Northwestern University Alumni

In August 2020, Jason Wright ’04, a former player on the Northwestern Wildcats football team and retired NFL running back, was appointed president of the Washington Football Team. Wright broke through barriers to become the first African American—and, at 38, the youngest person in history—to hold that position in the NFL.

“If I could custom design a leader for this important time in our history, it would be Jason,” Washington Football Team majority owner Dan Snyder said in a statement. Wright may be new to the job, but he’s been honing his leadership skills for decades. While at Northwestern, Wright was captain of the football team and president of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, as well as an Academic All-American. After he retired from the NFL in 2011, he earned an MBA at the University of Chicago and joined McKinsey and Company, a management and consulting firm in Washington, DC.

As a partner at McKinsey, Wright acted as a galvanizing force, helping struggling corporations rebuild, leading McKinsey’s equity initiatives, and raising awareness about the nation’s racial wealth gap. Last year, he coauthored a report that detailed the scope and implications of this gap, which showed that a typical Black family in 2016 had a net worth of just $17,600—one-tenth of the wealth of an average white family.

Here, Wright, a father, husband, and member of the Union Theological Seminary Board of Trustees, shares his plans to transform the culture of the Washington Football Team. Plus, find out how he intends to amplify players’ voices and continue his family’s multi-generational fight for racial equity.

On leading the Washington Football Team during a pivotal time in history

This role was exciting to me because I saw an opportunity to bring together my identity as a football player with my identity as an analytic thinker and business leader at a time of big transformation.

I see myself as an enabler for the really bright men on the field, and the men and women in the office and on the sidelines, who are lifting their voices for issues I care about. I can enable them by connecting them to my network, which can amplify their messages. I can help them understand versions of the message that will resonate with different groups and how to bring in partners.

One of my first priorities is to make sure that we continue to stay ahead of COVID-19. This is a very, very tricky environment in which we’re trying to play a football season, and we’re doing a great job so far in executing the plan, but the situation may change.

Secondly, we’ve got to build a healthy culture in the organization, and a lot of that starts with developing a formal HR infrastructure—policies and procedures are important to making people feel safe and supported. Concurrent to that, we’re going to open up the level of engagement around establishing a new identity, brand, and name.

On leveraging the support of fellow Wildcats

My Northwestern network has helped me a ton during this transition. In fact, Michael Blake ’04 (a New York State Assembly Member and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee)—my best friend from Northwestern and student body president while I was there—has been my senior adviser during my transition into the role. The Washington Football organization has already fallen in love with him. He is helping me think about how to spend my time as an executive and how to be strategic about the big opportunity ahead of me.

The Black community at Northwestern was just a great and vibrant community to be part of. We were all about mission and service. I was part of Alpha Phi Alpha when I was a student, and all of my brothers—I’m so proud of them—are doing amazing work with racial equity. Being around all these phenomenal Black leaders was fantastic.

Also, my wife, Tiffany Braxton ’07, is very much on board. She has been very supportive.

On his lifelong commitment to social activism

I’m the third or fourth generation in my family who is invested in civil rights and racial equity. On my mother’s side, my great-great uncle was a man named Charles Gomillion, and he was a landmark civil rights figure. He was a professor at Tuskegee University who took illegal gerrymandering on race to the Supreme Court. On my dad’s side, my grandfather started the NAACP chapter in east Texas, and lost his job for it and had militias attack his home. My dad was a civil rights activist—a Black Panther at one point—and my sister went to a historically Black college and works as a civil rights lawyer. It’s just part of our DNA.

Throughout my time in the NFL, my wife and I spent the off-seasons doing what we’d call “do-gooder work” in inner-city communities. We ran a church, did anti-human trafficking advocacy, and all sorts of stuff. I started to notice that the topics I cared about, particularly racial equity, were driven by two sets of folks: nonprofit organizations, which are funded by wealthy people and businesses, and politicians, who are funded by wealthy people and businesses. And I thought, “The actual fulcrum for impact might be these businesses. So why don’t I learn what it might look like to use the influence and capability of this capitalism machinery to affect the causes I care about?”

At McKinsey, I made it my goal to convene Black leaders and use McKinsey’s capabilities to provide analytics on Black America and the Black economy, which really took flight and helped drive the national dialogue.

On the murder of George Floyd and America’s future

The murder of George Floyd has rocked the entire world, and it has created a race consciousness in places where it did not previously exist. I think almost every Black person I know has a story that resonates with, or at least connects them to, the events that happened. This is not a political statement—it is simply the reality of Black culture and living life in America as a Black man. Dialogues like this are becoming more pervasive than they used to be, and as a result, the data and information we provided in the past have really come to the forefront because economic inequality is at the root of these injustices that occur in Black communities.

I am actually hopeful right now because normally these conversations about Black folks die off very quickly, but interest has sustained. When I was at McKinsey, I talked to so many companies—and not just in the United States, in Brazil, in the United Kingdom—about, “What do we do to help Black people? We have been complacent.” There really is a shift in thinking.

On improving one’s understanding of race, equity, and inclusion

First, embrace where you are on your own journey with some of the buzzwords out there—racial equity, anti-racism—pick your woke term. We’re all in different places on our woke-meter; accept it and start your own personal learning journey. Pick up a book that you might not have thought of reading before. Be self-reflective and honest with yourself about where you are.

Second, every one of us has a sphere of influence that we marshal, whether that is our intellectual capital, who our kids are hanging out with, etc. I’d encourage us all to look around and see if we represent an equitable or diverse society. If you don’t see any of that around you, you’re not in the game. If your time is only spent with other folks like you and not in the communities that are most in need, find a way to start deploying your capital.

The last thing I would say is: All of us, because of our journeys, are going to be more aware of what’s okay and what’s not. I think we can all be bolder, myself included, in calling out issues when we see them.