Succession Watch | Why Women Who Played College Sports Keep Rising to the C-Suite

Headline-friendly stories tend to focus on elite athletes who launch brands, build platforms, and turn personal credibility into business momentum. But the more interesting succession signal is quieter: high-performing operators who rarely appear on magazine covers, yet consistently move into CEO, president, business unit leadership and board director roles — and who also played college sports.

Not because sport magically makes someone a leader, but because sport is one of the cleanest, most repeatable ways to build the exact capabilities succession plans tend to miss: performance under pressure, coachability, resilience, team standards, and competitive cadence.

The data boards should stop treating as a fun fact

One of the most cited findings in this space is from EY and ESPNW: 94% of women in the C-suite played sports, and 52% did so at a university level.¹ For organizations working to strengthen the pipeline of women executives, sports participation is not a side detail. It’s a predictive signal.

More recent work from Deloitte reinforces the mechanism behind it. Deloitte’s survey found that 85% of women who played sports said the skills they developed were important to their professional success, rising to 91% among women in leadership roles.² Deloitte also points to specific skills respondents associate with sports: teamwork, leadership, managing stress and pressure, problem solving, and communication.³ And the takeaway is not subtle. As espnW’s Laura Gentile put it: “The evidence is clear: Sports matter.”⁴

Between the lines: A succession model hiding in plain sight

Most succession processes still overweight pedigree, linear career progression, executive presence, and polished boardroom performance. Meanwhile, the practical demands placed on next-generation CEOs, CHROs, and business unit leaders increasingly resemble a high-stakes season: constant resets, rapid learning cycles, public accountability, cross-functional coordination, and decision-making when the data is incomplete.

That is sport. Which means the board question is not “Did they play sports?” It is whether the individual built the capabilities sports often develop — and whether those capabilities show up consistently in current performance.

Beyond celebrity stories: Corporate examples

Yes, the athlete-to-founder stories are inspiring and highly visible. But to make this practical for succession, the better examples are leaders whose primary identity is executive, not athlete.

Example 1: Meg Whitman (Princeton lacrosse and squash), former CEO of eBay and Hewlett-Packard

Whitman is a classic case of an elite operator who learned competitive habits early. In a Business Insider profile citing her book, she describes how team-sport language followed her into leadership:

“I liked team sports the best. When I’m pulling a business team together, I still use those basketball aphorisms…”⁵

Example 2: Irene Rosenfeld (Cornell basketball, volleyball, tennis), former CEO of Kraft Foods and Mondelēz International

Rosenfeld’s biography notes she often served as a team captain at Cornell and explicitly links that experience to leadership development:

“…often serving as team captain, which she cites as ‘a key factor in my leadership development.’”⁶

Example 3: Lynn Laverty Elsenhans (Rice University women’s basketball), former CEO of Sunoco

Rice Athletics describes Elsenhans as a member of Rice’s first women’s basketball team before rising to become CEO of Sunoco.⁷ Her quote is a lesson in visibility, scrutiny, and reputation management, which is board-level reality:

“People tend to remember you… and that can be a good or bad thing.”⁸

What this means for succession planning now

If the goal is to strengthen the pipeline of women executives, this should not become a superficial “hire athletes” slogan. Use sports participation as a lens that sharpens evaluation of readiness, not as a substitute for evidence.

Practical takeaways for the next talent review

• Add “pressure performance” to readiness criteria. Define observable indicators: decision quality during disruption, speed of recovery after setbacks, ability to reset team focus, and the capacity to compete without damaging culture.
• Assess coachability like it is a core competency. Ask for recent examples of difficult feedback, specific behavior changes and independent confirmation that changes were sustained.
• Build “game film,” not just résumés. Create assignments that mimic game conditions: crisis roles, integration work, messy cross-functional turnarounds, and customer-facing P&L responsibility.
• Treat sports as a potential indicator, then validate it. Use assessment results, performance outcomes and multi-rater feedback to confirm whether the expected capabilities are present.

The succession takeaway

One of the most common succession failures is treating leadership as a trait rather than a set of practiced capabilities. Sports can represent repeated practice under pressure — not perfect practice, and not automatic, but often the kind that produces leaders who perform in environments defined by faster cycles, higher scrutiny, higher stakes and constant reset.

When the pipeline is thin, the first move is rarely “another name on a slide.” The first move is upgrading the system that identifies and develops ready-now leaders.

What’s next

To turn succession plans into board-ready decisions — not just a list — the Succession Planning Sprint is designed to deliver a board-ready succession plan and a 12-month implementation plan in 30 days, based on a four-hour working session with the executive team. Learn more at SuccessionSprint.com.

1. Chozet, T. (2015). Sport is a critical lever in advancing women at all levels, according to new EY/ESPNW report. ESPN Press Room. https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2015/10/sport-is-a-critical-lever-in-advancing-women-at-all-levels-according-to-new-eyespnW-report/ ↩︎
2. Deloitte. (2023). 85% of women surveyed who played sports say it’s important to their career success [Press release]. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deloitte-85-of-women-surveyed-who-played-sports-say-its-important-to-their-career-success-301931539.html ↩︎
3. Deloitte. (2023). 85% of women surveyed who played sports say it’s important to their career success [Press release]. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deloitte-85-of-women-surveyed-who-played-sports-say-its-important-to-their-career-success-301931539.html ↩︎
4. Chozet, T. (2015). Sport is a critical lever in advancing women at all levels, according to new EY/ESPNW report. ESPN Press Room. https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2015/10/sport-is-a-critical-lever-in-advancing-women-at-all-levels-according-to-new-eyespnW-report/ ↩︎
5. Elkins, K. (2015). These 9 successful CEOs all played sports in college. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-ceos-who-played-sports-in-college-2015-2 ↩︎
6. Cornell Johnson. (2022). Irene Rosenfeld ’75, MS ’77, Phd ’80. https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/people/irene-rosenfeld-75-ms-77-ph-d-80/ ↩︎
7. Rice University Athletics. (2011). Elsenhans shares experiences with Owls. Rice Owls. https://riceowls.com/news/2011/3/25/Elsenhans_Shares_Experiences_With_Owls ↩︎
8. Rice University Athletics. (2011). Elsenhans shares experiences with Owls. Rice Owls. https://riceowls.com/news/2011/3/25/Elsenhans_Shares_Experiences_With_Owls ↩︎