Professional athletes spend their careers building the traits every boardroom looks for: grit, discipline, composure under pressure, and the ability to read a situation and adapt.
Yet many leave the game without a plan, a network, or the business training to put those strengths to work
The Women’s Business Collaborative (WBC) set out to change that. The WBC Business Academy is a first-of-its-kind program that pairs career mapping and executive coaching with world-class learning from edX. In a 90-day program, 17 elite women athletes tested the model. Within eight weeks, they had logged 148 learning hours across 35 courses.
The goal: build business leaders during their playing careers.
WBC’s goal was to prove that elite women athletes can build real business skills during their playing careers, not only after them. Most athletes start career planning only after they retire from their sport. WBC wanted athletes to plan their next career while they still compete.
The pilots set out to:
- Translate athletic strengths into business language. Leadership, resilience, and strategic thinking are already there. Athletes needed a way to name them and apply them in professional settings.
- Fit learning into demanding lives. Training blocks, travel, and game days leave little room for a fixed classroom schedule.
Professional basketball player Akela Maize shares how the WBC Business Academy, helped her plan a career in business. Gwen Young, CEO of WBC, explains the Academy’s mission to prepare women athletes for life after professional sport.
The solution: wrap-around support, powered by edX
WBC built the Business Academy as a wrap-around model, with edX as its learning provider. Courses alone rarely change a career; but courses tied to a personal plan and a coach do.
Each athlete moves through three connected steps:
- Career mapping. Tailored exercises surface each athlete’s long-term professional goals, interests, and skill gaps.
- Coaching and mentorship. A career or business coach translates the career map into a learning plan and recommends specific edX courses.
- Flexible learning with edX. Athletes learn from the edX course library on their own schedule: between sessions, on the road, or in the off-season.
Why edX
Three strengths made edX the right fit for the Academy:
- World-class content. Courses from leading universities and institutions give the Academy credibility with athletes, leagues, and investors alike.
- Breadth. The 17 athletes enrolled in 35 different courses, from sport business to leadership, all within one library.
- Flexibility. Self-paced learning works around training and travel instead of competing with it.
The most popular courses so far point to athletes’ ambitions in entrepreneurship and the business of sport:
- AlaskaX: Sport Business Management
- AlaskaX: Sales in Sport Business
- HarvardX: Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles
The impact: high engagement and a case for scale
Eight weeks in, the 17 athletes had made 50 course enrollments across 35 different courses and logged 148 learning hours. Most are active professionals, mainly in basketball and football, and athletes return to the platform daily. On average, that is nearly three enrollments and close to nine learning hours per athlete.
What athletes gain
- A clear starting point. Career maps give each athlete defined goals and a learning plan.
- Skills they didn’t know they were missing. Courses show athletes how the leadership and communication skills they use in sport apply in business settings.
- Confidence as business leaders. Athletes now see themselves as founders, executives, and entrepreneurs, not only competitors.
The field is just the beginning
The WBC Business Academy Program shows that professional athletes can build business skills during their playing careers. Career mapping, one-to-one coaching, and flexible edX courses give them a structured way to prepare for roles in leadership and entrepreneurship.
To discover more watch the “From the Field to the Boardroom: Skill-Based Growth in Action” webinar where WBC and edX discuss how athletes’ skills translate to business.
Build a learning program like this for your community. Whether you support athletes, members, employees, or partners, edX Enterprise can help you design a skills program that fits real lives.