After serving an unprecedented two consecutive terms as USTA Chairman and President, Katrina M. Adams will serve the next two years as Immediate Past President. Adams was the first African-American, first former professional tennis player and youngest person ever to serve as USTA President.
An accomplished professional player, Adams competed for 12 years onthe WTA Tour, winning 20 career doubles titles and reaching the quarterfinals or better in doubles at all four Grand Slam events. In 2015, Adams was elected vice president of the International Tennis Federation, and in 2016, was appointed as chairman of the Fed Cup Committee. In 2018, Adams was also named chairman of the Gender Equality in Tennis Committee.
She was named to Adweek magazine’s “Most Powerful Women in Sports” list in 2016 and 2017 and Forbes magazine’s “Most Powerful Women in Sports” list in 2017. Also in 2017, Adams was named to Ebony magazine’s “Power 100” list. Since 2005, Adams also has served as the executive director of the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program, based in New York City.
During her administration, the USTA achieved a number of major milestones, including the opening of the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla., and the completion of the strategic transformation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. She also spearheaded an unprecedented outreach effort into underserved communities—with an emphasis on Hispanic communities—in an effort to share the sport of tennis with more people.
A native of Chicago, Adams now lives in White Plains, N.Y.
My name is Sarah Maxwell and I grew up in Montreal, Canada wanting to solve the problems of the world in my earliest memory. I went from climbing all over my Mom’s furniture to trying every sport and wanting to be the best at everything I did. We were a family of 4 kids and I would be the one out in the backyard perfecting back flips off the picnic table or kicking the soccer ball over and over and over again until I got it right! Yes, it was that obsessive gene!
I chose to get on a 6-hour plane right across the country to do my BioPsychology degree at the University of British Columbia. It was the top tier volleyball program that really drew me in and getting my first taste of representing my country in sport was honed there.
It was the sandy beaches that eventually drew me in and I became a Professional Beach Volleyball Player for for 10yrs. This brought me to Australia where I would eventually meet my life partner Nat Cook and reside here for the past 20 years.
Retiring from sport in 2008, I studied Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) to give structure to what I had been growing through in terms of team work, goals, purpose, and relationship building.
This led me to engineer specific GAMES (now called Gamification) to bring forth more experiential learning for Corporate Team Building (for companies such as Qantas); Couple Relationship Workshops (PG-rated GAME PLAY); and even Mindset coaching with Olympians on their way to London 2012.
These days, I have created a program called FOCUS coaching for high impact women CEOs and Managing Directors; Corporate Wellness and Nutritional Cleansing (with a team of over 13,000 people); and finally demonstrating my Eastern Philosophy Slant with my MindShift Meditations (offered free as a taster on this site)
Overall, I create communities that uplift and inspire people to dust off their dreams and start playing IN THE GAME of life once again!
Leave a Reply