Yolanda Moore and Amazon’s Athletes Program

LEADING THE WAY WITH TEAMWORK , INNOVATION, & MENTORSHIP

BY MYAH TAYLOR

Left: Yolanda Moore #33 of the Houston Comets defends during Game Two of the 1998 WNBA Finals on August 29, 1998 at the Compaq Center in Houston, TX.

Even with obstacles approaching her from each direction, Yolanda Moore knows how to complete the mission. Today that looks like recruiting, training and attending meetings for her job at Amazon. Moore took advantage of this opportunity through the Amazon Athletes Program — an initiative that adapts skills former athletes learned in the sporting arena and transfers them to the corporate world.

During her playing days, completing the mission looked very different for Moore. At the end of her senior year at Ole Miss, the post player tore her meniscus for the second time. Soon after, she found out she was pregnant with her second child. Ironically, her first daughter was born during her freshman year when she tore her meniscus for the first time.

Despite her mounting injuries and responsibilities, Moore played her way to All-Southeastern Conference honors three times while in Oxford, Mississippi. The WNBA began league play in 1997, just after Moore graduated college. That May, four months after the birth of her second daughter, she tried out for the Houston Comets and became one of four women out of hundreds selected to the team.

“Quitting was never an option for me,” Moore said. “I was going to figure it out. I knew basketball was a part of it, but I didn’t know how long I would be able to play or anything like that. Of course, in 1992, my first year of college, I had no idea five years later there was going to be a WNBA.”

After winning two WNBA championships with the Houston Comets and playing for the Orlando Miracle, Moore retired from the league in 1999.

Moore studied broadcast journalism in college and dreamed of being the next Robin Roberts. However, her future wasn’t so clear after she bid farewell to basketball. No one taught her what would come next once her playing days ended, and she struggled in the transition to life after hoops.

After their careers concluded, some of her former teammates went the broadcast route, while many pursued coaching because it was what they knew. It was the “logical” option, as Moore put it.

“When you’re an athlete, your life is structured, but you don’t create that structure,” she explained. “That structure is created for you by your coaches and your season, your schedule, things like that. But then it’s like … who am I without this ball in my hand?”

It’s a predicament many former athletes find themselves in. A small percentage of collegiate athletes go on to play professionally, and if they do make it into the big leagues, longevity is difficult.

Moore said the structure that governs the lives of college athletes doesn’t give them time to think about what’s next — for example, getting internships or carving out other identities. At the same time, that feel for structure, among other skills, is what makes former athletes so appealing to Amazon.

“If you think about it, [if ] you’re in a basketball game, and you’re on offense, you’ve spent all this time going over your offenses,” Moore said. “You’re in the flow of your offense, and suddenly, there’s a turnover. You’ve got to be on defense in less than three seconds.

"Now your brain has to switch from offense to defense. You’ve got to know where your player is, and you’ve got to know which set the other team is in. You have to be so mentally agile on the fly. It’s no different from when things happen in life or business.“

Like many former athletes, Moore has advanced degrees and a valuable skill set. Still, she said not everyone always knows how to articulate to hiring managers the experience they have or how the skills they learned in sports correlate with success in other ventures.

Thankfully, Amazon sees that correlation. Through its Athletes Program, they value athletes’ inclination toward teamwork, innovation, finding solutions and getting things done — something Moore has practiced since she was a college athlete caring for an infant and going to class while nursing injuries.

That perspective is Moore’s favorite aspect of the program, which she came across in Fall of 2020. After hearing about it, she attended a webinar featuring former athletes who talked about their experiences working for Amazon.

“The best thing about the program was feeling seen and valued as a person, not just for who I was,” Moore stated. “But also the value that I can add to the company.”

Moore said she wishes she had a mentor while in college to counsel her about how to approach life after basketball. Back then, she had little time to spend with herself, which is why the identity crisis Moore experienced after retirement was inevitable.

Thankfully, her job at Amazon has filled that void she missed in college. The program has allowed her to tap into who she is off the court and explore her interests while working in a team environment.

“I’ve learned a lot about business, I’ve learned a lot about myself and I love that Amazon is so wide-open with opportunity,” Moore happily explained. "If you find yourself in a role and you’re there for a month or a year, and you decide, ‘You know what, I have a finance background, but I want to try engineering,’ There’s a space for that.”

Mission complete, at least for now.

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