Alexis Ohanian, the husband of WTA legend Serena Williams, has fought back against the notion that the race of his wife and daughter played a factor in his repeated investments in women's sports.
Ohanian is the co-founder of and major investor at Angel City FC, a women's soccer club based in Los Angeles that is part of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Although the entrepreneur has credited his daughter for inspiring him to invest in the club, he remains adamant that he would have done so without her.
"One thing I don't want people to hear is like, oh this dude has a black wife and black daughter and now he cares about these things," said the Reddit co-founder in a recent interview with Bloomberg. "Because I don't think you need to have these things in order to care. You shouldn't need to have a daughter to care about women's sports."
However, Ohanian stated he would not have moved at the same pace were it not for his daughter.
"Probably, a lot slower if at all," said the American. "So yes, it [Serena Williams and Olympia's presence] absolutely played a huge role in helping build my perspective."
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
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I ask @olympiaohanian to bring a BIG question to the dinner table every night; I promise I'll always answer it if I know, or (as is often the case) we'll look it up together. This night, she asked "who was the first artist?" so we got to look up cave paintings together.