Since joining the LPGA board in 2020, she has been committed to elevating Black women and diversifying women’s golf from the course to the boardroom.
Courtesy of Jacqueline Nickelberry
Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx are putting the spotlight on the diverse journeys of Black women across sports—from the veteran athletes, to up-and-coming stars, coaches, executives and more—in the series, Elle-evate: 100 Influential Black Women in Sports.
Growing up in the Bull’s Michael Jordan–era in Chicago, Jacqueline Nickelberry’s life was centered around sports, but she considered herself far from an athlete. Nickelberry describes her younger self as a bookworm, Scrabble savant, and speech team member.
In an effort to get her off the couch and into something more physically active than reading, her mother enrolled her in tennis. Nickelberry instantly fell in love with the sport, and practiced feverishly. For her, it wasn't about competing, just the joy of the game and a good sweat. "I believe endorphins are real,” she says. “It hypes you up and gives you energy. I believe in all of the good benefits of exercise." Although her journey to fitness has been varied, Nickelberry is very much still in love with the game. But these days, it’s golf that has the heart of the LPGA board member.
Twelve years ago, Nickelberry and her husband joined a New York–based sports club where she intended to play tennis as she had during her formative years until a friend, who was the first Black member of the club told her, "You should play golf. It will change your life." And so she took a golf lesson and fell in love with it, as she had with tennis many years before. One lesson became many as she immersed herself in the sport and honed her skills over the span of a few summers. The more time she spent playing golf, the more vocal she became about being a Black woman on the course in a sport traditionally reserved for wealthy, white, cis-gendered men. At 20 years old, Nickelberry lost her mother and everything she had yet to teach her about life. She credits her time on the green as a constant learning opportunity, a chance to form friendships and business connections with people from all walks of life.
"You spend five hours with somebody over and over again, you get to learn about their kids and their values and how they think about life and marriage and friendships,” she says. “It's really filled a hole for me. My mother was irreplaceable but filled a void by having a woman in my life who could tell me about the next stages of life. Golf has really done that for me. "
In the summer of 2020, in the weeks following the murder of George Floyd, Nickelberry, like many others, felt emotionally raw. She was initially hesitant to return to her primarily white golf course for fear of being misunderstood. Determined to find her "happy place," peace of mind, and some understanding amid all the world's chaos, she headed out to the green. Instead of being met with hostility and contempt, she found meaningful conversations surrounding race, gender and class.
"I wanted to be with my people because I thought only my people understand this hurt,” Nickelberry says. “What I found out is that more of us understood that hurt."
Nickelberry's bookish tendencies and athletic prowess provided a well-rounded foundation that led to her Spelman College, where she earned her undergraduate degree in 1999. In 2003, she earned a law degree from Georgetown University and practiced law in New York City, providing counsel to entertainment companies, before pivoting to a career in philanthropy. Nickelberry spearheaded significant initiatives for the Apollo Theater for nearly a decade, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to support emerging artists and young patrons.
Nickelberry eventually channeled her philanthropic and commitment to equity, diversity, and fairness into her role with Harlem School of the Arts (HSA), where she currently serves on the development committee and the executive committee. During her tenure at HSA, she raised over $1 million for the school's annual gala in 2019, and secured six-figure donations to assist the school community as it recovered from challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
Nickelberry's full schedule of travel, speaking engagements, philanthropy, golf, and other professional duties doesn’t leave much time for her passion project, Jackie UnFiltered. This lifestyle site began as an exploration of how Nickelberry wanted to present herself to the world through style, fitness, and food. Instead, she developed skills like photo editing and website management that would come into play later on. "Jackie Unfiltered prepared me for The Global Gift Registry,” she says of the experience. But most importantly, she found herself.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, after a chance encounter with an unhoused, pregnant woman sleeping on a bench in the streets of downtown Miami, Nickelberry was determined to help the woman in any way she could. She quickly took notice of the lack of resources available to expectant mothers as she worked to find the woman shelter, food, and basic necessities. Thus, The Global Gift Registry was born. Co-founded with Yetta Banks, The Global Gift Registry is a grassroots approach to providing expectant mothers and young families with the essentials, functioning similarly to an online baby shower registry. Since 2020, The Global Gift Registry has distributed over a quarter of a million dollars of supplies across seven major cities, including New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Atlanta. The Global Gift Registry brought Nickelberry national attention and was awarded the “Essential Heroes Award” by Essence and the “Power of One” Philanthropy award from World of Money.
The year of 2020 also brought Nickelberry a new opportunity that combined her passions; the LPGA took notice of her storied career as a philanthropist and offered her a seat on the LPGA board. As she attended her first board meeting that fall, prepared to listen and observe, she quickly engaged in conversation about diversity, equity and golf. By the end of her first meeting, she was asked to chair the Fundraising and Development committee and her work with LPGA has taken her all over the country, attending golf tournaments, meeting players, talking to executives, and learning to view the sport from the executive lens as she identifies the changes that need to be made.
Since joining the board, Nickelberry says she has seen qualitative changes such as the internal elevation of women of color, more diversity being seen at LPGA pro-ams, and major sponsors making a commitment to diversity—such as the Clearview Legacy Foundation's recent decision to represent Renee Powell and her father's legacy of “Golf for Everyone” by providing affordable access to municipal golf courses. Nickelberry credits solid and supportive leadership for the progress made. "I think Mollie [Marcoux], LPGA commissioner, said it best,” Nickelberry says. “She says it's a crime to keep education from someone. And on the golf course, you learn so much. We view it as we should make this as accessible as possible. So that's what we're working towards."
Nickelberry has dedicated her adult life to fairness, access, inclusion and diversity. Although no longer directly involved, she is a founders' circle member of Higher Heights, a political organization dedicated to elevating the voices of Black women. However, she is still very much active in the political sphere. As a current Miami resident, Nickelberry saw a tremendous need to help citizens navigate complicated election laws and the voting process in Florida during the 2020 election cycle, so she became a poll worker. "It was just such a great experience,” she says. “I really saw that voting is such a community experience in our country.” Her experience at the polls was not unlike her time on the golf course, a learning experience to reflect upon and channel into her personal life and the boardroom.
Today, Nickelberry is still unapologetically herself and is constantly learning and evolving from every experience she has, whether on the golf course or in the boardroom.
“Be yourself, even when it’s hard, even when nobody understands the overweight, chubby, frizzy-haired girl, lean into that,” she says. “Be the most overdressed person in the room, be the loudest person in the room, take up as much space as you can, but also be learning. Be well-read, be curious, be willing to take chances, and bet on yourself. Black women bet on everybody else. Bet on yourself and bet on yourself over and over again. And that it’s never about failure; it’s always about experiences and growing. Every experience I’ve ever had has grown me and prepared me for the next one.”
Danielle Bryant is a contributor for Empower Onyx, a diverse multi-channel platform celebrating the stories and transformative power of sports for Black women and girls.