Gloria Nevarez Named Mountain West Commissioner

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Gloria Nevarez, a 25-year veteran of intercollegiate athletics, has been chosen because the second Commissioner within the historical past of the Mountain West Conference, it was introduced right this moment by the MW’s Board of Directors Chair Garnett Stokes. Nevarez will formally assume her duties on January 1, 2023, following the retirement of long-time MW Commissioner Craig Thompson.
 
Since 2018, Nevarez has served because the Commissioner of the West Coast Conference (WCC), main a change of the WCC and its member establishments in athletics, teachers, variety and inclusion, and advertising and marketing and branding.
 
“We are absolutely thrilled that Gloria will lead our membership into the future during a critical and challenging period in intercollegiate athletics,” Stokes mentioned. “We had an impressive pool of candidates, but in the end, Gloria had the vision, the experience, the desire and the ability to elevate our league and our twelve member institutions. She will be a great leader for the Conference and take us to unprecedented heights, after working closely with Craig in the upcoming transition. On behalf of the MWC Board of Directors, we welcome Gloria and her husband, Rick, to our family.”
 
Nevarez beforehand labored on the Pac-12 Conference, the University of Oklahoma, the University of California Berkeley, San José State University and in a previous stint with the WCC. She serves on the NCAA’s Division I Transformation Committee, the NIT Men’s Basketball choice committee and the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee, in addition to on the Board of Directors of USA Basketball, Women Leaders in College Athletics and is a member of the Knight Commission.
 
“I am honored and humbled to be trusted to lead one of the nation’s elite athletic conferences, and I want to thank the Board of Directors for their belief in me and in my vision,” Nevarez mentioned. “We are well-positioned as a league thanks to the incredible legacy of Commissioner Thompson, but we cannot—and will not—rest on our success. We will be aggressive, we will be innovative, we will be inclusive and we will keep our focus on the student-athletes who call the Mountain West Conference home. I cannot wait to visit our campuses, our Conference staff, and our fans, and to begin the work ahead.”
 
Since changing into Commissioner of the West Coast Conference, Nevarez has formed almost each side of the inner and exterior operations of the WCC, directing main overhauls to the convention’s branding, increasing the league’s nationwide tv contracts, including a long-term title sponsor for the lads’s and ladies’s basketball tournaments and launching groundbreaking social justice initiatives.
 
Directed by Nevarez, the WCC launched into a complete rebranding initiative to carry consistency throughout all platforms. After an exhaustive and collaborative six-month evaluate with WCC stakeholders, the model, reflective of the mission and values of the WCC colleges was refreshed with a brand new model id. In her second full yr on the job, Nevarez renegotiated the media rights settlement for the convention, leading to unprecedented ranges of nationwide publicity for the league, together with an up to date eight-year settlement with ESPN and the addition of two nationwide tv companions in CBS Sports and Stadium. The publicity of WCC’s males’s basketball has almost doubled from coast-to-coast.

The WCC grew to become the primary Division I convention to undertake a variety hiring initiative, the groundbreaking “Russell Rule” adopted in July of 2020, requiring all WCC colleges to incorporate a member of a historically underrepresented neighborhood within the last candidate pool for each athletic director, senior administrator, head coach and full-time assistant teaching search.

 

Nevarez returned to the WCC following a profitable stint because the Senior Associate Commissioner, Senior Woman Administrator on the Pac-12 Conference. In her position, Nevarez oversaw all convention sports activities and championships besides soccer, whereas additionally serving because the convention liaison for males’s basketball and event director of the lads’s basketball event in Las Vegas. Nevarez led all-star groups to China and Australia and introduced convention groups to China for the first-ever NCAA regular-season sport. During her tenure on the Pac-12, Nevarez was instrumental in league growth, the relocation and success of each the lads’s and ladies’s basketball tournaments, the creation and operation of the Pac-12 Networks, the event of worldwide initiatives and superior the convention’s sustainability efforts.

Prior to becoming a member of the Pac-10 employees, Nevarez served as Senior Associate Athletic Director on the University of Oklahoma. Her duties have been wide-ranging, together with sport administration duties and overseeing the division’s power and conditioning, advertising and marketing and human sources items. She additionally served as the game administrator for males’s and ladies’s basketball, males’s and ladies’s cross nation, soccer, males’s and ladies’s observe and area, softball and ladies’s rowing. Nevarez served Oklahoma because the Senior Woman Administrator and oversaw the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, the division’s Staff Council, Title IX compliance and labored with the fundraising group, the Sooner Stilettos.

Before her time at Oklahoma, Nevarez spent 5 years working in compliance on the West Coast Conference, becoming a member of the convention in January of 2002. During her first stint on the WCC, her main emphasis was to direct the convention’s compliance efforts. In that position, she was concerned in schooling efforts in any respect member establishments in addition to within the league workplace. She assisted the faculties with their particular person certification efforts, violations, waivers and rule interpretations.

 

Prior to the WCC, Nevarez was on the University of California, the place she served in a number of roles. She was the lone compliance officer and served as an government officer for the division and its 29 intercollegiate athletics groups. She performed NCAA and Pac-10 guidelines schooling workshops for student-athletes, coaches and division employees on an annual foundation. Nevarez was additionally concerned with authorized issues that concerned the division, together with lawsuits, serving because the division’s campus liaison in these issues. She was accountable for processing all departmental contracts, together with sport contracts, and served because the division’s campus contact for all athletic-related contracts.

 

Nevarez started her athletics administrative profession at San José State University, the place she was the primary full-time Director of Compliance in class historical past and developed and carried out an NCAA compliance program.

A graduate of the NCAA Fellows Program and the NACWAA Executive Institute, Nevarez accomplished 5 years as an adjunct college member on the University of San Francisco’s Sport Management Master’s program, instructing sport regulation.

Nevarez obtained her Juris Doctorate from the University of California. While a pupil, she served on the La Raza Law Journal and was a co-founder of the Boalt Hall Sport and Entertainment Law Society. A four-year scholarship athlete and letter-winner in basketball on the University of Massachusetts, she graduated cum laude from UMass. She served on the board of advisors for the UMass sports activities administration division, a division of the Isenberg School of Business.

 

A local of Santa Clara, California, Nevarez is married to fellow Berkeley Law graduate Richard “Rick” Young.