Parity’s Risa Isard is behind some of women’s sports’ biggest conversations
At the heart of Isard’s work is a drive to help create change for women in sports
“Always doing what I can, where I am with what I have.”
That quote from Risa Isard, pretty much sums up her journey.
It was a theme that we circled back on a few times during our conversation.
Isard, the Director, Research and Insights at Parity, a women’s sports marketing consultancy, most likely is a name you haven’t heard.
She’s not an athlete or a coach (although, she did both roles when she was younger). She’s not an owner. She doesn’t work in the front office of a league and isn’t an analyst on TV or a sportswriter.
Isard is the one behind a few of the recent biggest research studies in women’s sports.
When Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers accepted the ESPY award for best female college athlete after her freshman season at UConn, she said:
“Now, with the light that I have now as a white woman who leads a Black-led sport (basketball) and celebrated here, I want to show a light on Black women. They don’t get the media coverage that they deserve. They’ve given so much to the sport and the community and society as a whole, and their value is undeniable. In the WNBA last season the postseason awards, 80% of the winners were Black, but they got half of the coverage as a white athletes. I think it’s time for change. Sports media holds the key to story lines. Sports media and sponsors tell us who is valuable, and you have told the world that I matter today and (to) everyone who voted, thank you. But I think we should use this power together to also celebrate Black women.”
Behind those powerful words was Isard’s work.
Isard’s most recent study at Parity that gained buzz looked at fan interest and perceptions around gender equity on the most recent Olympics and Paralympics.
And, yes, it was “surreal” that Bueckers talked about this work at the ESPYS and yes, Isard’s phone blew up after this.
This is part of Isard’s why.
“The reason to do this research was to see if we could quantify this (racial disparity in media coverage) and if so, how do we use that knowledge to contribute to conversations, to elevate issues and ultimately to create change,” Isard said.
“For Paige to stand up there and not just share at high level the findings from the research, but to do so in the manner which she did, which was about creating change, which was about shining a light on the other incredible athletes who were there with her that evening, which was about honoring the incredible Black women who play in women’s basketball, it was, kind of perfect. I couldn’t have scripted or asked for anything better, and I didn’t know it was going to happen.”
It was meant to be
Isard’s journey to this point, was, as she put it “purposeful and winding.”
Which, to be honest, isn’t that unusual for someone working in women’s sports.
“For a long time, I was working in women’s sports in a piecemeal way, because there weren’t full time jobs really in any kind of scalable way to be had in women’s sports,” Isard said. “I did a lot of these things that I could, to stay involved and contribute and learn and grow.
“I was always hoping that a day like this would come. I was always preparing myself, building the tools, the skills to be ready for this kind of arrival of women’s sports and the jobs that would come with it.”
Some of ways she stayed connected to women’s sports included working on a project for soccer legend Brandi Chastain and pitching in on ESPNW’s Summits. She found her way to the Aspen Institute, got her PhD at UMass and taught at UConn. Last June, she landed at Parity.
There were many pivotal moments in her life that carried her to this career. The earliest and most formative experience came when she was seven years old: the launching of the WNBA.
Isard was living in Phoenix, AZ and attended Phoenix Mercury games growing up, mainly with her dad.
She learned so many lessons from those games. First the positives, the intricacies of the game and watching elite athletes playing day in and day out. And the negatives, which are the realities that women’s sports still face today. From the disparity between men’s and women’s sports to racial inequities. and more.
“I was at this perfect precipice of an age,” Isard said. “I was old enough to remember going to my first game. I was old enough to remember falling in love with the team. I was old enough to be aware of what was happening … Literally growing up in those stands. Young enough to still have a lot of time to enjoy it, and old enough to have a consciousness about what I was enjoying, and to start paying attention and noticing very early that this thing that I loved more than anything in the whole world was a thing that most people didn’t know about, at best, and at worst, it was a thing that they went out of their way to troll. It was a thing that they went out of their way to bully me for. It was informative. I think early on, I was a girl athlete. I loved the WNBA.”
Isard played soccer and ran cross country. She coached high school cross country while she was getting her PhD.
Isard had quite a few touchpoints with the Mercury from early on. She hosted a toiletry drive in fifth grade that was a competition among classes. A player from the Mercury would visit the winning class. She even worked for the Mercury the season she graduated from high school as a game day assistant.
In between those two experiences, Isard read an early collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players. When Diana Taurasi was the Number 1 pick of the WNBA in 2004, going to the Mercury, Isard was at the draft party with her dad. She found then-GM, Seth Sulka, and had a conversation with him about marketing and signing strategies.
“When I think about pivotal moments in my career, I was just a kid, but he stopped in the middle of his day drafting Diana Taurasi and said hi to me and shared some meaningful thoughts and had a meaningful conversation with me,” Isard said. “Those moments all happened before I was in high school, and they all set this foundation for what I continue to do today. I had been really well aware of Title IX because I was very aware of the inequalities. I was also trying to educate myself around like, ‘Well, how do you make equality happen?’”
Her parents, dad, Dan and mom, Debbie, played a big role in opening up her world and guiding her along the way.
When Isard was in high school and was involved in a nonprofit, she started looking at things differently: from not just doing good from a community service viewpoint but from the lens of social change.
Isard struggled with choosing her path because she loved women’s sports and was intrigued by the business side of it. Yet, she also wanted to leave the world a better place.
She shared this with her mom, who said, “Well, have you thought about how you can use sports to do that?”
That question changed everything for Isard. From that point on, everything was more intentional in finding her way to what truly is her calling.
“All of these different stages in life, I was always trying to do what I could, where I was with what I had,” Isard said. “Over the years, I’ve worked really hard to develop a skill set that gives me more and more tools to do this work. I was a very enthusiastic but largely above average, mediocre athlete myself, but I have always been very successful academically and very intellectually curious and very driven there. I think along the way, I just realized that’s the contribution that I can make.
“(Now at Parity) our mission is to close the gender income and opportunity gap in professional sports. My part is asking the questions, running the data, translating it, and doing all of that in service of putting money in the pockets of women athletes. It’s pretty much a dream. This mission feels like it’s been the through line to my entire life. And then it’s again, doing what I can, where I am with what I have. Where I get to contribute is on the data and research side, which I’ve spent the last 10 years in my career building toward.”
The Bonus
Isard is always thinking about the “stories we can tell about women’s sports writ large, and what are the nuanced stories to tell.”
“What are the research projects about women’s sports writ large, and what are the research studies that can really shine a light on the unique experiences of different women athletes?”
Here are links to the the research studies mentioned in this story:
Racial disparities in WNBA media coverage
Thanks to my founding sponsor, Elevated Sports Group, and to all my subscribers for the support.