Teresa L. Phillips is a sports pioneer. A former Vanderbilt basketball player, Phillips spent time as the head women’s basketball coach at Fisk University (Tenn.) and Tennessee State University for a number of years before becoming the first woman to coach a Division I men’s basketball team, which she took over at TSU for a short time in 2003. Now the TSU athletic director, Phillips was named one of the 101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports by Sports Illustrated and Tennessee’s second-most influential sportswoman by The Tennessean—all this while becoming just one of a handful of female athletic directors in the country.