Caitlin Clark effect extends to the CEO suite

With more young girls participating in sports, we can expect high career aspirations to follow.

Most of the little girls who covet an autograph from basketball phenom Caitlin Clark won’t end up playing in the WNBA. However, Clark’s talent, character, and charisma inspire them to participate in team sports from grade school through high school. This aspect of the Caitlin Clark effect could ultimately guide them to leadership roles in the corporate world as adults.

Despite progress, women remain underrepresented in executive positions, especially in public corporations. As of 2024, only 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. Among the few are three Minnesota women CEOs: Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes, Corie Barry of Best Buy, and Teresa Rasmussen of Thrivent.

Beth Ford, like Clark, hails from Iowa and competed in basketball, tennis, and track-and-field in high school. Kelly Skalicky, CEO of Stearns Bank, is a celebrated member of the Minnesota High School Basketball Hall of Fame for her standout career with the Albany Huskies. Vicki Holt, former CEO of Maple Plain-based Protolabs, was a varsity swimmer at Duke University.

Their early exposure to girls’ and women’s sports equipped these women with the confidence and leadership skills needed to excel in classrooms and workplaces. Competing in sports taught them how to set goals, take risks, and handle failure.

When Ford, Skalicky, and Holt were in high school, fewer girls participated in competitive sports compared to today. During the 2022-23 school year, boys held 119,352 spots on Minnesota teams, while girls filled 99,742 positions, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. This count includes multisport athletes counted multiple times.

To gain more insights into the relationship between sports and corporate talent pipelines, I interviewed two Twin Cities-based CEOs. Their stories illustrate how sports prepare women for the demands of the business world.

Katie Lorenson, president and CEO of Alerus Financial Corp., was a three-sport high school athlete in Oklee, a small town in northwest Minnesota. This town is notable for being the home of Coya Knutson, the first woman to win a Minnesota congressional seat in 1954.

“I was the first one in my family to go to college,” Lorenson said, highlighting how the traits she acquired through sports provided her with a foundation for success in both college and business. As a two-time basketball captain, she learned valuable communication skills with her teammates. “If you can nail communication among your team in the company that you are running or in the business that you are in, that solves a lot of issues before they become problems,” she explained.

Lorenson also emphasized the mental toughness sports instill. “A big part of it, for women especially, is confidence, self-esteem, and having successes, but also having failures and building that resilience,” she said.

Reflecting on her experiences, Lorenson recalled, “Many of the teams that I was on were losing teams,” she said with a laugh. However, this did not diminish her inner drive or motivation. In her mind, she was always thinking, “I want to be better. I want to climb higher.

Most of the little girls who covet an autograph from basketball phenom Caitlin Clark won’t play in the WNBA. But Clark’s talent, character, and charisma inspire them to play team sports from grade school through high school. This aspect of the Caitlin Clark effect could ultimately guide them to leadership roles in the corporate world as adults.

Despite progress, women remain underrepresented in executive positions, especially in public corporations. As of 2024, only 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. Among the few are three Minnesota women CEOs: Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes, Corie Barry of Best Buy, and Teresa Rasmussen of Thrivent.

Beth Ford, like Clark, hails from Iowa and competed in basketball, tennis, and track-and-field in high school. Kelly Skalicky, CEO of Stearns Bank, is a celebrated member of the Minnesota High School Basketball Hall of Fame for her standout career with the Albany Huskies. Vicki Holt, former CEO of Maple Plain-based Protolabs, was a varsity swimmer at Duke University.

Their early exposure to girls’ and women’s sports equipped these women with the confidence and leadership skills needed to excel in classrooms and workplaces. Competing in sports taught them how to set goals, take risks, and handle failure.

When Ford, Skalicky, and Holt were in high school, fewer girls participated in competitive sports compared to today. During the 2022-23 school year, boys held 119,352 spots on Minnesota teams, while girls filled 99,742 positions, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. This count includes multisport athletes counted multiple times.

To gain more insights into the relationship between sports and corporate talent pipelines, I interviewed two Twin Cities-based CEOs. Their stories illustrate how sports prepare women for the demands of the business world.

Katie Lorenson, president and CEO of Alerus Financial Corp., was a three-sport high school athlete in Oklee, a small town in northwest Minnesota. This town is notable for being the home of Coya Knutson, the first woman to win a Minnesota congressional seat in 1954.

“I was the first one in my family to go to college,” Lorenson said, highlighting how the traits she acquired through sports provided her with a foundation for success in both college and business. As a two-time basketball captain, she learned valuable communication skills with her teammates. “If you can nail communication among your team in the company that you are running or in the business that you are in, that solves a lot of issues before they become problems,” she explained.

Lorenson also emphasized the mental toughness sports instill. “A big part of it, for women especially, is confidence, self-esteem, and having successes, but also having failures and building that resilience,” she said.

Reflecting on her experiences, Lorenson recalled, “Many of the teams that I was on were losing teams,” she said with a laugh. However, this did not diminish her inner drive or motivation. In her mind, she was always thinking, “I want to be better. I want to climb higher.”

In any leadership role, she said, “confidence is everything.” The confidence gained through sports competition positions girls and women for later success in corporate suites.

Beth Wozniak, chair and CEO of nVent, which had $3.3 billion in sales last year, shared similar sentiments. Wozniak was on the swim team growing up in southern Ontario. “You learn how to behave at a young age with a team and how to support one another,” she said. “Think about business. You work in large teams, small teams.” Sports teams, she explained, help people understand how to pursue common goals.

“Different people on your team have different skills,” Wozniak said. “How do you best utilize those skills? There are so many things you learn when you are in sports that translate to business.”

With Caitlin Clark as a role model and higher participation rates of girls in sports, we should expect that we’ll see more girls developing higher career aspirations. It’s incumbent upon parents, schools, and community organizations to ensure girls have access to a broad range of sports opportunities.