If you ever get the chance to have a conversation with Dr. Kiki Baker Barnes, you might go over time. Not because of any extraneous circumstances or distractions, though.
It’s because you’ll want to keep experiencing the passion that the HBCU Athletic Conference’s commissioner shares about her work as a mentor and leader in sports. Listening to Dr. Baker Barnes speak about the importance of pouring into young people she works with every day will leave you glued to your chair.
She has worn many hats, including acting as a women's basketball head coach at both Southern University at Shreveport and at Dillard University and as the athletic director at Dillard University. But perhaps her largest role has been opening doors for those who come behind her. Being the first is an honor, she has said, but ensuring you’re not the last is a responsibility.
It led her to create a program called So You Want to Have a Career in Athletics?, a professional development initiative that invests in girls and young women through educational programming. We spoke with Dr. Barnes as part of our International Women’s Day series, focused on connecting with women in sports who have transformed what it means to be a leader in their field.
FanSided is celebrating Women's History Month and International Women's Day by recognizing the women transforming the sports landscape on and off the field and redefining what it means to lead and inspire. Check out the full list here.
You created the So You Want To Have A Career In Athletics program. How has it grown over the years, especially at such an inflection point for women’s sports?
The impetus for starting the program was actually a conversation I was having with my beautician. She was bragging to everyone at the shop that day that I was the only woman athletic director in the southeast United States. And I was like, Oh, no, that can’t be true. But I was the only one in Louisiana. And that didn’t sit right with me. How can I be the only woman who's leading a college athletic program?
So I said, I’m going to do a program. The focus was, one, just to say, Hey, I’m not the only one. There are other women, but we’ve got to create a bridge to make sure that they connect, have knowledge of one another, and are able to, hopefully, be mentored by another woman who's in the industry.
I felt like, for young women who are now looking to have an opportunity to work in this space, they're going to need another woman who can hear them out and to help them think more strategically about what they're experiencing and how to handle it. And I will say that it is: It has been amazing.
Then, I took on this job as commissioner, and I got really, really busy. So I've kind of been on a little pause because I've been trying to set and level the new role and expectations and trying to figure out what would be the next path for So You Want A Career In Athletics.
You're in a relatively new role as HBCU Athletic Conference commissioner and have just published a book. With so much going on, can you talk about timing?
I released my book Blazing Your Own Trail: Faith, Focus, and Forward Momentum in Leadership on Jan. 7, which is I Am A Mentor Day. And I said, I think this is my next iteration of So You Want A Career In Athletics. I’m looking to hopefully take that book and develop some curriculums for personal development for young women in sports, alongside the book.
It's been incredible to work with young women. We’ve connected them with people all across the country, which was the design. It's the thing that I didn't have. But you have to take advantage of the role that you have and the power that you have when you have it. I considered waiting: Let me just do really good in my job, and then let me do this after I retire. But it's not the same. The phone doesn't ring the same when you step away from the power.
Which experiences from your program resonate with you most?
During my time at Dillard, I was working with students closely all the time, so a lot of young women became game-day management team members or became work study members for me.
There was one particular work study student who was working with me every day, so she kind of became like a student assistant, and she had shared with me that she wanted to be an athletic director. I said, "Oh, this is so exciting." I was like, OK, so I'm glad you're working with me.
My very first So You Want A Career In Athletics, I'll never forget. After all the speakers had done their part, we transitioned from the programming over to a game, so that it was all connected. It was a big day. You're going to get some education, and you're going to watch our girls' basketball team play. We're in the gym, and the young lady comes to me, and she's crying. In that moment, it was such a raw expression, and she was so grateful. I mean, I still get teared up thinking about it.
It was such a special moment. And actually, she reached out to me just a couple of days ago. She's a high school athletic director now. It's great! Oh, my goodness. She said what she wanted to do, and she did it.
I knew if I had never done anything else, if that was the only one I had done, I had done the thing I was supposed to do in that particular moment. I mean, there's probably been 20 more of those, but I just that was my very first one, and I just remember her crying, like, just like, really being so grateful. It was just an incredible moment.
You recently spearheaded the transition in name and branding of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference to the HBCU Athletic Conference. And you honed student input for it. Tell us about that rebranding.
Yeah, it was a fun process. I feel like there are people who would say all I do is win. And what I would say is, there's a formula to that, right? There's a strategy to that. It's not that I always win. But I do believe that I think methodically about what I'm trying to achieve, and if I'm clear on what we're trying to achieve, it's working backward. So it's almost like I am guaranteed to win because I know clearly where I'm going, and I know what I need to get it done.
There were groups that we needed to engage in order for this to come about and to be successful. Because of my experiences working on campus, I knew for sure that meant no students, no success.
You can't say that you want to connect with the next generation and don't involve and listen to them. It's a very interesting concept in our society, how we view young voices, right? I don't think we do a good job in our society of preparing our next generation because we're always trying to silence them. And we're always trying to tell them what to think. It's not our job.
What I learned in leadership is that you can learn from anyone, right? Age doesn't matter. I am the beneficiary of listening to young people.
How would you define what being a trailblazer means?
The reason I named my book Blazing Your Own Trail was because people kept calling me a trailblazer, and I didn’t understand what that meant. Because, in my brain, a trailblazer is Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks. I felt like I was too young, quote unquote, to be a trailblazer. Like I hadn’t lived enough life yet. So, part of the book was exploring, well, OK, I’m a trailblazer.
I explore some key stories and life events that I believe helped to form my leadership style, my personality and how I show up. And so, I was reflecting on what was happening, and I’m thinking about what I want to share in the book. I was a head coach at 25. And from the age of 25 until now, I’ve been in charge, I’ve always had the top position. I was the head coach, and I was the athletic director. And now, I’m the commissioner. So I said, well, maybe I am a trailblazer.
I introduced what I’d like to call the blind exchange framework and a faith-focused and forward movement. I talk about these as the foundations of developing confidence, learning to take risks, learning how to deal with failure and fear, and it’s a framework that I hope can help the next generation.
What are some characteristics of a trailblazer?
I would say if you talk to anyone that someone considers a trailblazer, I think there are some common characteristics that we experience. One of those is a self-determinedness that exists in the person and a strong faith and belief in self.
They can see things that other people can’t see. I think if you were to, again, sit down and talk to people who had blazed trails, I will often say to people the things that I’m experienced in are things that I saw and that I believed would happen at some point, whether in daydreaming or in a dream, and I’d write those things down. The life that I’m living is the life that I knew I was going to live. It may not have been clear to everyone else, but I was very clear about what I saw for myself.
Another is, I’m not going to be afraid of what I don’t know, and I’m just gonna go ahead and do it anyway. It doesn’t stop us from taking action.
Dr. Barnes’ book, Blazing Your Own Trail: Faith, Focus, and Forward Momentum in Leadership, is available to purchase now. So You Want A Career In Athletics, her mentorship program, is currently on pause — but she hopes to be able to utilize her book as a means of continuing the education provided in that program soon.