr to talk about recruitment and retention and training and promotion, they know that we're looking at it from a lens to make sure that our, our team does reflect not only our customers but our fan base, which has always been incredibly diverse. We in order to give the customers and the fans what they want, we have to make sure we know who they are. Um And so, having a diverse um team and to me, it's just hand in hand with making sure we're delivering a better product, delivering a better game experience and, and making sure that we're growing our fan base. Well, thank you so much Sandra. Thank you.