Tywanna Smith is an award-winning sports manager, best-selling author, and international business consultant. As President of The Athlete’s Nexus, Smith has worked with 50 athletes across the NFL, NBA, WNBA and abroad. She is also a former professional basketball player who spent two years in Europe. As a motivational speaker, Smith has delivered presentations to the NFL, HBCU Celebration Bowl, and the Black Student-Athlete Summit. She will give the keynote address at the commencement ceremony for the Master of Business Administration graduation at the Gertrude Ford Center at UM on Friday, May 6 at 10 a.m.
Smith has been showcased at The L.A. Times Festival of Books, and her work has been featured in Forbes, Huffpost, NerdWallet, and NBC Sports. In 2022, the former Lady Rebel basketball player was selected as one of Ole Miss’s Top 40 Under Forty alumni. Smith earned her B.B.A. in Marketing (’04) and her MBA (’05) from the University of Mississippi. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Memphis in athlete development programming. Smith’s scholarship, the Tywanna Inmon-Smith Scholarship Fund, has awarded over $4,000 in scholarships across the Mid-South.