What happens when you are an athlete and you start to look at life beyond just your sport? When you're Allyson Felix and Misty Copeland, you focus on creating legacy.
Allyson, 40, and Misty, 43, opened up about the purposeful and intentional ways that they're creating meaning in the future stages of their careers in a panel with Women’s Health executive editor Abigail Cuffey called The Long Game: How 2 Legends Turned Sports Mastery Into Sustainable Legacy.
The panel was hosted at The Female Force event, presented by Hearst Magazines in collaboration with HearstLab, as a celebration of female entrepreneurship and the women investors, CEOs, and leaders shaping the future of women’s wealth, business, and impact.
Misty is a ballerina (she was the first Black principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, or ABT), activist, filmmaker, and founder of the Misty Copeland Foundation, which is making ballet more affordable and accessible. And Allyson is the most decorated female Olympian in track and field ever and the co-founder of women's footwear brand, Saysh, and women's sports management company, Always Alpha.
Here’s what they each shared about building their respective legacies, businesses, and futures.
Their past experiences are driving their forward-looking goals.
Misty says that timing mattered in her career. “The door opened for me, and I think what I've learned is that we can succeed in spaces that were not built for us,” she said. “I really kind of took my time in setting up a real circle and community, especially Black women, who were mentors to me, that allowed me to stay there.”
Misty also shared that getting in the door was easy for her, “but it was staying there that was difficult, and I hope to be able to just set a new standard, an example for what it is to exist in a space, but not just think of yourself.”
Now, she's taking the opportunity and thinking about how she can set an example for the next generation, including storytelling through her books and production company, Life in Motion Productions.
Allyson says that she had a “really hard time” as an athlete after she became a parent, and became an advocate for equity in the space within sports after having her first child. (Allyson famously wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in 2019, revealing that Nike—her sponsor at the time—proposed a 70% pay cut around her pregnancy and refused to provide a guarantee that she would not be penalized if her performance dropped in the months around giving birth. Nike later revised its policy; Allyson moved on to join forces with Athleta.)
“I had a really hard time, and so many of the women before me had an even more challenging time,” she said on the panel. “When you go through it, whether it's having to hide a pregnancy, or whether it is having to be on the road with a newborn and navigating breastfeeding and pumping and all these spaces and there's nowhere to go...it was just so hard when it didn't have to be.”
Now, Allyson is motivated to encourage other athletes to acknowledge that they can be professional athletes and parents. “I know that's possible, and if we give them the support that they need, they can really thrive in both,” she said.
Access is incredibly important to both of them.
Misty’s foundation features a BE BOLD program, which is an after-school program for kids, along with BE BOLDER, which offers adult ballet classes for people 50+.
“We’ve really built the curriculum around the communities that we're serving,” Misty said. “So right now, we're in the Bronx and in Harlem. And we're in after-school settings. It's free. It's twice a week for ages 5 to 12. And it's not about creating professional dancers, it's really [about] exposing them to live music, exposing them to the technique of classical ballet, and teaching them the tools that by being a part of any sport, you pick up and you learn, and they're transferable into anything that you do.”
Allyson also added that it was important to her to create shoes for women. “We don't know that we're wearing men's shoes,” she said. “I didn't know. As a professional runner, I always thought that the shoes were for me, but going down that path and the research and understanding that the only difference between the wall of men's shoes and women's was excellent marketing…it just felt like women were being lied to.”
Allyson’s Always Alpha firm also focuses on female talent. “During my career, my brother represented me, and then he founded his agency. It just felt like a really great time to come together and say, ‘Let's fully focus on women, and I believe that they need to be represented in a different way,” she said. “Women's sports marketing is not just the same as men's.”
They each have their own health non-negotiables—and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
For Allyson, her consistent habit is writing in her gratitude journal. “Even if it's just a quick three things," she says.
Misty said that she tries to find “stillness” in her day. “It could even just be sitting with my son, it could be reading a book, but finding that, that moment just to be still."
As for what they'd tell other aspiring entrepreneurs or innovators: “There’s never this perfect moment to start something, whether that's building a business, or making a pivot, a new career, transitioning,” Allyson said. “Sometimes you just have to take that first step.”
Misty agreed: “Just because there isn't a blueprint doesn't mean it's not possible,” she said.
The Female Force was presented by Hearst Magazines in collaboration with HearstLab, which—backed by resources from the Hearst Corporation’s 360+ businesses and a robust, company-wide network of 200+ female leaders—is working to close the gender gap in venture capital funding by providing cash investments and support services to early-stage, women-led startups and helping women founders build healthy, sustainable, and highly-scalable companies. The Female Force event was presented in partnership with Spectrum Business and Pura, with special thanks to BLKSWN.
