 Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa Granstein, Adweek's Cheap Content Officer, so glad you could join us for another episode of Most Powerful Woman in Sports, where the world's greatest marketers, media pros, athletes and coaches share their remarkable career journeys and how they achieve peak performance. We'd also like to hear from you, so join the conversation in the chat, questions in the Q&A box. Today, we'll be speaking with the legendary Cynthia Sint-Marshall, of the Dallas Mavericks. Sint's life journey is an incredible one, having overcome poverty and domestic abuse to achieve greatness as a leader and mentor. We'll hear from Sint on her grinding principles for leadership and racial equality, but first, a little background on Sint. When Sint was hired to lead the MABS in 2018, she made history as the first Black female CEO in the NBA. Sint quickly set her sights on cultural transformation. Her vision was for the MABS to become the NBA standard for inclusion and diversity, and to bring transparency, trust, and a values-based culture to the team. Prior to joining the NBA, Sint had worked at AT&T for 36 years, becoming its top chief diversity officer. I am blown away by these accomplishments, and it's truly an honor to have Sint here today, and I'd love to welcome Sint to the show. Sint, thanks for joining us. Can you see me? I am here. I can see you. Yes, you are here. Lisa, it's so good to see you, sister. Thank you, thank you, and thanks again for being here. We're so excited. I want to start at the beginning. I want to start where you grew up, and we're going to get very Barbara Walters. Just where you grew up, and who shaped the person you are today? Okay, I can answer that. Okay, so I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. My parents left Birmingham, Alabama when I was a baby, because they made a decision they didn't want. There are four kids at the time growing up in the Jim Crow segregated South. I mean, there are six of us now. And so we moved to a housing project in Richmond, California, and my mother truly shaped me. She shaped me to have big dreams, despite, and you mentioned a domestic violence, all kinds of stuff that was happening in our neighborhood, in our household. She just gave me four words to live by, dream, focus, pray, and act. And so I had big dreams. She shaped me. I ended up doing well in school. I had three teachers and a principal, really embraced me. So I love educators and kind of the homeland security role that they play in this country to really shape the future. They wrapped their arms around me. I got a full Wright Scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, and the rest is history. The rest is history, 36 years of AT&T after that. That's amazing. All right. Well, I'm going to roll back a little bit and tell me what sports influence your life. You were a cheerleader. Am I right? Yes, I was a, the head cheerleader. I'm trying to make sure all my stuff is off over here. So I was the head cheerleader in high school. But prior to that, I ran track for 10 years from about the age of seven to 17. I ran for the Richmond half-steppers. And so we competed, Junior Olympics, all that. And it really actually shaped me, taught me discipline, teamwork, conditioning. I'll never forget how our coach used to have us put on ankle weights in the summer and run these heels to get ready for the season. And we used to complain about those ankle weights. And he used to tell us, sometimes you have to carry a load and sometimes it's heavy, but you just keep working at it. And when you take them off, you can fly. I mean, that's what he used to tell us. And he was right, though. And it's amazing how true that is just in life. Okay, that sometimes you carry these loads, but eventually it equips you to really be able to carry some bigger things and compete. So it just shaped me to learn how to really be a great competitor and how to focus on getting things done. And I imagine also working with a team. It just seems so many people we speak to on this series had sports played a huge role in their lives early on. And it really does shape the person you become and the business person or athlete or whatever you become. Exactly. You learn teamwork and discipline and preparation and how to win and lose. Graciously, you learn all that playing sports. All my kids play sports. You learn great life. So how did you get into AT&T? What made you decide to go there? And what were you doing there? I love that question. I don't talk about this often. I had 13 job offers coming out of college. So I had 13 job offers. And Lisa, I had two criteria. I said, and I was 21 years old. I said, I want the one that pays me the most money, because of course I had to scream to help my mom get out of the project. I said, I want the one that pays the most money and the one who will let me be a supervisor. I want to be the boss at 21 years old. Okay. And so just just two small things. Pay me the most money. Let me be the boss. And so I ended up coming in to work for AT&T. It was Pacific Bale in the vision of AT&T in a fast-track management program supervising operators. So supervising these operators, I had the night shift and I was 21 years old. And those, it was primarily women, primarily older women who worked these six-hour shifts. They taught me and along with the union representatives just about everything I know about leadership right now. It was an amazing experience. And they paid me $16,800. So they beat out another company who actually gave me my full scholarship. They beat them out by 600. But it was a fabulous experience. So what kind of leadership, I mean, this is going back a bit, but tell me what kind of leadership advice did you get from these operators or support or tips? I walked in at 21 years old and told them, I don't know anything about this, which of course, that was not a newsflash to them. They knew I didn't know anything. But I told them I knew people and I was taught to love people and to take care of people. And so I wanted to just get to know them, know who they were, what they were about, and what they wanted, especially in that stage of life. And I was there to help deliver it. And so I practiced three main things around leadership right now in order to be effective leader. I think I need to be able to listen to the people, learn from the people, and genuinely love the people. And that's what I did at 21 years old. These people embraced me, taught me everything I needed to know about the environment, had me take some bold steps on some things they wanted to change. And we were very, very successful, but it really came down to those three else. And were you working on the HR side of things back then? Or how did you make that transition into heading up human resources plus getting involved in DEI, which we now call DEI, but back then it was not. Right. Okay. So most of my career was in, you know, operations, supervising people, big operations, environments. You know, I had people, I mean, I actually went to poll climbing school because I wanted to know kind of what all the folks did. So I was in technical and non-technical roles, regulatory, et cetera. And so I did once then as a recruiter for the network engineering department, but by the time I climbed up the ranks to officer and I left San Francisco when headed up our North Carolina operation, I ended up getting a call asking me to move to Dallas because we had gone from so many mergers. I was, you know, 30 years in and they wanted a group of people to help bring all these subcultures together and help really lay out a people strategy for our company. And I only had that once in an HR years ago, but they said they wanted somebody who had a proven record of success. And I think that's one lesson about leadership. So much of it is transferable to other areas, other industries, et cetera. And so I ended up being one of our leaders in HR, same vice president human resources. And then two years into that, they added the chief diversity role to an already big job. It worked out great. And we worked out great. Some thought it was just too much to ask me to do two jobs. I had great teams and then we could control it all. We could really drive the whole people strategy, really pushing an agenda for women, for people of color, really just, I mean, we touched all the people stuff in the company. So it worked out great having all those folks around my table to help drive that agenda. And you were pretty ahead of the curve doing that. I mean, a lot of these roles are being configured in the last two years or so. So that's pretty amazing. And I guess that is, I guess your work got in front of you because Mark Cuban, head of the Dallas Mavericks came calling. How did he even know, like, were you head hunted? Like, how did he know what you were doing over at AT&T and to think about taking you from AT&T and putting you in the middle of an MBA team? That was not in a good place. I want to hear about this. Okay. So there was a little 10-mile stretch, but I had actually retired in May of 2017. So after 36 years, I retired. I had started my own consulting company. I was supposed to actually take a year off, but the chairman of the Dallas chemical company, Lisa asked me if I could come. We were already doing some work with them. He said, it's great you're retired. Not going to have you full time because he was starting on his own culture transformation journey. And I told him, you name a great chief diversity officer and I'm all in to help you drive this agenda because I'm all about that. Right. And so we were on a roll. I mean, we were getting it all set up and it was very successful. And I got a call from Mark even who unfortunately, don't judge me, Lisa, I didn't know him at the time. Okay. And that's okay. I said, I didn't know him. He didn't know him. Okay. So it wasn't like he was calling a friend to come out. He heard about me. I assumed from the leaders at AT&T and some other places and asked me if I could come and meet with him. And I told him, well, I had a mammogram scheduled ladies always take care of your PSA, your medical business. And so then I went on and he was so sincere in his request, basically to come in and create a great place to work. I had worked on AT&T's effort. And right before I retired, our work led to us making fortunes, great place to work list for the first time ever. We also made diversity ain't top 50 lists. We made the workforce 100. So we were doing a lot of stuff to just really make it a great place to work. He wanted that same kind of thing to happen at the maps because he was genuinely concerned about what was being uncovered and what was going on. But he's not the person that convinced me. Two women stopped me as I was leaving his office after an almost hour conversation and asked me if I would join the team. And they started telling me their stories and telling me why they needed me at the maps. I went home and prayed about it. I said, I got to do this for the sisterhood. The brothers will benefit to but I just felt compelled to do it based on what he said, based on what they asked me to do and frankly based on the fact that for some reason I was uniquely qualified to come in and do that. That's pretty amazing. And were you at all when you came in? I mean, the Sports Illustrated had written a whole article talking about what was going on at the maps and probably not just there. I'm sure at the time there was a lot of, you know, troubles, different kinds of trouble, hostile work environment and other teams. But what was that like on your first day coming in? That must have been, well, I'm not going to put words in your mouth. You tell me. What was a tad unbelievable because when I came in the next day to basically tell Mark, I had decided to do it. I was in the building for three hours before he even knew I was there because people grabbed me as I walked in and took me into a conference room and they just start filing in one after the other, just telling me about their experiences and giving me different stories. And when he finally found out I was there, he said, I guess this means you're yes. I'm like, yes, I'm definitely a yes. And so it was very clear to me that we needed to just set out kind of a vision on being diverse and inclusive and establishing a great place to work. We needed a set of values. And so we put those values in place. It was clear to me that we needed an agenda for women because there were no women in permanent leadership positions around the table. And so I brought some in and promoted some people. We have great people at the Dallas Mavericks. We had great people when I walked in the door. We needed some leadership changes. We needed to purge some things. And we did. And so we laid out an agenda based on vision values and a hundred-day plan that focused on modeling zero tolerance and agenda for women, cultural transformation and operational effectiveness, things like gender pay equity and that kind of stuff. And so we just had about 200 initiatives and everybody rallied around. We had these big poster boards, Lisa, where all the areas were up there. We would just check it off one by one as we started to make changes. And I met with each employee one on one, every single employee, to just get to know them. And you'll appreciate this. So I'd say, I'd always start with the same thing. I said, tell me your story. Tell me your story. Undoubtedly, they'd say, oh, this is my fifth season at the MABS. This is my tenth season at the MABS. And I said, were you born here? Were you born here? I mean, so just like you started, I wanted to know the story. Like, who are these people? Right? I serve these people. And they're not employees. These are people who get up out of bed in the morning. I have served that person who gets up out of bed in the morning. They just so happen to walk into our doors. So I got to really know them and truly fell in love with them. And then I would close my one-on-ones with the same statement. I said, tell me where you see yourself five years from now, professionally and personally. Because then it gave me a sense for who was in there. And pulling in my chief ethics officer, my chief human resources officer, who I brought in with me. And I was just crying one night. I told them, I said, I love these people. Like, I love them. Oh, wow. They came here. These people deserve to have a great place to work. Some of these people are sports management majors. I had never even heard of that. They mean to have a great career in sports. We got to give them a great place to work. And we know what that looks like. I said, are you all in? They said, yes. I said, let's get busy. Amazing. I have a leadership team that's 50% women and 50% people of color. We put our agenda together, a robust diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda. And we got busy. And he's pretty good now. So how many people did you actually speak to roughly? You were doing this. It was about 120 at the time. Wow. 20 people at the time. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Well, you just have, you know, at night, and then we did that in 90 days. We just laid out a plan that just said, I have to talk to everybody within 90 days. And it was small enough group where I could do that. I'm now a lead group of tens of thousands where you can't, but it was a small enough group where I could actually do that. And that was really impressive. I got a lot of insight. And what were some of the challenges in getting some of these values pushed through? I mean, where were you finding obstacles? And how did you overcome them? I think now, and you know, there were obstacles. I think that the biggest challenge was trying to institutionalize a new culture, a values-based culture, a culture that said every voice matters and everybody belongs in all aspects, pay, all that promotion, et cetera. So trying to instill that culture, but also trying to purge the old culture. I had one guy who told his team not to listen to me. And I noticed they weren't responding a lot. And then one of them, they were very honest. They said, well, you know, our boss says you'll be gone in 90 days. You don't know basketball. You don't know sports. And basically, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. When my boss, Mark Cuban, made the decision. Okay. I got a lot of credit for making history. Mark Cuban wasn't even trying to make history. He was trying to make a difference for his people. And he asked me to do this job because he wanted to create a great place to work. And we were on a mission and we were serious. And we had to let these people know we were serious. So those of you who don't want to listen or who want to buy into the culture, that's going to be an issue and you won't be here. And so we have to make a few exits. It sounds like you have a book in here. Is that something in the future you may decide to do? Well, I am writing a book and it's going to come out in November, but it's going to be about my cancer journey. It's going to be a book that the name of it is going to be you've been chosen. It's going to talk about just kind of what got me to the point where I could actually go through my cancer battle and how I got through with the help of a lot of people. But it's going to tell a few stories. And then the big book that we'll talk about my actual career and all that will probably be called Rebound. And that'll probably come out in a couple of years. I love that. And I can't wait for the movie too. I bet there'll be one. Okay, I want you in the movie. We need to clip to this interview in the movie. Done. And I want to play you. Speak to my agent. No, I'm kidding. All right. So we just have a little bit of time left. But I, you know, we could keep going. But I do want to ask you your thoughts about women in sports, both on the field, off the field. Where do you see it now? Where do you see it going? Okay, so I was going to say I don't have a crystal ball, but I actually do, but I actually do keep a crystal ball right now with me. But that's to help me set my priorities. The crystal that I can't drop in the stuff that's right. Don't drop anything. That's exactly right. Okay. But you know what I've been thinking about a lot is ownership. That, and I've been thinking about the fact that Kathy Engelbert, who is the commissioner of the WNBA, she's an amazing woman, just led a capital campaign of $75 million. And so now the WNBA is worth a billion dollars. Okay. Now some would say that's nothing compared to the NBA, but that's a lot. That's a big thing that just happened. And so it's made me think a lot about ownership and how we need to really start collaborating more. And we need to not just have a seat at the table, but we need to own the table, build the table, build the chairs around the table, and not folding chairs, but permanent chairs where women are running things. And so I think we are headed there. Another thing I think is that we are using our platform more. And so when you look at what the WNBA is doing, I think others will do the same to really use our platform on social justice issues. And frankly, I'd like personally, I have a passion for children. I'd like to see us use our platform as women to save the children in this country. And then I don't know what other sport is going to end up turning into like the WNBA. I think that's up to us to kind of decide what's going to be the next WNBA. We get to decide that. And we'll have another one in the next couple of years. So we got to collaborate on that. But when we get it, we need to own some of the teams. All right. I love that. And so what's next for the moms? What are we going to see coming up? Well, at some point, you guys see another championship. Okay, we're just not going to see 2011. So of course, we have some amazing players. So you guys see another championship. You're going to really see us taking an even greater role around promoting social justice. We are very focused on the platform that we have. And so we have this theme called Listen, Learn, Unite and our MAPS Tech Action Plan of over 50 initiatives to promote racial equality, social justice, etc. So you're going to see us doing a lot more around that and a lot more collaboration with pro sport assembly, women in sports and events, I mean, other organizations at week to really just drive not just the message, but action around equity, equality, and inclusion. We have moved yet diversity, we get that. But we want to create some true equity and inclusive environments for people. So you're going to see us really take a stand and be even louder around that. Okay, one last one last question. Okay, where we go to our takeaways. What is the picture behind you, the thank you sign? Oh, this thank you sign says thank you health care workers and first responders, because it's amazing what they've been doing for the past what 22 months or so to respond to the pandemic. And so we like to thank them every chance we get. I was with some of the folks from one of our hospitals last night at our game, just saying thank you. They are on the front lines every day, saving lives, literally saving lives. Yeah. And we can't thank them enough for the sacrifices they've made they've been away from their families. They've made personal health sacrifices. And so the Mavs are real big on saying thank you to all of them. Love that. And yes, we agree here at Adweek, they've done an incredible job. And we actually celebrated them with a number of leaks, including the NBA with real heroes project by almost two years ago hope to bring that back somehow. I remember that I remember that it was it was pretty awesome. All right, well, you know, we could keep going, but I do realize you have, you know, elite team to lead right now. So let's go to your takeaways. Okay, take it away. Okay. So my three L's of leadership is listen to learn from and love the people. It's just that simple and love them as people, not as employees. Take the time to listen to really understand what they're saying, not just to hear them, but really understand where they're coming from, learn from them. Our people have a lot to teach us and then truly love them. Haasu, that's a big one. Hook a sister up. We have to ask for help. We have to be able to pick up the phone and I need to call Lisa and say, Lisa, this is a Haasu moment. And when I say that, it's like the answer cannot be no Lisa. It's a Haasu moment. You got to hook a sister up. I need something from you. We need to be there for each other. Okay. The third one, it's okay to cry. Sometimes it shows weakness and all that. It's okay to cry. There are some things going on in our country, some things that go on at work as it relates to how we're treated sometimes. It's okay to cry, but then you have to get up and get busy. So what I like to say is cry like a baby, fight like a girl, change the world like a woman. You can cry, but then you got to fight and then we got to make things better. And then the last one is, we really do, I have learned this in my life, being a cancer survivor and just all kinds of stuff. You have to accept the fact that sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is a training. Sometimes there's something coming to run you over, but then you have to get up. You realize bad things do happen to good people, but you get up, you get help, and then you get going. So that's it. Don't run in front of it. That's amazing. Thank you so much. That was so inspiring. This whole conversation was, and we hope we can have you back somehow someday doing something with us real soon, actually. Absolutely. Thank you. So thank you for joining us today, and thank you all in the audience joining us. We're going to be pausing on February 23rd episode for Adweek's Challenger Brand Summit. Hope we'll see you there. And we'll be back for more powerful women in sports on March 2nd with soccer great Carly Lloyd. See you then.