CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Shelly Cayette-Weston is one of only a handful of women to hold a top executive position in the NBA and one of just two Black women to lead an NBA team as president.<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston grew up in Louisiana and said she fell in love with basketball as a little girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many things I learned back to trying to figure out how to be a team player with 15 women from different places in life\u2026 mental toughness,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
From the court to the boardroom<\/p>\n
The 6\u20324\u2033 standout high school basketball player took her competitive drive to Tulane University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think being a student-athlete for me was so valuable because it taught me so many life lessons and business lessons that I didn\u2019t know at the time that I\u2019d happen to every day,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
She then applied what she learned on the court to the business of sports, working her way up to her current role as president of business operations at the Charlotte Hornets, leading 1,300 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just had an interest in learning the business. I started in marketing, I moved into sponsorship, I moved into community investment, and just was very intrigued about the business and what sports could do for a city, for people, and just bringing people together,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
The importance of visibility<\/p>\n
For Cayette-Weston, being one of the few women in the room is about what other people see when she sits down.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes it\u2019s just the visibility that\u2019s empowerment to people. And I just don\u2019t take that for granted,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
She said she knows firsthand that one person\u2019s example can change another person\u2019s trajectory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke at an ERG summit in Cleveland when I was there, and it was for a major hospital. A woman came back to me at a game several months later and said, \u2018Shelly, I want to thank you because I actually took your advice and I went into my leader and I became the first chief community officer at the Cleveland Clinic,\u2019\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston said moments like that remind her why visibility matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t have to be a president of an NBA team. That\u2019s not necessarily what the outcome is, but you can do whatever it is that you choose to do. So, I see a lot of responsibility and just providing visibility to people to feel confident in what it is they do,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Balancing career and family<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston said her message isn\u2019t just for women already climbing the corporate ladder, but also for women trying to figure out whether they can have both a career and a family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a point where I didn\u2019t know if you could have children and be in sports, right? It\u2019s a lot of hours. It\u2019s a lot of long nights. And the reality is, you can. You can. You just have to find what works for you,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston and her husband are raising two young daughters. She said one of them has a dream of following in her footsteps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked her recently, \u2018What do you want to be when you grow up?\u2019 and she said, \u2018The president of the Charlotte Hornets,\u2019\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston said her daughter does not see the barriers or how few women have held a position like hers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t need her to be a president of an NBA team, but just she has no idea that there\u2019s only four women that are presidents of a team, or she doesn\u2019t have any idea of what it takes to get there. And so that is a possibility for her. And so the question is, what can she do? Her opportunities are open,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead<\/p>\n
Cayette-Weston said she is thinking about her legacy; not just what she accomplishes, but what becomes possible for the people watching her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to ensure the doors are opened that anyone who\u2019s looking at any job… again, it doesn\u2019t have to be the president of an NBA team, of any business… are you ensuring you\u2019re looking as wide as you could be for talent, pure talent, right? Not whether there\u2019s a woman, whether the race, the gender — are you really open wide to the best talent? And I want to be that for others in the pipeline and generations to come,\u201d Cayette-Weston said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WBTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Shelly Cayette-Weston is one of only a handful of women to hold a top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,6,100318],"class_list":["post-849856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-charlotte-hornets","tag-basketball","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-charlottehornets","tag-hornets","tag-nba","tag-woman-to-woman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117376336920785015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}