A University of South Florida research task force working to address racial issues and attitudes on a local, national and global scale selected 23 projects exploring a wide range of issues in systemic inequality, economic and health disparities, Black history and contemporary challenges for funding.

Our selected project, Game On: Grooming Black Youth for Leadership Excellence Using Video Gaming, is led by Drs. Sylvia Thomas (PI), Tempestt Neal (Co-PI), Denise Davis-Cotton (Co-PI), Giti Javidi (Co-PI), and Kelly Cowart (Co-PI).

Black people are drastically under-represented in executive leadership positions. They comprise 2-5.3% of technology executives, 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs, and 0-3.2% of NFL CEOs/Sr. Managers. Barriers to advancement at this level are largely invisible. Yet, they exist in the form of systemic racial challenges, such as lack of access to training, mentoring, and promotional opportunities. This project recognizes the nexus between engineering, computer science, business, and arts, and highlights the shared attributes of these disciplines to prepare Black youth for leadership positions. By leveraging students’ interest in video gaming, the project aims to change the trajectory of Black youth by opening pathways to entry and creating an active pipeline to leadership. Therefore, the goal of this project is to study the leadership characteristics of professional executives, including conscious and unconscious bias behaviors, to establish the foundation to implement an AI video game sports module based on their real-life experiences via an online, anonymous survey and a one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Graduate and undergraduate research assistants were responsible for distributing the survey, conducting interviews, collecting results, analyzing data, and preparing a final manuscript discussing these results.

T1-T7.pdf contains seven themes derived by the research team after categorizing 3,157 codes. Each file is associated with a single theme (listed below), and includes the researcher's code and corresponding interviewee's quote from their interview. These files are made publicly available as a resource/diary of insights gathered from 31 professional executives and/or national leaders. Interviewee quotes reflect the opinions of the interviewees.

1. Theme 1: Defining Leadership and the Characteristics and Qualities of Leaders 
2. Theme 2: Barriers to and Challenges in Leadership
3. Theme 3: Learning Leadership Skills Early
4. Theme 4: Significance of Mentorship
5. Theme 5: Role of Video Games in Leadership
6. Theme 6: Conscious and Unconscious Bias and Behaviors
7. Theme 7: Race and Gender in Leadership