A New Game Plan

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Washington, D.C.’s NFL franchise has built a reputation for controversy over the past 20 years.

The team’s owner since 1999, Daniel Snyder is known as one of the most litigious people in the capital region. The organization’s former name, the Redskins, had drawn rebuke from Native Americans and others who pointed out the racist origins of the moniker and logo. In 2021 the NFL concluded an investigation into the franchise’s workplace culture amid accusations of sexual harassment. Members of the cheerleading squad filed a lawsuit against the team for secretly producing inappropriate videos during swimsuit calendar shoots.

So when the franchise fired former team president Bruce Allen in late December 2019, many wondered who would step up to fill the role.

Some in Jason Wright’s inner circle advised him to think twice about the opportunity to lead the transformation of the renamed Washington Football Team.

But Wright ’04, a former NFL running back and one of the top 10 rushers in Northwestern football history, has never been one to shy away from a challenge. The position offered him a unique opportunity to reshape the culture of a franchise from the ground up. Those chances don’t come around very often in the tightly controlled NFL, where change is often slow and incremental.

“I saw that this organization was at a major inflection point,” Wright says. “I knew that there was a commitment to a cultural transformation. In the interview process, I understood that Dan and Tanya Snyder [co-CEOs of the Washington Football Team] were deeply committed to this. We poked and prodded at each other, but we didn’t find any fractures. So we were excited to link arms and move forward.”

On Aug. 17, 2020, the Washington Football Team named the 38-year-old Wright the franchise’s president, making him the first Black president in NFL history. Currently the youngest president in the league, Wright was hired after seven years at McKinsey & Company, where he was a partner in the operations practice and helped lead the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. His combination of on-the-field NFL experience and corporate boardroom chops made him an ideal candidate to guide the team’s cultural and business transformation.

Responsible for leading the team’s business divisions, Wright immediately began putting his stamp on the franchise, hiring a diverse group of leaders, not from the insular NFL but from outside organizations like the Obama Foundation, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and soccer powerhouse Real Madrid, to provide fresh perspectives to a franchise that had gone stale. He also retained Julie Donaldson, who was hired just weeks before Wright, as the team’s senior vice president of media and content. She was the first woman to become a full-time member of an NFL radio broadcast.

And in the Washington, D.C., area, where every move made by the team is often met with either skepticism or hostility, something strange happened under Wright’s watch: People actually liked the things he and his newly installed team were doing.

In December 2020, Wright was named the “Best Hire of 2020” by Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal. NBA superstar Kevin Durant, a native of Maryland and passionate Washington Football Team fan, applauded Wright on Twitter. And so far, the fan base seems happy with the work of a president who has been transparent about the changes, big and small, to their favorite team.

“When Washington hired Jason, his resume as a former player turned well-regarded consultant made sense for the situation, but he inherited a daunting, culture-changing task,” says Ben Standig, who covers the Washington Football Team for The Athletic. “There’s no ‘mission accomplished’ banner flying over FedEx Field or anything, but at a minimum Wright has helped put a professional polish on a tarnished brand thanks to his relentlessly positive vibe and forward-thinking business approach.”

On to the NFL — and Beyond

After rushing for more than 2,600 yards in his Northwestern career, Wright spent seven seasons in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, Atlanta Falcons, Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals. He was a team captain for the Cardinals and served as the team’s NFL Players Association representative. But even at the pinnacle of his profession, Wright felt something was missing. 

He comes from a family with a history of activism and service. His grandfather helped launch an NAACP chapter in east Texas, and his father was a Black Panther and civil rights activist. So during his NFL offseasons, Wright found ways to give back to communities he cared about. He went to seminary and helped start a charter school network in Cleveland. 

While Wright was playing for the Browns, he and Braxton befriended two teenage girls who attended the after-school program where Braxton worked. When their parents were not around, the girls lived with the Wrights. Now in their 20s, Aiesha Gaston and Jamie Owens are the Wrights’ goddaughters and part of the family alongside Jason and Tiffany’s children, Johnathan and Gabrielle.

For Wright, there had always been more to life than football. So in July 2011, at age 29, he retired from the NFL to attend the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

“My wife will tell you I was going through my pre-midlife crisis in graduate school,” Wright says. “But I was always focused on the platform or the fulcrum for broad societal impact. I believed that occurred through business. If we can find a way to generate capital while also doing good for the community, that’s the rising tide that raises all boats. I found that at McKinsey.” 

During his seven years at McKinsey & Company, Wright helped raise awareness about the U.S. racial wealth gap. He rose to partner and co-authored a report that showed the average Black family in the U.S. in 2016 had a net worth that was one-tenth the wealth of an average white family.

“The entire economy does better if the racial economic gap is closed,” Wright says. “Even taking this job with the Washington Football Team, I looked at it as an opportunity to enact that vision of equitable distribution of capital while creating social good. It just happened to lead me back to sports, fortuitously, at the right time.”