Serena Williams is a renowned tennis player, but she has diversified her portfolio over the last five years. On top of being a super mom to her four-year-old, Olympia, she is leading a venture capitalist firm. The 23-time Grand Slam champion tells PEOPLE, ”Now when I prepare for a tournament, I practice in the morning, I take VC calls in the afternoon and then I spend time with Olympia, and that didn’t happen five years ago.”
Williams describes her day-to-day life as “totally different” than it was a few years ago. She said, “I can’t imagine having this conversation with you a little while ago and saying that this is what my life looks like.” But she thinks it’s an ideal “second career” because her parents emphasized the importance of financial independence and money management. These are lessons she teaches her daughter alongside her husband, Alexis Ohanian. “I am a huge proponent of financial independence and education, and accessibility,” Williams says. “So those things are really important for me to teach my daughter and also important for me to raise awareness.”
Williams recently partnered with Cash App for their “That’s Money” campaign. The tennis star and her daughter are featured in an ad, which shows Williams using the app to pay the babysitter before she grabs some leftover pizza. Regarding the deal with Cash App, she said in a release, “I am a huge proponent of financial independence, education and accessibility. I want to use my platform to raise awareness around the opportunities money management tools like Cash App have to offer, so working together was a no-brainer.”
Williams is making an effort to ensure Serena Ventures is diverse because very few companies in the venture capitalist realm are. She told the outlet, “We invest in women, we invest in women of color, we invest in people of color. A lot of these companies talk about diversity, but they just talk about it. It’s because it’s a good subject that they bring up, but they don’t really do a lot of things about it. And so at Serena Ventures we do, we talk about it. We be about it.”