Dame Gives Back

Five-time All-NBA guard Damian Lillard is launching The Visionary Academy, a four-month internship program for select student-athletes at 27 high schools across Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. 

• The Visionary Academy will provide one female and one male student from among the nine high schools in each hub city with a local internship, focusing on giving them sports media and digital marketing experience. 
• Lillard will serve as “visionary coach” by checking in virtually with each student to offer advice and feedback on their projects.
• Each student will be assigned an Adidas Basketball employee as a personal mentor.

Solidifying his legacy: The internships, which Lillard is personally funding, are an extension of the Adidas Legacy program that provides programming to underserved students at the partner high schools. 

Adidas Legacy was created to combat the increasing trend of the nation’s top high school prospects leaving their inner-city schools to play at private schools, causing strong basketball programs in those cities to lose funding from shoe companies.

Programming ranging from panels led by Lillard to workshops geared toward future career prospects reaches a total of 810 students per year, 98% of whom are students of color.