College Football’s black excellence: The first Power 5 Athletic Directors
By Dante Pryor
Candice Lee became the SEC’s first black female Athletic Director.
Candice Lee was destined to become an administrator at Vanderbilt. In many ways, Nashville and the university are home to Lee. A native of Madison, Alabama, Lee has been associated with the school as a student, athlete, and administrator for 25 years. Lee arrived as an undergraduate student-athlete in 1996 and for the most part, never left.
Lee would receive her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral Degrees from Vanderbilt and began working as an intern before being appointed the athletic department’s senior woman administrator in 2004.
Lee would become deputy athletic director in 2016. It was Lee’s upbringing that would help mold her into a leader.
Lee’s mother worked for NASA and her father was a lieutenant colonel in the Army. Moving around a lot helped her come out of her shell. Lee said this of going to 13 different schools and living everywhere from Puerto Rico to Kansas:
“I think it exposes you to a lot of different people,” Candice Storey Lee would say 24 years on. “I think it teaches you to adapt and adjust. I really appreciate it as an adult more than I did growing up.”
Lee has some large shoes to fill taking over for the late David Williams, the first black SEC Athletic Director.
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Fitting the first black AD would be replaced by the first black female AD, serving as Williams’ deputy for three years. If anyone can step into those shoes and step out of that shadow, it is Lee.