Farewell Serena Williams Athlete, Welcome Serena Williams Leader

Some time in the next 14 days Serena Williams, the most decorated and dominant woman tennis player of all-time, will take her final bows as a competitive tennis player. This U.S. Open will be her last.

We’ve watched others hailed as the greatest of all-time sail off into the sunset, or even return quickly to shore after attempting to sail off, yes we are talking about you, Tom Brady. Each takes a bit of us with them. But the time has likely passed to see Serena lifting hardware at the end of tournaments, none of us are so swift as to outrun time. Instead, we can only surrender to its ravages with grace.

This is what makes Serena so intriguing a presence heading off the stage, as staying on it. She has been the longest lasting female champion in her sport, first coming to our attention as a teenager in the last century. While she has not been without criticism in her career, more for her on the court demeanor than her persona off it, she has been a thoughtful champion who leaves the glass of multiple shattered ceilings behind her.

She leaves the game intent now on having an even larger impact and a higher degree of activism both in her work and charity. This makes a post-playing career Serena such a tantalizing prospect. She is one of the most recognized figures on the planet and she symbolizes multiple constituencies who have not have a champion with Williams’ profile and resolve to galvanize them or fight for their interests. At 41, Williams may have a platform to change the world for the next 40 years with her company Serena Ventures. That is how it should be or was meant to be in the gilded age model of athletics, ideally an athlete retires with nothing left to prove and so much more to do and be for the rest of their life. Williams certainly fits that bill.

For the last few years, I’ve had a test question in a course I taught at Penn State Law School called “Representing the Professional Athlete,” on what Serena Williams post career contract with her principal sponsor Nike might look like as she moved from being an active player to a lifetime endorser and champion of sport, how it would change, or what might it permit? My test question is no longer a hypothetical, but even when it was, it was clear that being an active player, that was only a small fraction of who Serena Williams is and of the many things she will ultimately be.