Chasing Angela Taylor

Chad Sowash (00:15.583)
Welcome to Talent Chasing, where we bring together the worlds of major league sports, corporate talent and journalism to amplify real world stories and experiences in finding, retaining and motivating the best talent for your team. I'm Chad Sowash, corporate recruitment and tech expert.

Brian Johnson (00:34.772)
I'm Brian Johnson, former Major League Baseball dude and scout.

Chad Sowash (00:39.607)
Dude, I like the dude part. Yeah, so I'm excited today because Brian, you brought on Angela Taylor on the show today and listener, you know Angela, she played under Tara Vandiver at Stanford where they won two, not one, two national championships. Then she went on to be assistant women's basketball coach at the University of Arizona, Texas A Stanford.

Then spent nine years in the WNBA head office where she elevated to the senior director of player personnel. Angela went on to be the VP of BizOps with the Minnesota Lynx, president and GM over at the Atlanta Dream, VP and GM with the Washington Mystics. It doesn't stop. And then she transitioned into sports consulting, executive leadership coaching, podcast host, network basketball.

analysis and founder and partner at Dignitas agency. my God. Have you ever had time to breathe

Angela Taylor (01:47.067)
This might be that moment. Looking forward to being in conversation with that dude, BJ Brian Johnson and you, Chad, as well. So thank you for giving me a chance to exhale a little bit and be in a good conversation.

Chad Sowash (01:48.695)
Yeah

Chad Sowash (01:58.561)
I love it, I love it. Anything to add, Brian? You know Angela better than I do, so I know the long list, but whew.

Brian Johnson (02:08.106)
Well, for me what jumps out, she was a walk on at Stanford, became a captain, and then two time national champion. just a walk on period that route is tough. She gets in the business world and then goes back and gets her master's degree from NYU. So all kind of good stuff to talk about here today.

Chad Sowash (02:27.147)
NYU Stern Business, right?

Angela Taylor (02:30.056)
Yes, there's the School of Business and I was working at the WNBA League office at the time and again, a monumental period on my journey.

Chad Sowash (02:38.423)
Wow, wow, wow. talk about the, now you both know much better than I do about this whole walk -on process. How do you get into Stanford, number one, and then you start, you're like, nah, know, studies aren't enough here at Stanford. I gotta go try to do some sports stuff. So take me through that story, Angela, because that to me sounds, I mean, that's more than

Angela Taylor (03:01.32)
Yeah, there's a little bit of a six degrees of separation story going on here. I have Brian Johnson to thank to a certain extent. My one of my older brothers. Yeah, no, it's so true. One of my older brothers, Gary, who's about two years older than I am, knew from seventh eighth grade that he wanted to go to Stanford. And I remember having a conversation at the dinner table and he talked about, we done with college at that time. And I hadn't even thought about, I was still in fifth grade.

Chad Sowash (03:09.229)
stop!

Angela Taylor (03:28.366)
And he said he wanted to go to Stanford because he wanted to be an engineer. And I'm thinking, I heard him say Stanford and the only Stanford ish word I knew of was Stanford, Connecticut. And I am thinking, why would you go from Mountain Home, Idaho, where it is cold all the time to another cold climate? Like I'm going in the opposite direction. I want to go to California. And so as he started to talk about Stanford more and more, I learned that it was in California, but it was, if we spring forward to, he actually was recruited by Jack Elway.

And I was recruited as a quarterback to Stanford to play football. And his freshman year, he was a backup to Brian Johnson. And one of the things that I remember, my brother, it has been so intentional his entire life has known exactly what he wanted to do. And I admired that in him because I had no clue exactly what it was I wanted to do with my gifts. But when he came back for Christmas vacation after his freshman season.

Chad Sowash (04:06.049)
No.

Angela Taylor (04:23.466)
He was a completely different person. If you can say that about Gary, like right there's different person means about a 1 % shift in his personality, but in the engineer brain, but he just loved Stanford. The people there, brought out so much in him. And so I got curious about, a minute, if this place can do that for Gary, it's magical. What could it do for me? And so I started to think a little bit more heavily about going to Stanford.

Brian Johnson (04:31.696)
Engineer, the engineer and brain.

Angela Taylor (04:50.29)
and was recruited widely for volleyball, for track and field, as well as basketball, had scholarship offers. But education had always been so important in my family. And I just knew that it wasn't just gonna be about playing volleyball or basketball or running track. It was also gonna be that degree that I was gonna be able to have on the wall. Seeing what Gary was going through at Stanford, I knew that that was a place that I wanted to go to. And it was a tough conversation. My parents talk about it to this day is,

I had scholarship offers. We weren't a wealthy family. My father was in the Air Force. My mother was a paraprofessional in secondary education. And having the conversation say, you know what? I want to go to Stanford still. So we're going to have to take some loans out. We're going to have to, I'm going to have to do a work study as opposed to having a full ride scholarship to play at another PAC -12 institution was a tough conversation. But my mother said that she had a conversation with my dad one night and she's like, we told our kids whatever they want to do, we're going to make it happen for

And so they figured it out and I went to Stanford on an academic scholarship and had work study in the engineering library and figured that I did not want to do that for the rest of my four years at Stanford and felt that maybe I'll walk on. And that was the beginning of that story. Tara Vannevar and her staff were so gracious to me, communicating with me throughout the summer, saying, if it is a case that you want to walk on here at Stanford, we're happy to give you the chance.

went through the process, was not easy, but to this day, I know I am where I am today because of that process, the challenge that it was and the opportunity that I had.

Brian Johnson (06:28.52)
What, so does that imply or does that assume with your success as a player that you were given a full scholarship eventually for basketball or did you walk on the whole

Angela Taylor (06:40.624)
Yeah, no great question. I did after the first quarter. So at Stanford University, we're on the quarter system. So the first quarter in December, we were playing in Cincinnati, I believe, in a tournament, one of those holiday tournaments. And Tara and a couple of assistant coaches called me to their office or their room at the time and said, we have some news for you and we're going to give you a full ride scholarship. you know, as of the next quarter, you will be on a scholarship and

I remember calling my parents, life changing, and just it's the little things. Like it was not easy to walk on to Stanford. They had been in the Sweet 16 the previous year. So a talented team, Tara Vandiver, the Hall of Famer legendary coach, the most, if you look at the history, just the most talented coach that I've ever been around for her to take a chance on me to give me a chance to be part of that 1990 team.

where we eventually won an NCAA championship was quite remarkable. But it changed my family's trajectory and certainly made me put my head down and want to work harder to prove that they weren't making the wrong decision.

Brian Johnson (07:50.834)
Wow, amazing story. Mom and dad as a dad with two kids in college, that's an amazing news to get. But for you young ones on there listening, you actually just go in and have a meeting with someone. You don't have a camera along the way and that goes viral for everybody to see. It's a very personal and very emotional moment to have that happen. So just incredible. We're to move on to WNBA stuff. But before that,

Angela Taylor (07:56.468)
Yeah. Woo.

Brian Johnson (08:19.88)
Mountain Home, Idaho, tell me about the culture there and how it was for you and Gary growing up there. For me, I've never been there, I've always wanted to go. But tell our European folks or domestic folks like me that haven't been there, what's it like there?

Angela Taylor (08:37.29)
Well, first and foremost, you are all invited. There's a lot of Idahoans that are saying, don't come, right? Hoping that people don't discover it. but you growing up was not easy, but it was what exactly what I needed. I was born in mountain home. My father was in the air force for 27 years and was stationed in mountain home for the majority of that time. I had two older brothers. My oldest brother was in junior high when we were there. Uh, Gary again was two years older than I was. And what I will say.

it was the fabric of America. So there weren't a lot of people that looked like me in mountain home. It was an air force community. so any people of color typically were transient. They might come in for two or three years and then move on to their next assignment. And for our family, my parents wanted to prioritize our, the kids having a stable life. They didn't want to have us moving every two or three years, particularly as my brothers got older and were in junior high. So my father would

T .V. wire be stationed overseas in Seoul, South Korea or the Philippines. And the family would stay in mountain home. The people were great. When you think about I do this work for a living around equity inclusion from an intra interpersonal or interpersonal level. People were wonderful to our family and sports, I think, was the catalyst for that, where they got a chance to know Greg, Gary and myself for the content of our character, not the color of our skin. They allowed us to go into their houses for our parents to be able to drive them to and from.

Montana or Washington state to baseball events or basketball events. But it wasn't easy. was the less visible things that prevented my parents from having some access to some of the similar things that their peers would have. Whether it was policies or my father was a little bit of an entrepreneur, access to capital for the businesses that he and his friends were trying to start. But all in all, I had a great childhood. had amazing parents and siblings

cared for me and challenged me to be who I wanted to be. I had great coaches and teachers who believed in my capability and supported that and encouraged me to continue to move on. And the community that still, had my 35th anniversary, me, 35th high school reunion a couple of weeks ago, and that we still stay together. It was a community that loved one another, that supported one another, small town, about 10 ,000 people, and a place that I continue to go back to.

Chad Sowash (11:03.021)
That's awesome. Yeah. So for all you non -military speakers out there, TDY is temporary duty station. was in military for about 20 years. So I got that. Now, quick question though, because he was in the Air Force, right? What was his job, number one? And number two, why did he go into the Air Force? Was that kind of like a Vietnam era thing? Or how did that all come together? And how did that

Angela Taylor (11:23.891)
and

Chad Sowash (11:30.261)
you and the family at that point, because it sounds like you stayed pretty much in the same

Angela Taylor (11:34.73)
We did. So after 27 years, my father retired as a senior master sergeant in the air force. And he was in the three 66 tactical units, um, where he was mechanical engineering, basically, um, was a mechanic for those fighter planes. Uh, they had been stationed in Texas, Arizona, uh, Nevada and Alaska prior to moving to Idaho. And the reason that my father got into the military is, what you hear quite a bit about, you know, kids in rural communities or the inner city. It was their way for them to get

Chad Sowash (12:03.767)
Yeah.

Angela Taylor (12:04.97)
Right. My father was a phenomenal high school athlete, which I think is, where we, we get our athleticism, uh, and went to college at Wiley college. And at that time, you know, obviously HBCU's, uh, huge story that we're hearing now after 2020 and George Floyd's murder. Wiley college is at HBCU in East Texas. And one of his cousins who was also on the football team actually died of heat exhaustion after a practice.

And that just was overwhelming. was almost a sibling to my father, not just a cousin. And it was too much for him to be able to handle and want to be able to stay in that environment. And it was in that moment that he decided to go to a recruiter's office and talk about joining the Air Force, which changed the landscape and the trajectory of our family. My mother at the time was a student at Texas Southern University in Houston. And so when my father joined the military and then got stationed outside of Texas,

She decided to leave Texas Southern and to be able to go with him so that they can get married, start a family and move forward with that. So I learned so much about my work ethic and the importance of family through my parents.

Brian Johnson (13:15.166)
Very cool. that suggest that I know when people go stay in other countries, they stay on base. That doesn't mean did you stay on base there? Were you in that base environment or did you all just in the community at large?

Angela Taylor (13:30.129)
Yeah, I love that you asked this question because I think it's a really important perspective and kind of will show you like a little peel back the curtain on who my parents were and how intentional they were around how they raised my siblings and I. So the first time we were in Mountain Hill, we did live on the base and we were stationed here for about two and a half years. After that, my father was stationed in Madrid, Spain. So we, as a family did go to Madrid, Spain. I was again, about three years old at the time. We went to Madrid, Spain and the Air Force Base, is now closed,

was at Torajón, so Torajón Air Force Base. And they made the decision for us not to live on base in Europe, in Spain, in a place that they had never been with three young children. They wanted us to live in Madrid, where we would be surrounded by the culture, where our neighbors spoke Spanish and maybe a little bit of English, where we would be immersed in the culture. And I think to this day, I didn't recognize it in the moment, but just think about how difficult that decision had to be.

but how forward thinking it was for my parents to make that decision. And I certainly think it had a huge imprint on the journey that my brothers and I had after that. I remember we also had a conversation about two and a half years in, we were at the dinner table and my father said, well, my service here in Spain is about to be over and we're head back to the States. Where do you kids, where do you think you would like to go? My brothers are like California, they had all these big ideas of grandeur and I'm like, mountain home.

Cause it's all I had known growing up. And so my brothers looked at me, rolled their eyes, the side eye, all of those emojis. If we had those back in the day, it would have been, been out. And lo and behold, we got reassigned to Mountain Home. And it was in that moment, there wasn't any base housing available, which was serendipitous. And one of my father's good friends told him like, Hey, owning real estate is the best thing that you could do for your family.

And my father didn't think that he had the capacity or capability to be able to do that. But this friend of his walked him through it, the process, and literally two weeks later, we bought a house right across the street from that friend. And the rest is history. We lived off base, downtown, home, if you will, downtown. And we're able to go to the downtown schools and interact with folks that had been there for a long time.

Brian Johnson (15:48.66)
Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. Transition a little bit. Some congratulations are in order. You, my friend, were part of the early days of the WNBA and building the foundation of what has exploded in the last year. Chad and I were talking to us before. We got Angel Reese, we got Katelyn Clark. That competition that went on during the college rank in the college Final Four and championship games the last couple years.

very similar to what Larry Bird and Magic Johnson went through in the explosion of the NBA. So congratulations for, exactly. And congratulations for putting that together, being part of the foundational work of getting the NBA on its feet and getting running. How do you feel about that work that you did and what's happening current, present day for the WNBA, the Women's National Basketball Association?

Chad Sowash (16:21.463)
Yeah. College to pro. Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Taylor (16:24.414)
Yes,

Angela Taylor (16:31.786)
Thank

Angela Taylor (16:43.466)
Brian, I am so excited about what is happening in women's sports writ large, but specifically in the WNBA. I was on a flight the other day and sitting next to a gentleman who didn't know that I had any affiliation with sports at all. And as we're just having idle chit chat, he asked, have you watched Caitlin Clark? Have you been watching the WNBA? And it just warmed my heart because it was 180 degrees from where we were in 1997 and the conversations pretty much encapsulated.

Are you guys going to survive another year? Right. and so first I would love to kind of talk about where we've been and then be able to talk about where we are now. I think back to the day, it involves some of the things that have been pivotal kind of triggers in my life. So one of those was my sophomore year at Stanford, I torn my ACL and I remember it was the toughest.

Chad Sowash (17:21.783)
Please do.

Brian Johnson (17:22.569)
Love

Angela Taylor (17:37.418)
timing my life, if you can imagine that, a 19, 20 -year -old. I remember sitting in Stanford Stadium, so big Stanford Stadium before it's been renovated. So Brian, you remember playing there, it was where the Super Bowl with the Miami Dolphins, and I think San Francisco 49ers played around 88 or 89. And those wood, those Dan Marino, the wooden bleachers that, you know, about 100 rows up top. And you had a lot of splinters sitting there. Well, we had a spring practice where the players were playing pickup.

Brian Johnson (17:52.074)
Yeah. Dan Marino.

Angela Taylor (18:07.434)
And I felt like I wasn't a part of it. And I remember jumping on my Honda Elite scooter at the time and just driving around campus. And eventually I found myself in the stadium about 80 rows up and was watching people as they were, you know, repairing the field and some folks on the track team were doing their workouts. And I just erupted into probably one of the biggest cries that I've ever had, like just elephant tears.

that I could not even stop. so as I sat there for an hour, looking out at Hoover Tower and Stanford's campus off in the distance and watching people in the stadium, I had to pause and be like, what is going on with me? Like, why am I so emotional in this moment? And I recognized that this was the first time in my life that sports had been taken away from me. My mother in particular had worked really hard for me to be able to participate in sports in Mountain Home because there weren't a lot of sports for girls.

And so she's like, well, if my boys can play, Angela can play. And so I played football with the boys in in the lot and on the fields. And I played base little league baseball and, did boys basketball camps. And this, in this moment, as a sophomore at Stanford was the first time that I was not able to play to participate. And what I recognized in that moment, that it wasn't about the baskets that you score or the wins and losses, but it was about the ability to be able to participate, to be part of a team that I was missing. And as I was sitting in the gym.

An hour prior to that, I felt like I was adjacent to being part of a team and it hurt. And in that moment, I recognized how important sports had been in my life. How grateful I was to my parents for introducing all of us to sports and knowing that that was going to be a differentiator in our lives because it was going to allow us to get to know people in Mountain Home, for them to get to know us for reasons, as I mentioned earlier.

And it was in that moment that I kind of pivoted. was majoring in economics at the time, thought I was going to go to Wall Street and do something in the financial sector or management consulting. And I recognized that sports is so much more than just the games that we play, but it brings people and communities together. And some way, shape or form, I had to stay involved in sports. I remember after that having a conversation with Tara Vandevere and telling her that story.

Angela Taylor (20:27.75)
that I recognize how important sports was in my life. And so she started to set up a variety of meetings with executives from the Rams, from the Warriors, for me just to have conversations out at Adels at the Golden State Warriors, him at a awards ceremony. I remember him calling me on our voicemail where you had those little tape recorders and you got a voicemail and saying, Angela, know, stop by my office sometime. I'd love to talk to you. And they started talking about what it took to be in professional sports. And I didn't want to be, you

Brian Johnson (20:35.123)
No way.

Chad Sowash (20:41.293)
Wow.

Angela Taylor (20:57.8)
on the administrative side, actually wanted to be in the mix, whether it was the NBA team or NFL team, I wanted to be on the sports side. And the conversation was like, have to learn more about the sport. You have to be an expert in your field before you'll get that opportunity as a woman, because there aren't very many opportunities for women at that particular time. And so I remember that was what fueled my passion. After I coached for a little bit, Tara, I was like, well, maybe coaching is what you need to do.

So I coached for a few years in college, never wanted to be coached. Brian, you may have this experience. Every time we saw a coach and went to the coaches offices, they were drinking diet coke, watching video and ordering Nike. I was like, that is not what, you know, I just can't imagine that being my life. But I coached for a few years just to kind of get immersed in becoming better at understanding the strategy and the dynamics of being a good coach. And I remember having a conversation with Renee Brown who Brian, you know as

Brian Johnson (21:34.168)
Yeah.

Angela Taylor (21:54.186)
who was my mentor and had been an assistant coach at Stanford on the 1990 championship team. And she's like, well, what do you want to do? Like, I'm like, I want to go to business school and I want to run the Chicago Bulls. And she paused for a little bit. Um, I think I heard a chuckle and she's like, well, I can't, she'll never admit to a chuckle. She will never admit to a chuckle, but she's like, I can't help you with that. But I just had a conversation with David Stern.

Brian Johnson (22:09.418)
Renee will never admit to a chuckle. She'll never admit that.

Chad Sowash (22:14.122)
Ha ha!

Angela Taylor (22:22.11)
And he's thinking about starting a women's professional league. Why don't you consider coming to work with me? She's like, I'm going to work in the league office. Why don't you consider working with me? And I was like, New York city. I don't know about that. I'm not interested in going all the way to New York city, but the rest is history. went out for a visit, met with Val Ackerman, Carol Blaziowski, Renee, and heard the mission, what they were about and understood.

that the opportunity to now have the longest running professional women's sports league in America, to be part of that, the start of that league before we had uniforms or a basketball, to be able to see that from the ground up would be something that I couldn't pass up. I could always go back to business school or do whatever else, but I couldn't be part of something that was going to be so special. And to have the backing of David Stern, who anything he sets his mind to, you know, he's going to get it done.

and the support of several NBA clubs was really monumental in that. And so I had a great nine years at the league office and to see where we are now, to see from Lisa Leslie or Tina Thompson to go from having to go overseas and play in China or to play in Brazil or to play in Russia, to being able to play in the United States in front of their friends and family was a really special opportunity for me. And if we spring forward,

Brian, to your point to where we are now, where there's sold out arenas, where there's sponsorship dollars, where there's a upcoming television deal that is going to be renegotiated. And we start to see the ratings in the NCAA women's tournament and the Final Four, and they exceeded the ratings for the men's tournament and some pro events. That now they're at the table and they can have the conversation. think that that is the only thing that we wanted was to be able to have a seat at the table and to be able to prove that we are worthy.

Chad Sowash (23:59.511)
Yeah. -huh.

Angela Taylor (24:10.802)
of support. When you bet on women, you win.

Brian Johnson (24:14.366)
Tell me the answer. Okay, yep.

Chad Sowash (24:14.389)
Talk about that though real quick though, real quick, because we take a look at like the women's national soccer team, right? And they stood up for what they believed in, right? It was equity, was equal time. We're selling more jerseys, we're filling more stands, right? It feels like the women's basketball is having a moment, not just the WNBA, but also college, right? So, I mean,

This feels like a movement. Does it feel like we need more of a push or do you think this is the push that actually sends the WNBA into really the next stratosphere of

Angela Taylor (24:56.51)
think that we need more of a push. It's a continuum. You can't stop pushing ever. And we've evolved. We've come a long way. And anyone who's been involved in women's sports can say, and I am one of them, so happy to see where we are and so proud of the work that has been done to get us to this point and know that we are much further along today than we were yesterday. But we need to keep pushing. And some of those reasons, we talk about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, where they were in the late 70s, early

and where the NBA is now, right, there's a huge gap between the two, the delta of that timeframe from where they are now. And it's because people were pushing like a David Stern of getting it off of tape delay television to being on national TV and NBC. And so we need to continue pushing, but also recognize that we have come a long way and appreciate all the work that has been done. And I think that juxtaposition, it's really difficult for us as humans to be able to hold two thoughts sometimes.

That's one of the perspectives that I really hope that we have is continue to push women's sports. And we think this four years ago in 2020, during the COVID years, we saw the inequities in the NCAA where the women at the Final Four, their training facilities were embarrassing, right? And just the access and the resources that the women had and from what the men had was just, the Delta was embarrassing.

Four years later and having a conversation, having an equity report done, the ratings exceeded the men's tournaments monumentally. were on ABC. We had many more television games. so Caitlin Clark can credit so many people from 2020 and before that gave her the platform to be who she is. And many of us need to credit Caitlin Clark of bringing some new eyeballs to the game and allowing us to actually start to hopefully grow the game, the sponsorship.

the television dollars and ticket sales. And those are the three things that really, I mean, you need to be able to do to grow the

Brian Johnson (26:59.442)
Yeah, I love that. And the Caitlin Clark piece is interesting to give it. From a racial lens is always fascinating for me because that's how I look at stuff. But the whole white savior thing comes up with Caitlin Clark when she first gets in the league. There's some pushback, hey, there's been a lot of talent here for a long time, yada, yada, yada. It's interesting because I don't think, in my impression, it hasn't been Caitlin Clark that handled that poorly. I think the fans that follow Caitlin Clark handled that poorly.

Angela Taylor (27:05.81)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (27:28.008)
And then there's the other piece of that racially is Angel Reese gets kind of depicted as a villain, right? And so there's pushback from Black Cloak, it's like, hey, she's not a villain, she's a great player also. But it seems now perhaps that there's a melding of the two where people are realizing this is an amazing league. There's a lot of great players, not just these two. Would you agree with that? Do you see it differently?

Angela Taylor (27:52.518)
Yeah, you know, I love the fact that we are in the conversation now. So you love that there's new eyeballs, that this conversation is taking place in households and, you know, bars and sports haircut places like around the world. But also I think that there's a responsibility for all of us to handle it with care. Sports is so much about the narrative and the narrative coming out of the last two years in college sports in particular was this Angel Reese.

versus Caitlin Clark or South Carolina versus Caitlin Clark. And it was along racial lines. Like, right. We cannot deny that that was an underlining factor in that conversation. And I think that that is the tenor and the tone of what's going, the discourse that's taking place in this country and in America and in somewhat some places around the world as well. And unfortunately women's basketball is being dragged into that, conversation and that narrative.

What many of the veteran players were trying to say is we absolutely understand the following that Caitlin Clark has and the support that she is bringing. But there have been some ballers for years from Lynette Woodard in AIAW days to Maya Moore is one of the best players. Yes. To Sherri Miller, who we never got a chance to see play at the highest level because of her injuries. To Teresa Edwards, who to me is one of the best players ever. Five time gold medalist that

Brian Johnson (28:59.752)
with no three pointer.

Angela Taylor (29:14.972)
only played a couple years in the ABL and the WNBA before she retired. There's been great players before them. Similar to there's been great players in the NBA before Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, LeBron James. And can we hold two thoughts at once? Can we appreciate where we've been and recognize that there've been some really talented players that were playing in a forest, right? A tree falls in the forest, no one hears it. WNBA players were playing in a vacuum before. There wasn't a lot of coverage consistently.

at the highest level on national television or in the media in print. And now it's a little bit different. so Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, a lot of the players coming out and into the league right now are the beneficiaries of the work and the groundwork that has been laid before them. And I hope that these players, Cameron Brink has done a great job of talking about that. Angel Reese has done a nice job of talking about that. I hope Caitlin Clark does that as well. I think she recognized Maya Moore and Lynette Woodard when she was going after the record.

I hope we have more of that discourse because until others in the media, the Stephen A. Smiths and the folks that have a platform, until they start talking about it, we have to be the voices.

Chad Sowash (30:24.993)
Yeah, yeah, wow. So senior director of player personnel with the WNBA, what did that job entail in itself?

Angela Taylor (30:36.473)
Yeah. Yeah. So when I started at the league, we were a single entity. And what a single entity meant was that the 30 NBA teams owned the WNBA, the league office, as well as the eight WNBA teams that we started with. And so at that time, my first year with the league, Renee Brown and myself, we basically were the ones that identified the talent around the world. went overseas to identify players. We went to college games, identify players who were going to be in the draft. So it was

Chad Sowash (31:03.095)
Yeah.

Angela Taylor (31:05.64)
to us to do all the scouting, recruiting, the American basketball league, the ABL was in play at that time. we, for all the teams at that time, and we had a competitor, a direct competitor, right? So the ABL was playing at that time. They were paying more money at the time. And so we literally had to go recruit Nikesha Sales or Tisha Pinnitero or Tina Thompson to play in the WNBA and to sell the vision of where we are. we're not, we're going to pay

Chad Sowash (31:11.191)
For all the teams, for all the teams at this?

Brian Johnson (31:16.17)
Wow.

Angela Taylor (31:33.77)
$40 ,000 this year, but hopefully at some point, like those salaries will go up. We signed them the contracts out of the league office. So Renee and I were working with their agents and hoping to get them to either come back from overseas and playing the WNBA or to come from college and playing the WNBA, negotiating their contracts. We were working with sponsors like Nike, Gatorade, a lot of the sponsors that were supporting us in the early stages with sponsorship deals and opportunities for those players.

We navigated a lot of anything that happened around players inside of the league office from a macro level or with teams. We were the point people for those for the teams and the general managers that were on the ground as well. We built phenomenal relationships. Renee Brown is one of the best relationship people that you'll ever be around. We built relationships with the players so that when we needed to ask them to show up somewhere at 5 30 in the morning because this was going to help us get somebody in those seats. Teresa Weatherspoon.

Spoon would be happy there, she would show up and she would show up powerfully. we, anything and everything that involved players, we were involved in from contracts to marketing.

Chad Sowash (32:43.853)
Let's talk about that real quick. How different is it today? So, I mean, you've got an organization. Now it's teams. I would assume it's actually gone down to the team level because obviously being the GM and VP, you know that. But the MBA looking for talent from an awareness, marketing, and revenue standpoint versus the early days business model. Is it just about wins or is it Jersey sales and attendance? Or is this like

just part of the onion that you have to look at as a VP, GM, and really focusing on personnel for that

Angela Taylor (33:23.014)
Yeah. So about four years into the league, there was a union that was formed from the players. so then collective bargaining came along and then we no longer became a single entity. And so that responsibility went to the teams. So to your question is, you know, what, what were we responsible for doing and what were you prioritizing? It depended on your role as a head coach or general manager. Sometimes you were actually even in a little bit of friction and conflict.

As a general manager, you're trying to build your team for the community to be able to sell tickets, to be able to be representative in the community and to have sustained success. You didn't want to just win in the short term. You wanted to be able to win over time. As a head coach, you're like, my job depends on me winning today. So there might be some conflict. The head coach might want somebody who's ready today. A general manager may want somebody who's somewhat ready, but in five years is going to be at the peak of their game.

And then if you're like a vice president of business operations, if you're focused on sponsorships, ticket sales, and TV revenue, then you are focused on both winning for me, like I'm an athlete. So I think winning is what elicits a lot of the success and the marketing opportunities. So you want to have a team that's successful, that's going to win, but you want to have a team that connects in the community and that people can rally around. I think that that was what the distinguish the WNBA from the NBA.

in the early stages and I think it still continues today, is these players went above and beyond. They would stay for hours after a game signing autographs. They would connect with people in the community. They had appearances to perform every week in a busy season. They were traveling commercial. They always were on. They didn't have the luxury of flying when they're dead tired on a private jet, right? They were flying commercial. So they always were representing the WNBA.

still have a lot of respect for those players and what they were willing to do and to sacrifice because they knew that that was laying the groundwork for what we're seeing today.

Chad Sowash (35:23.255)
So one thing that you keep saying over and over and over, which I think we're missing from corporate America today, is community. The community aspect just isn't a part of it. The community is the job. And it's within those four walls as opposed to, you're talking about the community of Atlanta, the community of Washington, of all those different teams. how do we, and should we, I guess, take

Angela Taylor (35:28.221)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (35:50.699)
that thought process and try to integrate it back into corporate America because it feels like we've lost

Angela Taylor (35:58.742)
One of the things that I always said as a result of my tenure as an executive in the WNBA was that if you want to build a championship culture in corporate America, you need to run it like a team. And in sports, if you want to build a championship team, you need to run it like a business. And I think that sports are starting to be run more like a business, much more efficient. Looking at the bottom line.

But businesses can start to look at a team and those team dynamics of being outside of just your insular walls and focusing on what you're doing, the product or service that you're delivering, but also the impact that that product or service can have as well. And those are some of the things that in sports you really prioritize was understanding that it wasn't just about the game and it wasn't just about how many baskets you could score, but it was about that young girl, her experience that she was having with her brother.

at a game, but that experience started as soon as they left their house at five o 'clock. As soon as they got into their car and got into rush hour traffic and then found parking around the arena and then found their tickets at the ticket booth and came into the game and maybe were watching shoot around and getting a chance to interact with players, watching a game, ticket prices were low so they were able to actually watch a game where they could see it. They weren't up in nosebleed.

Brian Johnson (36:57.546)
Sure.

Angela Taylor (37:17.62)
So they were able to connect with the players, hear the conversation that was taking place on the court. And then after the game, they were able to get autographs signed and then head home. And that whole wall to wall experience, like that is something that I believe companies can really spend more time thinking about with their constituents is what is the wall to wall experience? When someone's going to Amazon or going online to purchase a product, what is their experience? The first time they get an interaction with you.

to when they are using your product or putting your product away or having a conversation with a colleague about if they would recommend using that product or not. And so there's a lot of little things that I think that we can better apply in corporate America that we do really well in sports. And there's a lot of things in corporate America that are starting to be integrated and incorporated into sports such as data analysis and analytics.

Chad Sowash (38:07.181)
What about how we treat our talent? Because I think that's one of the biggest issues. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because it feels like, again, pro sports teams, they treat their talent fairly well. I could be wrong, right? You guys are, you were in that. I wasn't. But in corporate America, that's not always the case. Usually you're A players. They might get treated incredibly well, but everybody else, know, probably not. Can you talk a little bit about that? The talent, corporate America, and really building

Angela Taylor (38:09.522)
Mmm. Yeah.

Angela Taylor (38:33.097)
What money?

Chad Sowash (38:37.461)
a grade A

Angela Taylor (38:39.708)
One of the things that successful teams and leaders in sports have is understanding the importance of building a culture, of being able to communicate that culture. so that the culture no longer is coming from leaders, but that the people on the front lines are the ones that are executing and holding people accountable to that culture. Folks in sports are really good about.

designing, diagnosing, and communicating an individual player's role. And this is not true in all sports. There's a lot of teams that you see that there's absence, where there's not great leadership, but those teams that are successful, players from one to 12 know what their role is. I'll tell this story, Tara Vandervere, who again is a mentor and advocate for me, and was the head coach at Stanford University when I was there, just retired a few months ago, and is

winningest coach in men's or women's college basketball. But she, one of the exercises they did early on my freshman year when, as I was a walk on, they asked us to fill out these index cards. What's your role? And I don't remember that I remember the exercise. I don't remember writing this down or my thought process and writing this down, but I wrote to bring sunshine. And it is one of the stories that in any interview Tara has, whether it's

podcast interview, it's an interview for the New York Times. She is always telling this story like that, know, Angela Taylor walk on to bring sunshine and that that there's some something that resonates with Tara about that. But I knew what my role was. Like I was a walk on on this team. I was happy to be on a team and to have the opportunity to learn and grow and get better every day and be challenged by Jennifer A. Z. and Sami Hitting, challenge them to get better as well as we prepared to go on the journey toward a championship.

but I understood my role from the start. And that didn't mean that I didn't desire to play more or that I wasn't gonna work hard to make sure that that role evolved over time. And as a matter of fact, know, Stacey Parson, one of my teammates has reframed that story for me where it feels a little bit better than me saying that bringing sunshine, you know, think about the whole Oscar Meyer song when I hear that story.

Angela Taylor (40:50.518)
But what she says is she's like, you know, the story of you saying you're bringing sunshine it resonates with tar for some reason maybe that you know, Elite athlete can have that perspective but Stacey's like what's remarkable about that story is that that wasn't the only story for you is as you know, a sophomore you were starting in the final four against Tennessee So you didn't think that you were reduced to bringing sunshine and sitting on the bench and not being able to contribute on the floor But that that was in that moment what you could do. And so I think what sports does really

with coaches or leaders who communicate extremely well and players that have the clarity over what they are expected to do and be held accountable to that inside of the culture by their teammates and their coaches is be able to define those roles. And so I think there's a lot of things that correlate to corporate America. There's a lot of bad managers out there and they're bad managers because they haven't learned from good managers. So they don't know how to manage. Maybe they were a technical expert in some domain. They were a developer or a

And now because they've had tenure, they become a manager, but they don't, they haven't developed the managerial skills and they're expected to lead a group of people. And I think that there's a lot of things that we could take from sports and understanding how to build winning teams, championship teams that would help from a department level to an organizational level in the corporate space.

Brian Johnson (42:11.464)
It's such a, it's so many great points in there. You are a ray of sunshine, whether you try or not. I can see where that came from, but such a great point about, and I say this all the time, whether it's corporate America or sports, oftentimes teams or companies will just hope they find the leader and hope a leader will fall in their lap. Whereas as you're saying, I know you do it in your work, Angela, but the goal is to, and you too, Chad, I mean, with all the military stuff, you can build the leader.

Angela Taylor (42:14.206)
Thank you.

Chad Sowash (42:16.694)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (42:38.982)
Anyone can be a leader. can do you got to give them the skills show them how to do it. It's not that tough and it's not that rare to be a good leader. You just have to have some basic stuff. anyway, I wanted to ask about something else. You mentioned David Stern era. Now David Stern for anybody doesn't know used to be one of the most powerful people in the sports planet that exists. He was the NBA commissioner for a long time. He was the one that co -signed on bringing the WNBA

into play and creating it and starting it. However, there was also lot of criticism of David Stern. They didn't do enough for the WNBA. Put yourself in David Stern's shoes. WNBA is starting. What would you do differently to make the WNBA get up there quicker, perhaps? Have a better on -ramp into success? Whatever it may be. What would you do if you were David Stern starting the WNBA today?

Angela Taylor (43:35.17)
If you will, I'm going to talk about David Stern here in a moment, but I want to kind of go back to the leadership piece. So I think that this is really important. When we think about leadership, oftentimes people are closed minded and they take, this is who I am, or this is how I want to lead, or this is what I know. And we don't develop new mental models. So the best way to develop new mental models so that you increase your range as a leader.

It doesn't mean that you are changing who you are or how you show up, but you increase your range so you understand what tool to use at any given moment is to more mental models. And you do that by exposing yourself to others, to be being receptive to how others lead, even if you don't like it, even if you don't like that person, even if you don't have anything in common with them or a relationship with them, there's so much that we can learn from others along the way and start to add those mental models to our toolkit.

and then therefore be able to increase our range. And I think that that is something that's missing. It's the growth mindset versus the scarcity mindset, but really having a bunch of mental models. And I think that that's one of the things as Brian, you probably had to do playing multiple sports, learning from different coaches, playing under different coaches. You had different mental models that you can apply and those translate to the real world as well. David Stern, you know what David Stern was

visionary leader, like anytime you were in a space, he was the smartest person in the room. He knew everything that was going on. If there was a women's basketball game going on in Bratislava, Slovakia, he knew what the score was, who the leading scorer was, the leading rebounder. Like he, he just did his homework. It was an amazing ability to consume a wealth of information and to be able to take that information, to come up with really great strategic ideas and decisions and to hire great people.

think one of the best things that David did was hired great people to be able to do their job and hold them accountable. And he did it in ways that maybe everyone wouldn't agree with. Like he was a very challenging boss for many to have, but he knew exactly what he was trying to do. And a lot of people talk about his leadership style. Like it was needed in that moment to take it from where they were, you know, a league that, you know, players were doing drugs in the locker room and they weren't on live television to where it was when

Angela Taylor (45:49.93)
Silver took over. There's so much to learn from David Stern is that he was an unrelenting leader. He knew exactly what his vision was. And I think for most leaders, if you aren't sure what your North Star is, the first obstacle that comes in your way, you're going to give up. You're going to stop and you're going to turn back. David knew exactly what he wanted to do a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. He knew what he wanted the NBA and the WNBA to be able to do on a global basis.

And he was unrelenting. knew what his North Star was. So any obstacles that came along, they were just little blips on the screen. So there was so much to be able to learn from David. I think that one of the things that, didn't happen early on with the, with the NBA, and I use this analogy all the time. So when I got to Stanford, I planned to major in engineering. So I was doing a work study in the engineering library and I was going to major in engineering, not because I wanted to be an engineer.

but because I was following in my brother's footsteps. So again, Gary, you know, always did everything right. So I'm like, if I do what Gary does, then I'll be heading in the right path. And that was great until I got to Stanford and recognized that his passion for engineering and his interest in engineering had nothing to do with what really got me going about what my future would be. And I had to make a decision that engineering wasn't the thing. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get into business. And so I had to pivot a little

And I think what we did not do early enough in the WNBA lifeline was pivot from being the little sibling of the NBA to being able to stand on our own. Right. We were trying to be the NBA playing in NBA arenas, doing many of the same marketing ploys as the NBA was. And we didn't pivot to being able to, how do we stand on our own? What is our brand? What is our North star? How do we start to design what our future is independent of the NBA

Chad Sowash (47:39.746)
Mm -hmm.

Angela Taylor (47:44.424)
the NBA support. And I think that that probably didn't happen early enough. think that David probably because it was his baby, right, maybe could have pivoted and he was supporting us wholeheartedly for the right reasons. Maybe we could have actually been able to stand on our own a little bit early on in the journey.

Brian Johnson (48:01.214)
Yeah, makes so much sense. Thanks for walking us through that and then leadership piece. Great points about the leadership piece as well. I really translate whether you're in corporate America or you're in sports. doesn't matter. one last piece here for the WNBA and its growth, right? Recent is recent growth. It's always been growing, but recent growth. I love how the NBA players have embraced everything and anything about the WNBA. They've been fantastic on their social media.

in person, in interviews, attending games. They've really shown up, I believe. Would you agree?

Angela Taylor (48:38.442)
100%. It warms my heart when I see whether it's on social media or players just being at the games, because they have so much credibility when you think about the game. And there's a great appreciation. think Tyrese Halliburton from Chad, your Indiana Pacers team, his father coached girls basketball. And he just talks about when he was growing up, he learned how to play the game by watching women and girls play because they play the right way. the skill and the technical aspect of the game

is front and center. It's not about how high you can jump, how strong you are, how tall you are. It's the technical aspect of the game. And so I think that the most players who play the game at such a high level have a great appreciation for women's basketball and women's sports in general, because it's not about athleticism. really is about the mindset. It's understanding the game from a basketball IQ standpoint, and it's playing the right way. There's teamwork. It's a beautiful game.

I love and appreciate when you hear these players talk about the individual players, when they talk about watching the NCAA games, probably even to a certain extent. I think LeBron James said this year, they was watching more college women's basketball than college men's basketball. Some of these players were more familiar with the women's players coming out than they were with the men's players. And it does add a little bit of credibility to the space. And I think that there's some times where there's some...

Chad Sowash (49:58.146)
Mm -hmm.

Angela Taylor (50:01.234)
miscommunication around it as well and the expectations, right? We dream on green and a set a couple of things that are a little bit controversial about what women should do or should not do when they are demanding higher salaries and, you know what they should be expecting. But I think the whole heart of support from professional athletes, particularly those in the NBA has been a ground swell of energy for the league. And as individual players, you can tell when their brothers in arms are supporting them.

that that gives them a little extra pep in their step as

Chad Sowash (50:32.141)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Brian Johnson (50:32.326)
Yeah, I love that. And Draymond's comments, or anybody's comments, they may not be the greatest answers or greatest response. There's thousands of people that feel the same way. So just like you mentioned earlier, just having the conversation and putting it out there and discussing that through, it allows us as a society to grow and to learn. Yeah, great point.

Chad Sowash (50:53.911)
Yeah. So you talked about money and we always hear about contract negotiations and it always feels like for professional sports, for talent, that it's all about the money. you know, and I would hope to say that it isn't always right. So when you're looking to, I mean, you're in that GM position, right? And you've got great talent and you want to retain that talent. What do you do? Because it doesn't happen just

right at one time. It's got to be a process. So what did you do, Angela, to be able to focus on creating an environment where retention, you know, really was kind of like second nature?

Angela Taylor (51:34.142)
Yeah. Well, for those players where it is all about the money, I'm okay with that. Many of these players, this is life changing, you know, money or income that they're receiving. And so I think so often, and I had to do that as a woman, I think sometimes inside of marginalized identities, a lot of people feel like you have to do things for the right reason. You want to have an impact. And so sometimes that means sacrificing your own financial welfare. And I don't think that those things, again, that's a juxtaposition that I think that we need to have a conversation

Chad Sowash (51:40.343)
Yeah? yeah.

Angela Taylor (52:04.126)
Let's be okay with people wanting to make money. I'm not at the expense of somebody else, but wanting to make money where they can take care of their family, as well as, as everything else. But I think that, you know, when you're, when you're a general manager, for me, it was about relationships. And I was trying to look big picture at the welfare for everybody, the individual and the collective. And it was so important to figure out like, how can we all win? Like if I win.

then you win, if you win, then somebody else can win and we can all succeed. But that's not, it's a zero sum, right? There's only so much of a budget that you are able to spend when you're looking at a salary cap. And so you really have to be strategic and think big picture about where you're gonna go. Like it's a chess move. You're not just thinking about the move that you're making now, the conversation that you're in with an agent today, which may have nothing to do with negotiating a salary.

It could just be checking in with them, seeing how they're doing, seeing who they're recruiting for next year, but it's building that relationship. So when you do sit across the table from them and have that difficult conversation, you have a relationship and you understand, you know, the best negotiators are those who walk away where both parties win. And that was always a primary focus for me was how could I make sure that we all win in these conversations, knowing that that's not always going to be the case.

But being able to listen to what the priorities were for these players, what was important to them, was it just the financial aspect of it? Was it the length of the contract? Was it that they didn't have to go overseas, but we could do something with them in off season with a marketing package and allow them to stay in the States because maybe they had a young child, maybe they were the caretaker for their parents. So it was really about centered for me around understanding the big picture and how the,

the immediate future played into the big picture and then building relationships so that you can have a difficult conversation. But it didn't have to be difficult because you both were at the table looking each other eye to eye and understanding that it wasn't personal, but you were going to fight for whether what your team or organization needed or the player and their agent was fighting for what that particular player needed at the

Chad Sowash (54:18.349)
So when you're looking at this, we're take from that individual, now we take a look at the entire team. How do you create a culture? And then how do you have two like amazing players like Caitlin Clark and Angela Reese, right? How do you fit those? Are those puzzle pieces number one, because that's what you need? Or once again, this might be a Jersey sale kind of thing. Cause the fever, mean, you know, it was like great player, but we also want to sell.

want to sell jerseys. And then the Angela Reese, I mean, it's kind of like they make each other. It's almost like a culture, not just for the team, but the NBA or the WNBA right now. Talk a little bit about that, the culture, and then also managing some of those egos and maybe even

Angela Taylor (55:06.684)
Yes. Great question. think for me, when I was in the general manager seat, it started out with the vision and the vision vision was predicated on being in alignment and having clarity between the team president and the general manager and the owners of making sure that we were all on the same page. And were we trying to build a championship team or were we trying to build a building? Sometimes those are competing interests.

Were the owners, as Malcolm Gladwell calls it, were they focused on the psychic benefits? So they were about sitting courtside and getting out of the tension of being a professional sports team, or did they really want to run this organization as the businesses that they ran to help them be successful enough to have the revenue or the income to be able to purchase an NBA or WNBA team? So the first thing that I always focused on was what is the vision and then building, particularly at the top of the ecosystem.

the owners, the president, the general manager, making sure that we're all aligned on the same page and have buy -in and that there's clarity over exactly what that vision for the organization, where we're trying to go and that we buy into it. And then the second thing was to foster a culture that actually is able to bring that vision to life. And the culture is, know, what you do and why you do things. And so being really intentional about that and part of it, started with as Woody Hayes from Ohio State days. So Chad, I know you'll appreciate

But one of the things that he has always said is you win with people. So for me, once I had the vision and understood the culture that I felt would support that vision, it was about hiring the right people, the people that either believe in that, the people that have the capacity and the capability of helping to continue to foster that culture or to be able to augment that culture as well as to be able to hold themselves and others accountable. And then when you have the people, was like who can communicate that vision?

in that culture in a way that makes it dynamic where it doesn't have to be one person or two people constantly communicating with the vision and holding people accountable. But the people that were living and breathing inside of that ecosystem actually started to live and breathe the culture and execute it and hold people accountable as well. So it started at the top with the owners and the leaders. It went to your staff. And then on the basketball side, it was the players of making sure that you are constructing a roster of players.

Angela Taylor (57:30.058)
that fit into that vision that you have, that fit into the culture, and so that you don't have to manage that culture on a day -to -day basis. Like the best teams are the teams where the players are the ones who hold each other accountable, and they're the ones that exhibit the culture on a daily basis. And then when you get into roster construction, I just remember, I think it was the 2004 USA Basketball Men's Olympic team, where they had this great election, know, Carmelo, Dwayne Wade, and LeBron on the young side.

Then they had like Tim Duncan and I want to say Vince Carter. And it was a collection of some of the best players in the NBA, but it wasn't a great team. And I think a lot of times leaders in the corporate space and leaders in sports try to win the press conference. They try to win by getting the biggest free agent signing or the big names because people are going to love like, this person is brilliant. They just signed so -and -so.

That's not always what it is about. It's understanding what your culture was. So for me, was, it was a multi -pronged approach was we wanted to draft well. So we had to be able to scout extraordinarily well, both globally and the international play, as well as in the college game. We wanted to be able to develop talents. So, you know, maybe there's a player that can do one or two things exceptionally well, but they're not well -rounded. So how do we develop those things to make sure that they're above average in all categories?

as well. And we wanted to be attractive to free agents. So we wanted to be able to recruit people to be able to come to play for us. And so that meant we had to have the foundation. Like, why do they want to come to Atlanta or Minnesota or DC? And so once you start to figure out, so who fits into that realm recruiting development, then how do we put a roster together? What type of team do we want to be? And this required a lot of communication with the coach.

your head coach of like, you know, who do they want to coach? There were a couple of times as a general manager where there was somebody that I wanted to draft who I thought long -term was going to help the organization out. But the coach thought, well, this player is going to take a few years to develop. I may not get the chance to coach her because I'll be fired in the meantime, or, you know, I prefer this player. And so I had to make the decision is will this coach coach this player the way I need he or she to coach them. And so I may have to make a different decision.

Angela Taylor (59:52.436)
from a personnel standpoint for that reason. So roster construction is difficult. It's challenging, particularly with salary cap implications. But if you understand what your vision is and you have that clarity, sometimes it makes those decisions much easier than they would be otherwise.

Chad Sowash (01:00:12.109)
I gotta say, Angela, thank you for taking time to breathe with us because this has been a total pleasure for me and I know for our listeners. If listeners wanna find out more about you, wanna connect with you, where would you generally send

Angela Taylor (01:00:14.168)
Hahaha.

Angela Taylor (01:00:30.794)
So you can find me on social media platforms. So my personal social media on X or Twitter or whatever they're calling it is AF isn't Frank Taylor 22. So you can find me there. But you also have a lot of different irons in the fire. If you will. My main, main thing is the Dignitas agency, which is a boutique leadership development, change leadership and equity inclusion strategy company. You can find out about what we do with global companies and entities around the world at DignitasAgency .com. If you're ever coming to Idaho for a visit, really proud of the evolution of this state. It's a beautiful state. have a much greater appreciation today than I did as a eight -year -old of Idaho. It's a beautiful state. If you love the outdoors, it's a great place to be. And I have a culinary experience company called Indulge Boise Food Tours, where we explore the emerging culinary scene here in Idaho and take guests, both local and Abbeytown visitors,

Angela Taylor (01:01:29.406)
to some of the best restaurants in a variety of different neighborhoods. So you can find us at indulgeboise .com. And then lastly, I have a podcast as well called Unlocking the Club, where we invite black women particularly to come and share their story in a way that we oftentimes don't hear, in a way that also resonates with people inside of multiple identities, so that we can make sure that these powerful voices are both seen and heard in a very dynamic

Chad Sowash (01:01:55.703)
Are you twins? I mean, how do you do all that stuff? And Brian Johnson, I know that we now have more than enough reasons, especially with indulge to go to Idaho.

Angela Taylor (01:02:05.374)
Yes. Yes. You guys are invited to come for sure. Well, and Brian. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, and I don't know, Brian, if you had the same experience, but I think for me, I was much better students when we were in season. When I had too much time, I just got into too much trouble and wasn't as productive. And so I think that I need to stay busy in order to stay productive.

Brian Johnson (01:02:09.343)
I wanna go on the food tour. You have me at the food tour.

Chad Sowash (01:02:12.429)
No

Brian Johnson (01:02:25.706)
the same

Chad Sowash (01:02:31.853)
Well, thanks for taking some time, taking a breath now. Go back and get busy. Brian, thanks so much for bringing Angela on and for you listeners, we'll be back very, very soon. Thanks so much and we're