Damani Leech, president of the Denver Broncos, returned to his professional roots for a few moments last week while in Indianapolis for the NFL Combine. A former postgraduate intern at the NCAA, where he worked for 17 years, Leech engaged with the current group of postgraduate interns at the national office and talked about his career journey to becoming the president of an NFL franchise.
In an interview after speaking to the group, Leech talked about his time at the NCAA, his message to the interns, lessons from his student-athlete experience as a football player at Princeton, and how to improve minority representation in leadership positions across all sports. (Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Why was it important to you to give back to that NCAA Postgraduate Internship Program and speak to this year's interns?
When you're an intern, it's a very unsettling part of your career and your life. You're wondering what your next steps are going to be. You're in a cohort of people. It's somewhat competitive. People start getting jobs. There's a lot of uncertainty, and I've been there and just wanted to share my story and some of the things I've learned along the way.
What were some of your main messages to that cohort of current interns? What do you remember from your time as an intern that you still carry with you?
I definitely remember how uncertain it was in terms of where your career was going to be, and I think the message that I tried to impart was, "Don't presume to know where you can find professional happiness." The world of sports and sports business is actually pretty broad. Ultimately, people want people who are going to work hard, know their stuff and be good people. If you can do those three things and you're willing to work in a variety of industries and roles, you're going to find professional success and probably professional happiness.
You spent a lot more time than just your intern year here at the NCAA national office. How did your time at the NCAA shape you as a sports leader and executive?
I was here for a total of 17 years, so I spent a lot of time here in college sports. I have a great affinity for college sports, for intercollegiate athletics, the focus on the student-athlete, the development of young people into future leaders of the country, of the world. But I also learned a lot of things about the nature of the Association from my time in (academic and membership affairs) and then moving into championships and understanding from a business standpoint how we try to grow sports, how we try to drive attention to our events. All of those things I've taken with me, and understanding that connection that fans have to sports, whether they're pro sports teams or universities that they care about, it's a really strong bond and our responsibility to manage that, foster it but also protect it.
What have been some of those concrete connections from your experience in college athletics to the pro level?
Fandom is the core thread that runs through it all. Understanding that while it's a very big business and there are a lot of fans around the world, it's ultimately a very personal thing. Your ability to tap into that, I talk about "goosebump moments," particularly from a marketing and game presentation standpoint, trying to foster those "goosebump moments" and really create those important emotional connections for fans to teams and to universities runs across all sports.
Let's go back even further to your career at Princeton. How did that shape or influence your career path?
Early in my (student-athlete) career at Princeton, I worked in investment banking. I didn't really know what it was. I found myself to be pretty bored. That was really when the lightbulb came on for me to say, "If I'm going to work every day for the rest of my life, I want to do something that's really interesting to me," and that was really when I started my journey in sports. I started working in the athletic department and the (Ivy League) office down the street, sort of day by day understanding that, "One, this is interesting. Two, this is a really big and vast industry that I think I can find some happiness in."
Did you ever imagine it would take you down this path to becoming an NFL president?
No. Definitely not. Early on in my career, I didn't understand the size and scope of sports business, the different roles that people had. Early on in my career, my dream job was to be the athletic director at Stanford. I think for everybody in their career, things evolve, the industry evolves, your personal tastes and things that you're interested in evolve, and I allowed myself for those different things to happen to take me to different places in my career.
What were some experiences or life lessons from your time as a student-athlete that you've carried with you no matter where you've been professionally?
I think accountability never changes. I think as a student-athlete, being in a meeting room with a position group, and after every practice and every game watching film and being critiqued on your mistakes and being accountable for those mistakes — as they say, "The eye in the sky does not lie" — and you have to sit in that room and be accountable for every decision that you make on the field, and that carries with you in business and in your professional life.
There's obviously not a ton of NFL presidents who are Black. Ethnic minority representation, as well as for women, in leadership positions across all levels of sports isn't where it needs to be. How do professional sports and college sports grow those numbers, in your mind?
Obviously hiring is the end result of what we're looking for in terms of growth and development of diversity. I think what starts that is programs. I think you're seeing that. For me, I was a beneficiary of an internship at the PGA Tour and here at the NCAA that were specifically for minorities and women, and that was incredibly important in my career. Along the way, I think people have to be intentional about it and really be focused on diversity and growing diverse staffs. That development … whether it's mentoring, allowing people to shadow you, allowing people to grow and being willing to take chances on people who may not have the same background as you is also incredibly important.
