Nina King becomes the first woman and person of color to be Duke’s athletic director

DURHAM, N.C. — To replace the retiring Kevin White, Duke needed to look at the person who’s worked closest with the longtime athletics director.

Nina King, a rising star in the industry who’s worked for White at both Notre Dame and Duke since 2005, will be named Duke’s new vice president/athletics director, the school announced Wednesday.

The 42-year-old King would be the first woman and first person of color to head Duke’s athletic department. She’s been on Duke’s staff since 2008, most recently as senior deputy athletics director overseeing football and women’s basketball among other duties.

“I am thrilled that Nina will be our vice president and director of athletics,” Duke president Vince Price said in a statement. “In her time at Duke, Nina has demonstrated extraordinary leadership, earning the esteem of our coaches, student-athletes, athletics staff and colleagues in athletics departments across the country. Nina is recognized as a committed advocate for inclusive excellence in collegiate athletics, and she has represented Duke on committees of the NCAA, ACC and many other national organizations. I can imagine no better person to carry on Kevin White’s exceptional record at Duke.”

In the North Carolina Triangle, N.C. State was the first ACC school to hire a woman as athletic director when Debbie Yow held that job from 2010 until her retirement in 2019. In 2017, Virginia’s Carla Williams became the first Black woman hired as an athletics director at a Power Five conference school and Vanderbilt hired Candice Storey Lee to lead its athletics department last year.

King becomes the sixth female athletics director among the Power Five conference schools. Three are in the ACC in King, Williams and Pittsburgh’s Heather Lyke.

“Thrilled for this incredible new opportunity!” King posted on Twitter Wednesday. “Love my Duke family and so excited to continue our tradition of excellence.”

Like Williams and Lee before her, King’s first job as an athletics director will come at the Power Five level.

“This is truly a magical moment within the life of Duke athletics,” White said in a statement. “Nina King is indeed the absolute perfect choice to lead this storied program. Nina, unequivocally, possesses all the intellectual and relationship skills, coupled with inordinate subject knowledge, which, in my humble view, represents a very serious leadership 'upgrade!' To be sure, I could not possibly be more excited for both Duke University and the amazing King family.”

Currently, the ACC’s longest-tenured AD, White, 70, announced his retirement last January, saying he would step aside in August. He’s been Duke’s athletic director since 2008 when he replaced Joe Alleva.

According to sources familiar with the search, King emerged the choice from a field that included, at one point or another, Villanova athletics director Mark Jackson, Rice athletics director Joe Karlgaard and Florida executive associate athletics director Lynda Tealer, among others.

Richard Wagoner, a former Duke Board of Trustee chair and General Motors CEO who led the search committee to replace White, said King embodied what the group wanted in the hire.

“We set out on a national search to find the best possible leader, someone with the experience, intellect and vision to meet the challenges of the future and a sharp understanding of our commitment to excellence in academics and competition,” Wagoner said in a statement. “The committee was enthusiastic about Nina’s candidacy, and I could not be more excited to see her at the helm of Duke athletics.”

A graduate of Notre Dame, Tulane

King is a Notre Dame graduate with an accounting degree who also received her law degree from Tulane. A team manager for Notre Dame’s women’s swimming and diving team as an undergrad, she was Notre Dame’s director of rules education from 2005-08 when White was athletic director there. After White became Duke’s athletic director on May 31, 2008, King also joined him at Duke that September.

In addition to managing Duke athletics together, she and White collaborated to teach a sports business course for graduate students at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

“Nina King is a terrific choice, and congratulations to Duke on an outstanding hire,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement on Wednesday. “Nina is a person of tremendous integrity with quality experiences and insight that will serve Duke, its student-athletes, coaches, alumni and fans extremely well. We look forward to having her join the exceptional team of ACC Athletics Directors, and will continue to benefit from her servant leadership.”

As the primary administrator for Duke’s women’s basketball and football teams, King led the search and hiring of Kara Lawson as the women’s basketball coach last July.

“This is a historic hire for Duke University,” Lawson said in a statement. “Congratulations to Nina; she is a star! She leads with intelligence, competitiveness and compassion. I am excited to work together with her. The future is bright for our department because I know we have the right person to represent us in every way. One of the main reasons I chose to come to Duke was because of the diversity that exists at every level. This is a powerful statement by president Price and our Board of Trustees.”

In addition, King has led Duke’s senior staff/sports administrator group that oversees the school’s 27 athletic teams while also overseeing the department’s human resources plus the recreation and physical education program.

NCAA women’s basketball selection committee

Nationally, King joined the NCAA women’s basketball selection committee in 2018, becoming vice-chair for the 2019-20 school year and chairing the group that selects teams for the tournament last spring. The NCAA expanded the committee from 10 to 12 members in April, approving a one-year extension for King to chair the committee for a second consecutive year for 2021-22.

In 2015, King spearheaded the formation of Duke’s student-athletic civic engagement program, known as ACE.

“This hire is an important step for the continuity of the outstanding culture that exists within Duke athletics,” Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said in a statement. “Serving as one of Kevin White’s most trusted advisors for his entire time at Duke, Nina King has served our university well in whatever roles have been assigned to her. She has represented the Duke department of athletics with distinction both internally and externally, including many roles on the national stage. That national presence is important in our school’s leadership position in an ever-changing college sports environment. Personally, I have enjoyed working with Nina and look forward to working with her even more in the future.”

As a student, after completing her undergraduate degree but before finishing law school, King interned at the NCAA office with finance and information services and also twice at Nike with in legal and sports marketing departments.

In 2018, Sports Business Journal named King to its annual Forty under 40 class, honoring her for excellence and innovation before the age of 40.

While Duke conducted its search to replace White this spring, King was a candidate to become Northwestern’s athletics director. That school promoted Mike Polisky to that position on May 3 but Polisky resigned nine days later due to a campus backlash.

Northwestern has re-opened its hiring process but King has landed the job she wanted at Duke.

Current state of Duke athletics

King will take over a Duke athletics program dealing with pandemic-spawned losses university officials say will be between $15-25 million.

Despite obstacles the pandemic presented, the Blue Devils thrived on the playing courts and fields by winning an ACC-best six championships this school year. That included the softball program, in its fourth season of competition, winning the ACC tournament last weekend.

At the same time, Duke struggled in its most high-profile sports with football going 2-9 overall and 1-9 in ACC play last fall in coach David Cutcliffe’s 13th season with the Blue Devils. Krzyzewski’s basketball team posted a 13-11 record and missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1995.

Lawson’s first season as Duke’s women’s basketball coach ended after four games when, following positive COVID-19 tests in December, the players decided to opt out for the remainder of the season.

Once she takes over for White, King is almost certainly faces the prospect of eventually hiring replacements for both the 74-year-old Krzyzewski and Cutcliffe, who’ll turn 67 in September.

In the meantime, both Cutcliffe and Krzyzewski expressed their happiness with King’s promotion on Wednesday and said they are happy to work with her in her expanded role at Duke.

“I am thrilled for Nina and her family,” Cutcliffe said in a statement. “She has prepared for this opportunity her entire professional life, learning from the best of all time in Dr. White. Nina understands what it takes to build a great program on the coaching and playing side of athletics while possessing the unique ability to sit at the business, academic and legal tables comfortably. Without question, Nina will champion the core mission of Duke University while lifting the student-athletes to a new level of excellence. Duke Football is excited to move forward!”