Wade Davis

Former NFL Player, Thought Leader, Public Speaker, and Writer

Former NFL Player Wade Davis is a thought leader, public speaker, and writer on gender, race, and orientation equality. Davis is currently the Vice President of Inclusion Strategy for Product at Netflix and has consulted with Google, MTV/VH1, 21st Century Fox, AppNexus and others to co-create transformative solutions to build inclusive corporate cultures. Additionally, Davis has coached senior leaders to adapt and flex their leadership styles to meet the needs and develop their employee population. His work to engage, educate, and help men understand what actions to take toward gender equality has included partnerships with the Ms. Foundation and Ebony Magazine where he launched the #BlackMenAndFeminism campaign and with the Ms. Foundation’s #MyFeminismIs campaign.

In addition to his work as a Global Champion for Innovation for UN Women, he is a founding member of VICE’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board with Gloria Steinem, Roberta Kaplan and others and is on the boards of the Ms. Foundation for Women and Sparks and Honey. Most recently, Davis was named a Global Champion for Girl Up, a program of the United Nations Foundation. Understanding the importance of engaging men around gender equity and equality, he built a “Men’s Gender Equality Development” leadership program that launched with the United Nations 2018.

Davis is the NFL’s first LGBT inclusion consultant, and has consulted for numerous professional sports leagues on issues at the intersection of sexism, racism and homophobia. He has created league-wide inclusive leadership strategies, led inclusion-training sessions for coaches and players, and built and launched national engagement initiatives.

A former national surrogate for President Obama, Davis has been an Adjunct Professor at both the NYU School of Professional Studies Tisch Institute for Sports Management, Media, and Business and the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration. He continues to lecture on the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and sports at universities nationally and internationally.

Davis was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and graduated from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and received an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Northeastern University for his leadership and ongoing efforts to eradicate homophobia and sexism in athletics. He is currently at work on his first book.