A Radical Act: Renee Montgomery discusses her journey to ownership and leadership

When you hear the name Renee Montgomery, you may think about her resilience at UConn, her strong roles with the Connecticut Sun and the Minnesota Lynx, her short stint in Atlanta as a player or her courageous decision to sit out the 2020 season to fight social injustices across the world.

Montgomery has always been a leader on and off the floor, no matter where she has gone. She is a three-time high school champion, a college champion and a two-time WNBA champion but that's not even her biggest flex.

The West Virginia native is the first retired WNBA player and African American woman to become an owner of a professional team. She is a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a community leader who gives no matter where she is.

Among the hats she wears, she finds time to put her mass communication degree to use as a sports analyst, businesswoman, investor, and host of the weekly podcast.

The 37-year-old has brought a fresh perspective to the WNBA managerial side with her perspective as a former player and someone who understands how to enhance the brand. In her new documentary, directed by Emmy Award winner Sandrine Orabona and produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter's UNINTERRUPTED and P&G Studios, she takes the audience in on her journey to ownership and dominance.

Montgomery spoke with Fansided about the documentary, A Radical Act, and discussed her upbringing, basketball career, journey to ownership, and her mentality to help the W continue to grow.

So you grew up around an HBCU in West Virginia State? Your dad played for the football team and your mom was a professor there for 30 years?

Montgomery: Yeah, definitely. So while he was playing, she was going to school there, and then when they graduated, she went on to be a professor there. So yeah, I grew up on campus, every homecoming, every summer, all the time, absolutely.

How did being around that type of environment and being around your parents, along with your faith instill in you, the importance of giving back to the community?

Montgomery: Yeah, I think that when you're aware of something like once you know, you can't not know. And so growing up on an HBCU campus, it was interesting because that was all I knew at a certain point.

So the pit and the gyms there to me, those were the Mecca, you know. Like, I was like, this is amazing. But then when I went on to play for UConn, I understood that man, there's a lot of resources that are not there at the HBCU that I grew up playing at, and then you start to realize, okay, so those athletes are having to figure it out, you know, without the same resources, but still asked to perform at the same level.

So that's kind of how, like, my thought process started to like, man, okay, so how can I fit in in this equation? And that's kind of how our Last Yard Scholarship started. But it's just the thought that you don't really know what you know until you know it.

And so when I was growing up, you couldn't have told me that I didn't have the best of the best facilities and that it was, I mean, it was turned up every year at state and that's kind of the beauty of whenever you're in a certain situation, because it's like, I don't necessarily feel like I didn't have the resources.

I feel like I had everything I needed. I had a hoop, I had a ball. Let's get it, you know. But then there are so many things when you go to a higher level, like nutrition and recovery and things of that nature. And so you start to realize, you know, like when I think of community, I think of our community, and I think of okay, things that we're missing, and that's those are the spaces where you start to see it,

How did being overlooked while breaking records and dominating on the court impact you, especially when the newspapers and media outlets were shaving your points and not recording your proper stats? How did that prepare you for dealing with the WNBA and the unfair representation that it gets? And how is it helping you with your role as an owner?

Montgomery: Yeah, no, that's a great question. West Virginia prepared me for life, you know, like, I think that a lot of times when you're younger, you have this thought process that life is supposed to be a fair concept in your brain, and it's really not, you know, there's not, and there are no equal level playing fields.

In a lot of situations, depending on where you came from or where you grew up, you might have started behind and not on a level playing field. So I kind of learned early playing ball in West Virginia that it was, all right, you are the only thing that you can control is in between the lines, and that's the 94 feet, and that's me being prepared for the game, and that's me making shots, and whether or not the stats were correct, we know who won the game.

And so I kind of just held on to certain truths where it was like, all right, no matter what, we win a championship. Ain't no taking that back. So I kind of got into the mindset that the bigger goals that you have anyway, those are things that people can't take away.

No matter what, I'm going to be a three-time champion in high school, and then I'm going to be a champion at UConn, and then two time in the WNBA, those are things that I took pride in more so even than individual accolades, which, of course, when you put in a lot of work, you want to be able to get recognition for that work.

But I learned real young that it's like, all right, listen, if you win everything takes care of itself. You know, in sports, we say winning cures all. And so I really adopted that mentality where, listen just win and everything will take care of itself. It doesn't matter what a newspaper article says about yesterday's win today.

It doesn't matter what they're saying about what's going to happen tomorrow, win today. So I just got into that concept of just win now and everything else will take care of itself.

Walk us through your mindset in 2020 when you decide to opt out due to social injustice and a moral obligation you felt. There had to have been a level of faith and foresight in this decision.

Montgomery: Look at God, no, it's crazy, because I didn't play the year before and for various reasons. But then, to your point of, it's like, faith, because it's like, I didn't know what was going to happen next, but at every step of the way, it's just I was leaning in, you know, it was like how you get fired on your day off.

Why did I quit on my day off? I don't know, but I felt like, even when I did, it almost felt a relief, because I knew that this was the decision that I was leaning towards making. I already had talked to my family, I had talked to my teammates, my coaches, my management.

And so once I actually told everybody, okay, this is what I'm doing. I almost felt relieved. As crazy as that sounds in the sense of, all right, the word is out, I've done it. Once I sent the tweet, I was kind of, all right, cool. I'm done with this. You already know when things are bigger than you because they start to work out in a way that is like, wait, how was I here at this time?

I ended up leaving our championship team in Minnesota and signing with the Atlanta Dream. People thought that was crazy at the time. But then when you fast forward to me playing for the Atlanta Dream in 2020 it's not so crazy. And then when you fast forward one more year later, and now I was blessed to be a co-owner and vice president, it's like what is happening in life when every step of the way it was a crazy moment?

Who leaves a team like Minnesota, we went to the finals three straight years, you know, and we won the championship that year that I left. So it's like a lot of things didn't make sense at the time, even though it made sense to me. And then I'm just so glad that, looking back, people ain't calling me crazy, you know, this could have went a whole different way. So I'm thankful people aren't calling me crazy.

How do you stand on your morals, stand on what you believe in, but at the same time, represent the Atlanta Dream brand too? How do you balance?

Montgomery: Man, I'm so thankful that the team that I was able to become a part of in the front office is the Atlanta Dream. Because as you saw the documentary, it's easy to lean into the community, because that's what we look like. That's where we are. So when I'm like, hey, do we have black-owned vendors? Do we have women-led brands that we're leaning into?

It's the same thought process. It's not like my thoughts, and I'm trying to convince people — this is a like-minded group, from the ownership to the front office, everybody wants to be the most Atlanta we can be, so we already know what Atlanta is.

So for me. Let's go get these up-and-coming artists that are about to blow, that are already big here in Atlanta. Let's give them a platform so that they can show themselves to the world. And let's get this brand, this company that might not have had a chance, be able to have a chance to work with the pros team.

Let's work with them. Let's get these black-owned brands like Honey Pot, and start to have sponsors that lean in with us. It's fun when it makes sense and it. It's an easy collaboration, and I think that's what it's been like for the Dream.

It's like a lot of these partners, vendors, even our staff, people we work with. It's, fun when it makes sense and it feels like the right thing to do all at one time. So it doesn't always work out that way, but being in Atlanta, where we're sports entertainment and culture and all and even TV and film now, it's so fun to see who's on the sidelines, to see who we can partner with, and to see the companies that are coming in.

The WNBA is a strong brand that brings in profit. How do you along with other members in the WNBA continue to roll with the punches despite the negativity that has continued to surface over time?

Montgomery: I love that question because, for any women sports players or women's leagues, this is the same concept that we all are doing, but it's a labor of love. When I was playing in the WNBA, of course, we didn't have enough games on TV and I was part of a super team — my teammates were, Maya Moore, Seimone, Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, Rebecca Brunson, all these players are going to go on to be Hall of Famers, Lindsay Whalen, or already are Hall of Famer.

Shout out to Seimone. She got inducted this past weekend into the Hall of Fame. And imagine how many games we did not have on TV. Like, of course, our finals and our battles with LA were on TV. We were battling a super team with that.

You know, that's what I talk about to people all the time. They ask a lot of times, like, "What's changed?" And I'm like man, if you saw the games, you would understand that we've been hooping. It's just the media coverage, the brands, and the investments that are happening are happening at a larger scale now.

And I'm so thankful because, for me, it's not about, "Oh, I wish we would have had it when we were playing." I do, but I'm just thankful that it's here like I'm excited for the next-gen, that every single game, it's a sellout, like every single game, you can probably find it on a platform somewhere.

That's exciting, that's growth. And I think that, as you said, we're just at the tip of the iceberg, in a sense some people used to look at investing in women's sports and brands almost like a charity.

But now you can see that there's a real fight to get into the ownership groups of the new expansion teams, and there's a real fight for brands that try to get their name across jerseys of WNBA teams and women's sports leagues. And so I'm glad that people are starting to understand that, yeah, this is an actual investment, and you can get a return on your investment. It's not a charity.

So we want brands that are trying to tap in and turn up with us. That was a hard sell before because people just couldn't see the vision. But they couldn't understand that visibility equals more money. Of course, they don't know the players.

They don't see the players, but if they saw them on every commercial, like you do now, on billboards, like you do now, and on TV like you do now. You're gonna see bigger brands and bigger names because you're giving them that light. So I'm excited. I'm just excited for everything happening.

What was your initial thought when you heard Geno Auriemma say that you were the right fit instead of Alexis Hornbuckle? I know that had to do wonders for you.

Montgomery: I mean, it's just crazy hearing coach Auriemma talk nice in general. I think that you know, Sandrine Orabona, the director of this film, who was amazing, and the way she put this film together is just like, I can't thank her enough.

One of the things that she said interviewing coach was she was taken back at how pleasant he was because there's this narrative about him. But he's hilarious, on a day-to-day basis, he is a very funny dude.

But he's not going to be giving you all these compliments in college about your game and what he thought about you. He's going to be trying to chip away and mold you into this, machine, that he needs and honestly, that helps you be prepared.

You are the first retired WNBA player and African American woman to be an owner of a professional franchise, and your initiatives and you do so much for the community. What would be your advice to young women who look up to you and your younger self?

Montgomery: A lot of people ask, like, why is the documentary called A Radical Act? There's nothing radical about you. Like, when people meet me, they think that I'm positive, and they associate the term radical almost with a negative connotation, but it's almost like it's taken the word back.

So I would tell kids to be radical in their belief in their own success. I think it is radical to think that you can achieve that goal, that you don't even want to really tell people, because you know people gonna clown you if you don't get it.

You don't even really know if you're gonna be able to go get it. So you don't even want to mention it, because you don't want to put it out there, because you don't want to put yourself out there.

It's radical to put yourself out there, and it's even more radical to do it and be successful. So I think that kind of the concept of the documentary, where it's like, sometimes you got to be radical and you're thinking for yourself.

Because if you let everybody around you tell you what you're going to be, it might not be what you plan for yourself. You might end up in a whole world where you're like, all right, I'm living a life for other people. Or why not live for yourself?

And so I just think that if you're young and you have an idea of what you want to do, you can try it. Trying something doesn't mean that you're stuck in it forever.

But I just think that a lot of people don't even try because they fear the failure of it, or they fear people seeing you fail, and it's like, for me, I don't, I don't really care. Like, I don't, I don't have feelings to hurt.

Like, it's just in a sense of like, I'm gonna shoot my shot, like, this is how I am. It's like, I'm gonna shoot my shot. And whatever happens, happens. So I would tell all young girls, especially because women, we tend to self-doubt. Dudes will be very underqualified for something, and they were like, Yeah, I got one of the traits.

I can get this job, you know what I mean, but a woman could have every single one and still be like, okay, I'll apply next year. It's not the time yet. Now we got to be a little bit more radical in our thinking like the time is now.