Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Joe Kennedy is a lifetime basketball player and coach. A 2007 graduate of Northwestern with a bachelor’s degree in education and social policy, he was a four-year letterman on the Wildcats’ basketball team. He was named a team captain his senior season and received Academic All Big Ten recognition three times.
After graduating, Kennedy was a special assistant for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House, where he served as a liaison to key national organizations that helped promote and implement the administration’s legislative priorities. He also built a coalition of sports organizations — which includes the NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS, PGA, USOC and the NCAA — to promote then-First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign against childhood obesity, and coordinated and executed championship visits and other sporting events at the Obama White House.
In the years following, Kennedy spent three seasons as the director of men’s basketball operations at Northwestern, was the director of player personnel at Oregon State and served as a video coordinator for the Sacramento Kings. He has also been an assistant coach for the College of the Holy Cross men’s basketball team. He helped the Crusaders win the Patriot League championship and advance to the 2016 NCAA tournament. During his 12-year coaching career, Kennedy has been an active member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
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Most recently, in September 2022, Kennedy became the first executive director of The Team. During the 2020 election cycle, Kennedy connected with Eric Reveno, associate head coach of Stanford’s men’s basketball team, and they became a major force leading a new college athletics movement to expand student-athlete voter registration and create civic resources for coaches and teams. Kennedy is working towards a future where all student-athletes and athletic departments establish civic engagement as a priority. and he believes The Team can make that dream a reality.
Kennedy leads a Team project in partnership with the Bridge Alliance that started in the fall of 2023 called The Engaged Athlete Fellowship. This fellowship empowers student athletes from across the country to strengthen nonpartisan civic participation on their teams, on their campuses and in their broader communities. (The Bridge Alliance publishes The Fulcrum.)
I had the wonderful opportunity to interviewKennedy in June for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of her democracy reform work:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
