WTCA Chief Financial Officer Tammy Anderson has worn many hats throughout her life. From playing tennis at the collegiate level, to becoming CFO of Marriott, to her current position as the Future Stars Academy Director at The Tennis Club at Springhurst, she has brought a wealth of experience and business insight to the WTCA.
Not only has she made her mark on the organization internally, but she also recently donated $2,000 to the WTCA’s Anderson Scholarship. The scholarship, named after Anderson, was set up before the inaugural WTCA Conference in 2017 to cover conference fees for attendees in need. At the 2018 WTCA Conference, 11 deserving women were awarded the scholarship for the opportunity to further their coaching education.
WTCA CEO Sarah Stone and Anderson created the scholarship to help share the mission and vision of the WTCA with coaches willing to make a positive change within the sport of women’s tennis. According to Anderson, the ideal candidate is “somebody who supports our mission, someone who wants to continue their educational learning and someone who is just passionate about the sport of tennis.” Continued learning, passion and advocating for women have all been extremely important to Anderson throughout the entirety of her career.
Anderson played tennis for the majority of her life and began teaching after finishing her collegiate career in the sport. Prior to taking on a more full-time role as a tennis coach, she ran a $20 million account as the CFO of Marriott, an experience that has helped her tremendously as a coach.
In fact, prior to arriving at her current role at The Tennis Club at Springhurst in Louisville, Kentucky, she ran her own academy for six years where she taught over 65 students. Today, she still relies on her background in business to run a successful tennis program.
“From a business aspect, you just know how to run an organization,” she said “Because I ran my own academy, I knew how to run a business and be profitable and successful at it. Bottom line, it’s helped me make those leadership decisions easy. When there are tough decisions – budget, administrative, overhead, personnel issues – I know how to handle the situation.”
Anderson’s co-workers at The Tennis Club at Springhurst often rely on her steady leadership during trying times. “My club looks to me to lead, and I don’t know if that’s just a natural instinct from being a mom, or that’s just me as a person. Everyone always call me sergeant,” she said with a laugh.
In addition to her role at the Tennis Club at Springhurst, Anderson devotes a great deal of her time to furthering the mission of the WTCA. She first discovered the organization at a PTR Symposium nearly three years ago. Stone came to speak to a women’s group at the event about the WTCA’s vision, and Anderson realized that she needed to get involved.
She contacted Stone, explaining that they were each on the exact same page in terms of their goals and mission for furthering coaching in women’s tennis. Stone invited her to spend a week in Newport Beach at a mentorship program for aspiring tour coaches. From there, Anderson took on the Director of Marketing role for the WTCA, where she was instrumental in running the inaugural WTCA Conference in 2017.
However, her role would quickly change as the organization began to grow. “Sarah found out my background, and she said, ‘What do you mean you were CFO of a Marriott?’ I said, ‘Sorry!,’ Anderson explained through laughter. “Ultimately, she decided that I needed to be the CFO of the WTCA, and it went from there.”
Since joining the WTCA, Anderson has seen tremendous growth for the organization. “We started out with a great vision, but we started out very, very small,” she said. “We started out in February of 2016, and by May, the PTR had gotten involved. They wanted a piece of us because we were going to help grow their goal of getting 33.3% female coaches in their membership. They saw the writing on the wall. With that push, they were able to help us. All of a sudden, we had 210 attendees at our first conference.”
After the inaugural conference, the WTCA started to become a household name within the sport of tennis. “People were curious,” said Anderson. “We had incredible speakers at the first conference. After seeing that, people wanted to be a part of the WTCA. The growth from the New York conference just blew up. We hit it out of the park.”
Since then, the WTCA has gained major traction with tennis federations across the globe. “We were the catalyst that started this huge, huge mission to support females in the sport,” Anderson explained.
With strong women like Anderson at the forefront, the WTCA will be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come.