Former multi-stop Director of Athletics Sandy Barbour sits down with ADU’s Steph Garcia Cichosz at the 2024 Women Leaders Convention to reflect on her experience as one of a handful of female Power 4 ADs and offer insight into navigating change from the chair. Barbour: “There’s no doubt in my mind that starting out as a coach – an assistant field hockey and lacrosse coach – that I had no concept of athletic director, assistant athletic director, associate athletic director, any of that. … There were very few women who were leading Division I ‘Power 5 or Power 4’ athletic departments and so you just didn’t think about it. We like to say ‘If you see it, you can be it’ – well, what happens when you don’t see it? Frankly in the early-to-mid '80s, I didn’t see it.” Barbour pinpoints the virtues of stick-to-itiveness and resilience as key leadership qualities for today’s ADs; discusses the ways she’d lead differently if she were to sit in the Big Chair again today; and reminds busy leaders to prioritize organizing their department’s “human resources” to effectively tackle the workload and challenges of today’s landscape.

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing:

1:03 - In a letter to the Wolfpack family, outgoing NC State AD Debbie Yow used this quote: "When life kicks you, let it kick you forward." When is a moment - big or small - that life kicked you and you used it to propel you forward?
2:53 - That stick-to-itiveness - did that come naturally to you or did you have to cultivate through reps?
4:26 - When you moved to a new place with your family, did you have a go-to icebreaker or trick on your bike that you'd use to make friends early?
5:40 - When did you realize that being an Athletic Director was a job you could do and when did you realize it was something you wanted to do?
8:39 - It's so interesting how as a student-athlete, you can be so locked into what you're doing that you don't realize what's going on behind the scenes, that mechanics that makes your participation a reality.
9:22 - Do Athletic Directors need to get on TikTok to communicate with their athletes?
9:46 - Here's a thought experiment: if you were to get in the chair again, today, what would you do differently from the start?
11:53 - Did you ever have moments as an AD where you were so busy that you almost felt disengaged from the purpose of all that you were doing?
14:13 - How do you differentiate between "purpose" and the goals you had to set and navigate for your department?
16:17 - How did you stay personally organized during your times in the chair?
18:10 - Is there still a place for athletics in the framework of higher education?
19:25 - UCLA AD Martin Jarmond said in D1.ticker: “You do have to modernize; you can’t romanticize, because college athletics are not the same." - Is there room for romanticizing Athletics today?
21:27 - Have you been back in a Wake Forest locker room since graduating?
22:46 - I found an article from September 1996 that mentioned you as the new AD at Tulane alongside Debbie Yow at Maryland; Barbara Hedges at Washington; Cary Groth at Northern Illinois; Andrea Seger at Ball State. - that number hasn’t changed in nearly 30 years. Why haven’t we been able to close this gap?