Twanna Harris has been raising athletes for a while now. Her oldest son Will Harris is currently a safety for the New Orleans Saints. She also raised his younger brother, Trey Harris, who currently plays football at Cornell. She quickly found out that moms of professional athletes don’t always get the help or support they need, so she chose to become and create that support. This year’s Industry Moms celebrated and honored the moms of Yara Shahidi, Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown and DeAndre Hopkins, and after the celebration she spoke with rolling out about why this organization is needed.
Why did you start League of Industry Moms? The League of Industry Moms is a collective of mothers of professional athletes and artists who basically are dedicated to helping their sons and daughters navigate the uncharted terrains of sports and entertainment industry.
What moment sparked you to create the League Of Industry Moms? Okay, I would say that the moment that sparked this was literally being at Super Bowl last year in Vegas and really being able to speak with a few other mothers and realizing that not many mothers had the access to the community that they needed in order to help their children. You know, the sports and entertainment industry has never published a blueprint or a guidebook that really helps us navigate those worlds. And for the most part, they’re somewhat uncharted territory. And I think that being able to build a community that crowdsources our genius, our lived experiences and our best practices was really necessary because at the end of the day, a lot of times when our kids start these roles, they are actually starting to change the trajectory of the generational wealth for both themselves as well as their families, and that was really important to the moms.
What are some common problems industry moms face? Oh, my goodness. I think the biggest concern that we share as a group of NFL or professional sports moms is not having access to the resources that we need, the most vetted, trusted resources that really have our kids’ best interest. We realize that not only did we not have it in our lives at that moment in time, but for the most part, it’s very difficult to find. And so being able to connect with other women who are just like, listen, I have this amazing forensic accountant, I have this estate planner, so on and so forth, that was really interesting. Not only interesting for us, but also imperative in terms of the things that we needed.
Best part and worst part of being a professional athlete mom? The best part of being a mom of professional athlete, I think, is like just being able to kind of join the ride along with them. I think the hardest is you start to realize how much people have gotten in your kid’s ears. And for the most part, they start to believe other people more than they believe you sometimes. You know, I think I was told by a sports executive that they would rather engage with a girlfriend of two weeks and a mother of 24 years. And so those are some of the challenges that we fight. Because at the end of the day, they know the power of mothers. They know how much we know. They know that we come with gut instinct, and they don’t necessarily want to hear us, they don’t necessarily want to engage us.
Where do moms look to for advice? I think a lot of times moms don’t know where to look for advice. I mean, we tend to kind of sort of be comfortable in darkness for a minute because we don’t want to be vulnerable and tell people that we don’t know what we don’t know. Right. It’s embarrassing, it’s isolating, and it feels like you’re kind of sort of navigating the darkness by yourself. And so creating a community like the League of Industry Moms was really critical to ensuring that you don’t have to call me and ask me or tell me that I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m actually reaching out to you to say, hey, how can we be of service? And I think that is the part that has really resonated with us strongly in terms of mothers being like, where have you been all my life?
What is some advice for moms of aspiring professional athletes? I would say three tips that I would share with other moms of aspiring professional athletes. And I think I also include that in the NIL category because to me, once you make over $250,000, you’re a professional athlete, you just don’t have the resources, the unions, any of the support mechanisms that they have at the traditional professional level. So, I will say you need resources in terms of trusted, embedded resources. You need a community that is supportive around you, and you need to be in a space to where you can actually start to crowdsource some of the genius that’s around you. You know, again, like Issa Rae always says, stop looking up, look across the table. Those of us that are across the table, we have literally been in the trenches trying to figure this thing out. And so many of them have so many great resources at their disposal, and we want to ensure that we are continuing to provide those resources for the next generation that’s coming up.
