GRAMBLING, LOUISIANA (April 24, 2015) As the daughter of a football coach, Raven Campbell grew up around sports. She would travel with her father to games and observe the traits that made him a successful coach. At Riverside Academy High School, she was a star athlete in basketball and track and field and also a black belt in taekwondo. Pursuing a career in sports seemed like a natural choice when she entered Grambling State University.
 

"I can't see my life without sports. I've been a coach's daughter all my life, and I've been involved in sports forever," said Campbell, a 22-year-old senior majoring in sports management.

Campbell has been selected to complete a summer internship with the Philadelphia 76ers basketball camp this summer from June to August.

"I will be the assistant manager of camp facilities, which involves supervising the little 76ers campers and managing the professional 76ers while they prepare for training camp and off-season play," she said.

While it will be her first experience with an NBA team, it will be the third professional athletics team she has worked with, including the New Orleans Saints and the Kansas City Chiefs football teams.

Campbell spent one summer interning as a coach for youth football programs with the Saints. She has also spent the past two summers working with the Chiefs, where her day would begin at 6 a.m. to prepare for the excited fans and corporate sponsors who attended the Chiefs summer training camp.

"I learned a lot of pride in that job. I learned that you can't watch the clock. When you are in professional sports, it's not a 9-5 day. If you don't work hard, there is always someone else willing to take your job," she said.

Campbell's supervisor with the Chiefs, Jeremy Slavens, director of marketing and events, said Campbell has been a hard-working leader among the group of summer interns.

"She's been a model intern for us. A lot of her duties are fan facing, where she is dealing with fans and crowds and little children. She is very cooperative and does a great job for us. She's very strong, and she's one of the leaders among the group of interns we've had," he said.

When she's not spending her summers interning with NBA and NFL teams, Campbell is getting plenty of athletic experience working at Grambling. She got her start in college athletics when Santoria Black, her mentor and a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, introduced her to the Grambling Sports Radio Network in 2011. She worked as a promotions coordinator and radio production lead producer for two years, learning how to supervise athletic events, manage halftime performances, run in-house promotions and record stats for stories.

Since 2013, Campbell has been working media relations in the Department of Athletics. She keeps stats during games, coordinates media interviews with coaches and players and updates content for the department's website and social media accounts.

Her current supervisor, Robert Vogel, assistant athletic director of media relations, recalls how helpful Campbell has been this year since he is new to the job.

"Raven is the ideal worker that anybody in sports information or athletics would want, due to her knowledge and expertise that she brings to the table. She does everything. She was a huge help during the Bayou Classic. Given that this was my first Bayou Classic, Raven was my go-to person, and made that whole time a very smooth time for me," Vogel said.

After she graduates in December 2015, Campbell plans to pursue a master's degree in sports administration and ultimately work as a front office executive or general manager in the NBA or NFL. Her supervisors do not think she will have any trouble achieving these goals.

"She is doing all the right things to build that skill set that sports teams are looking for, and she is helping differentiate herself from other people in the sports management industry. Lots of students are attracted to this industry because it is sports, but Raven is actually living and breathing it and doing it every summer with these internships," Slavens said. 

- GSU -