Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx spotlight the multi-sport journey of black women in this series, from seasoned athletes to rising stars, coaches, executives and more. Elle-evate: 100 Influential Black Women in Sports.
Christina Williams has always been a basketball fan. Growing up in Harlem, she watched Shannon Bobbitt become a basketball superstar, eventually playing in the WNBA for the Los Angeles Spark, Indiana Fever and Washington Mystics. I witnessed it. “She was the best at what she did. I was like, ‘Okay, she can do it, I can do it,'” Williams says.
Determined to play, Williams pleaded with the middle school boys’ basketball coach to create a girls’ team. After playing a few years in her junior high school, Williams made headlines for her talent when she stepped onto the women’s varsity team at the famous nearby performing arts school known as LaGuardia High School. It was there that Williams was able to dig and perfect her on-court skills, and along the way she joined other women’s leagues.
Williams leaned into her performing arts background, choosing to major in journalism and theater when she enrolled at the Hunter School of the City University of New York, leaving little time for recreational activities. Yet basketball never left her mind. After her graduation, she began working in media, learning the ins and outs of marketing and post-production. Armed with her years of media experience and millennial intuition, she set out to create a platform dedicated to covering women’s basketball. Nothing of this type existed at the time, so she needed a little direction to get started. Only 4% of her sports coverage is devoted to women’s sports.
“At the time, there were no women’s job pages on content creation. I started picking the brains of the people running the biggest sports pages,” says Williams. Fair Women’s Basketball? ”
Williams founded Girls Talk Sports TV in 2018. It’s a digital platform for all things women’s basketball, where you can combine your passion for storytelling and the sport. When Girls Talks Sports TV started, she had only five viewers. Rather than disappoint, she draws on her college classmates, her former colleagues, and a network of industry professionals such as Arielle Chambers and her COO of Dyckman Basketball, Sharon Bond, to help her develop her career. Boosted new brands. With her mission in mind, she devoted her full energies to covering all women’s sports in her tri-state her area, ultimately qualifying for her New York Liberty coverage of her games. won.
A year after its launch, Williams rebranded Girls Talk Sports and established herself as the face of the brand. “I laid out my mission to give women visibility, voice and value. I also stepped into the forefront of my brand,” she says.
The attention she garnered was well received and established Girls Talk Sports TV as a credible and authentic storyteller. Since its inception, Girls Talk Sports TV has become the “go-to” source for all women’s basketball-related news, often beating out more established media for breaking news. This is her dedication to Williams storytelling, the trust basketball and her sources place in her, and her commitment to being a catalyst for change. Her efforts have been recognized in 2021 when she was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 and Hashtag She’s Creator of Color award winner in sports, and most recently when she was named a 2022 Forbes She’s Queens of Culture awardee. was honored by
As a news breaker, Williams is always on the move, checking stats and league schedules, booking photographers, creating content and managing sensitive sources. Her sources implicitly rely on them to correctly report the information entrusted to them. She has never let them down, as evidenced by her recent interactions with agents of Courtney Williams of the Connecticut Suns.
“”[The] agent called me [says]”Let’s go live right now. I’m going to make a statement on Girls Talk Sports TV. We put up the lights and the cameras. It was an interview,” Williams says.
In addition to her responsibilities on Girls Talk Sports TV, Williams also supports young children through both the Close the Gap Foundation, which is committed to “empowering the first generation of low-income people,” and the Malik Hall Women’s Basketball League. I find time to give back by mentoring them. “You just see how the coverage of the league has grown and how young girls are listening to it all.” It’s so good to be able to, she says.
Even with all of her credentials, experience and awards, Williams’ job in increasing access to the sports industry for black women is not finished. is a key element of her strategy.
“80 and more [WNBA] The league is black women. I think we need people in those positions to reflect and look like the people playing in the league. That’s how the best stories are told,” Williams said, adding, “I’m her one of the only black women in her WNBA world to break the news.”
Over the past year and a half, Williams has become a trusted voice in women’s sports. Still, she works every day to make her own journey more accessible to others.
“People know my name. I’ve worked for a position where people see me as an industry mogul,” she says. I know the hits I’m taking now will be easier for the next woman who comes after me, the next black woman who wants to make news in the WNBA space.
Daniel Bryant is a contributor empower onyxa diverse multi-channel platform that celebrates the stories and transformative power of sports for black women and girls.
.