ESPN’s Mike Rothstein profiled Detroit Lions principal owner Shelia Ford Hamp’s lifetime of unique experiences and examined how her approach to problem-solving could impact her leadership of the franchise.
Rothstein spent the first part of his piece discussing how Hamp’s experiences as one of the first female athletes at Yale influenced her views on equality and diversity. He would go on to detail how through her campus activism she met and befriended Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and documentarian Henry Louis Gates Jr.
When she took over principal ownership of the Lions from her mother Martha Firestone Ford, Hamp reached out to Gates Jr., for assistance in approaching the growing social justice activism movement in the NFL. She would go on to distribute Gates Jr.’s book “Stony The Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and The Rise of Jim Crow” to everyone in the Lions’ organization and asked him to speak to the players via a question and answer style lecture.
Rothstein would go on to highlight several of Hamp’s other life experiences and problem-solving successes. When the board of the Henry Ford Museum identified Harold Skramstad as the person they hoped to be their new director, it was Hamp who tracked him down and convinced him to take the position.
In another example, Rothstein shares Hamp’s work with actor Jeff Daniels’ The Purple Rose Theatre and how her involvement in redeveloping their board helped “turn a small operation into a modern nonprofit”.
“Sheila gets things done,” Daniels said in a statement to ESPN. “When she commits, they get all that she can do. My theatre company is better because of Sheila and Steve’s (Hamp’s) leadership. “The Lions will be as well.”
Rothstein does a terrific job of detailing Hamp’s life experiences and it’s definitely worth taking the time to read.