As more than 700 schoolgirls filed into lower-bowl seats at American Airlines Center for the Mavericks’ third-annual GEM celebration, Bally’s Sports Southwest sportscaster Dana Larson marveled at the transformation that has been made with a new generation of women.
The high-schoolers and junior-high students were about to receive some real-life wisdom from four of the most successful females in the fields of sports, finance and medicine.
As Larson said of the distinguished panel: “You were all told at some point, you can’t do that – the boys should do that. You should change what your dreams are.
“It’s not so crazy anymore, which is a beautiful thing, right?”
Indeed, it is.
GEM, Girls Empowered by Mavericks, is a program that began in 2020 and has provided support, guidance and knowledge to young women, focusing on education, financial literacy, as well as mental and physical health through sports.
On Monday, some of the most promising kids in the program were brought together from all over Texas to AAC for GEM’s biggest celebration of the year as part of women’s history month.
They were treated to a panel of accomplished women and their thoughts and ideas about how young people can succeed in this era of challenges and opportunities.
Joining Larson were Dr. Shawna Nesbitt, vice-president and chief institutional opportunity officer and professor of internal medicine-cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center; Tieisha Smith, head of tech partnerships, accelerations and culture transformations for TIAA; and, Danielle Viglione, a former Texas Longhorn standout in women’s basketball and now assistant coach for the Los Angeles Sparks and head of player development for Athletes Unlimited.
The stories were nothing short of priceless, particularly from Dr. Nesbitt, who grew up in a steel-producing town in western Pennsylvania.
“There were no doctors that looked like me, male or female,” she said. “Early on, I liked science. I loved people and I saw people suffering. And I thought, that’s what I want to be. I want to be a doctor.
“I told my mother that and she said: Hmm, girls are not doctors. Girls are nurses or teachers. Why don’t you pick one of those?”
That did not set well with young Shawna.
“I had a cousin who was in college at the time who came and visited and she said to my mom: if she was your son, what would you tell him,” Nesbitt said.
“My mom said: Yeah, you can be a doctor if you want to. From that point, I decided to look for people to help me get to the next level. I knew school was going to be important. I worked really hard at it.”
All of the women on the panel are well-educated and have risen to the top of their respective professions. And they were thrilled to be able to impart some of their experience to the young crowd.
And a diverse crowd, it was. Among the schools represented were Mesquite, Wylie East, Cedar Hill, Frisco Lone Star, Fort Worth Dunbar, Celina, all of the Richardson ISD high schools, International Leadership of Texas and many others. The GEM celebration was sponsored by TIAA and UT-Southwestern.
Mavericks’ CEO Cynt Marshall talked to the girls at the onset of the event. And her message included asking the question: what is a gem.
Several students provided answers, but one in particular impressed Marshall as one girl from Richardson High School said “a gem is something precious that’s formed by pressure.”
“I did not set that up,” Marshall said. “A gem is something that is precious and it is formed by heat, by pressure, by time and space. And you will have pressures in your life. But that’s how gems are created because all of you are gems.”
Just like the panelists remain shiny gems who have withstood pressures throughout life.
Viglione, who played at Texas in the mid-‘90s, once had 48 points in a game and shattered the NCAA record with 11 three-pointers in a game.
And yet, that memorable game also included an important teaching point from her coach, UT legend Jody Conradt.
“Do you think I missed shots? Yes,” Viglione said. “And when I missed shots, that made me mad. I wanted to make the next one. The game I broke the NCAA record, I airballed the last three-pointer I took. And Jody Conradt took me out of the game and said: you can sit right here until you’re ready to try to make your shots.
“I said: what? She knew how to motivate people and she knew that would make me mad. She put me back in the game, I hit the 11th three, broke the record and then she took me out.”
The point is that failure is not always a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably the best teacher we have.
“It takes a lot of times to go into a situation we’ve never been before and never experienced before and fail – and fail again,” Viglione said. “Fear of failure is the worst thing.
“Go out and fail. It’s OK. It doesn’t matter what people think. Go out and fail because you’re getting better. If you never fail, you never get better, honestly.”
As Larson added: “I failed a lot, too. But I was able to fulfill a dream. I never thought I could be a sports broadcaster. A girl talking sports? That’s crazy. It is now a very, very reachable goal. And I’ve been so lucky to do that for over 20 years now.”
The Mavericks employ an army of staffers to help run programs like GEM. And the results are tangible. All you had to do was look around AAC on Monday.
One of the students from International Leadership of Texas said the GEM program has a profound impact on lots of kids.
“I enjoy seeing women from different backgrounds coming and putting together their ideas. This is a great opportunity,” said Jayla Perri, a senior at one of the IL-Texas campuses in Houston. “I graduate in two months, so I’m really trying to find my way. So what I took from it is: staying motivated, staying in the game and figuring out what’s your ‘why.’
“That’s my motivation, trying to find what I’m going to do and how I’m going to impact the world.”
Multiply that by about 700 and you couldn’t help but feel like the future might just be in pretty good hands, Marshall said.
“I have four words that I live by: Dream, focus, pray, act,” she said. And those four words also lead to another three words that just happen to spell out GEM.
“Grow in your game,” she said. “Always be trying to excel and get better.
“Embrace the future. Appreciate it, hug it, see the vision and see where you are going.
“Make a difference. We are relying on you to make this world better. I just think you are the generation that’s going to save us from ourselves. You are smart. You are powerful, you understand all different cultures. You are all that. You truly are gems.”
Shortly after that, Marshall’s theme song, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, began to play.
The students came from far and wide. Perri got up at 4:30 a.m. to make it to AAC by the 10 a.m. start of the event.
And, by the way, the girls at IL-Texas are fluent in English, Spanish and Chinese.
“Our girls get the opportunity to engage with a lot of leaders and learn from a lot of great leaders,” said Caitlin Madison, executive director of communications, marketing and public relations for IL-Texas, which has 22 campuses and more than 22,000 students. “I know every year they leave and they are thrilled with everything they’ve taken away. And one of the cool things is that every time our kids leave an experience like this, they are seeing themselves with higher aspirations. That’s what it’s about.
“Hearing that a woman was told ‘no.’ Or if she doesn’t fit that role or she doesn’t belong there. And then getting there, and then some. It’s great for these girls to see that they don’t need to come from a certain background or look a certain way to get wherever they want to go. They have everything within them.”
And the Mavericks are helping cultivate that potential with events like the GEM celebration of girls.
X: @ESefko
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