Tywanna Smith

Award-Winning Sports Manager / CEO / Best-Selling Author / Speaker

Tywanna Smith is an award-winning sports manager, best-selling author, speaker, and former professional basketball player. For the past 15 years, she has served as a financial and business advisor to nearly 50 NBA, NFL, WNBA, Euro-League, and Chinese Basketball Association athletes as President of The Athlete's Nexus. Her first book, “Surviving the Lights: A Professional Athlete’s Playbook to Avoiding the Curse,” has been featured at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, the Black Student-Athlete Summit, and the NFL’s Careers in Football Forum. Smith has been recognized as one of Ole Miss' Top 40 Under 40 Alumni and Mississippi Business Journal’s Top 50 Under 40 Rising Business Leaders. In addition, she has been featured in Forbes, NerdWallet, and HuffPost. Smith is currently pursuing her doctorate at The University of Memphis, where she is researching effective professional development programming for Black athletes. Learn more at www.tywannasmith.com.