Community Builders to Watch: DePrice Taylor plays with an open hand, sports-infused empathy

Editor’s note: Startland News is showcasing five Kansas City changemakers from five local organizations through its third annual Community Builders to Watch series. The following highlights one of the 2023 honorees, selected from more than 100 initial nominees. Click here to view the full list of Community Builders to Watch — presented by Cyderes.

Check out these Community Builders and their organizations in person, Friday, June 9 at Startland News’ Startup Crawl. Click here for free tickets to the one-night showcase.

Growing up in Detroit — then the second most dangerous city in the country — sports was DePrice Taylor’s safe haven, her community of escape from the trauma, she shared. Now through sports — specifically soccer — she’s pouring into the Kansas City community that has embraced her.

“I think it’s the universal language,” the executive director of community relations for the Kansas City Current explained of sports. “Soccer is a vehicle for change, I believe. All sports can be, but soccer really can be a vehicle for transformative change and just the doors and avenues of opportunities that it can open.”

Taylor is a part of a Current organization that is making history by building the first stadium designed specifically for a professional women’s sports team. But it’s bigger than what’s happening on the pitch, she said.

“What I’ve learned about Kansas City is it is one of the most philanthropic spaces in the country,” she continued. “Even in my work with the KC Current, we have corporate partners come to the table and the first thing they ask is, ‘What are we doing in the community?’ And I think that just speaks volumes to what Kansas City itself has built and what it is known as.”

Click here to read more about the Current’s history-making stadium.

 

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Over the past year in her role with the Current, Taylor has been focused on increasing access to the sport through programs like Tickets for Youth — which is in collaboration with St. Luke’s Hospital and provides tickets, transportation, concession vouchers, and swag bags to kids who otherwise might not be able afford to attend a game — and through building mini pitches in urban areas like at Ashland Square Park on 23rd Street in KCMO. They also just bought a 12-passenger van that can be used to transport kids to practice but has also been used to take them to college visits.

It’s important to address these inequities, she said, because she knows firsthand how sports — specifically basketball — shaped her life and provided her much-needed community.

“When there were moments where I needed to get away or I needed to just kind of forget what was happening at home — my dad wasn’t in my life — basketball was that for me,” she explained, describing how she fell in love with the game. “So I’m always grateful for what it has provided me thus far.”

Basketball, Taylor continued, also has taught her many life lessons, plus provided her the opportunity to become the first one in her family to graduate college. After having her initial scholarship to Bowling Green University revoked, she landed at Pittsburg State, where she also received her master’s degree. The opportunity came through a chance meeting at a pickup game back in Detroit.

“I just love sports and all that it provides to young people,” she shared. “It’s given me the toughness and it’s given me the resiliency to be able to get back up because I’ve failed. It’s helped me build character. Losing my scholarship forced me to sit down and really look myself in the mirror and do some soul searching. I had no empathy and I had a horrible attitude. I think it’s impossible to call yourself a leader and not have empathy. All of those lessons were developed on the court and has guided me in being the community leader I am today.

On top of increasing access to soccer and the community it can provide, Taylor and the Current are also committed to young people seeing women in roles that aren’t typically represented, including those on the pitch, in the clubbox — like owner Angie Long and President Allison Howard — and even those helping to build the new stadium. Within this, she said, they focus on providing girls with training in STEM, financial literacy, and leadership development.

“They need to see (owner and founder) Courtney Kounkel and Monarch and what they’re doing in their hard hats,” she said. “So we bring young people out to the stadium so that they can see the development and say, ‘You know what, even if I can’t be an athlete down there on the pitch, I can build something like this. I can be a part of history.’ 

“So it goes back to that responsibility that I say that I have, as well, making sure that young people see women in roles like mine, women in roles like Angie and Allison, and women in roles like Courtney. But then, if I’m getting even deeper, for them to see a Black woman doing it, as well.”

In her role, Taylor also focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, she shared, which includes partnering with and highlighting local businesses and organizations like the Black Archives of Mid-America and Niecie’s Restaurant. The Current also just announced a collaboration for MADE MOBB to celebrate AAPI heritage.

Click here to see more about the MADE MOBB and KC Current collaboration.

“Within my role, I get to not only uplift community, but I get to uplift my own community,” she said. “I get to make sure that the first Black DJ is contracted for nine games with the KC Current. Those things are what matters to me. I always just believe in leaving the place better than you found it. You don’t have to do the dramatic changes, but leave it just a little bit better than you found it.”

“But I don’t do that work alone,” she added. “I do that work with incredible, innovative, creative, brilliant people back at our headquarters. We’re blowing this thing out of the water together.”

DePrice Taylor, Kansas City Current; photographed in the Blue Room at the American Jazz Museum in the 18th and Vine District by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

When DePrice Taylor first moved to Kansas City, the Blue Room in the historic 18th and Vine Jazz District was a place she felt — given its history — she could find community. “For the first two years, I used to sit in the back on Monday nights and come in and watch the performances here because I love music. But it provided a safe space for me. It provided community and I met so many folks here.”

Taylor — who previously worked for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kansas City and Kanbe’s Markets — doesn’t just invest in her adopted KC community through her work with the Current. She’s also a member of the Kansas City Sports Commission and Foundation’s Emerging Leader Advisory Board, plus a board member for Visit KC, appointed by Mayor Quinton Lucas. She’s also a Centurions graduate and serves on the board for Black Excellence KC and Youth Ambassadors.

“I don’t like the word networking, but if you’re gonna network, network with a purpose,” she explained. “When I build relationships with people — and specifically with all these four boards that I’m serving on — I’m really making those connections because I’m in a room where most people are not in rooms. Even if I can’t connect you directly, maybe I know somebody else that can connect you to another person. So that’s the joy that I get. How am I leveraging my resources and my relationships to support the folks that don’t have a seat at the table? Because I have that responsibility.”

Taylor credits her grandma — who was always helping to feed and clothe those around her — for instilling in her a sense of what it means to be a community builder. And while at Pittsburg State, she said, she knew the Kansas City community is where she wanted to invest her time and resources. Even in 2014, she saw the vision of what the city was becoming and wanted to be a part of its development.

“The Kansas City community has embraced me,” she continued. “I’m a transplant. I am not from this community. People had no reason to trust me. But the one thing that I can do in order to gain that trust is to continue to show up. And when you show up with no intentions, when you show up just out of pure love, with your hand open to help, you’ll get that back. It’ll come back in its most pure form. And so that’s how I try to go about living my life. I just want to be a good human being and everything else will happen. It’ll flow. So that’s how I view community.”

Community Builders to Watch is possible thanks to support from Cyderes, an innovative cybersecurity company that acts as custodians of our clients’ information security so that they can focus on growing their business. Cyderes was founded in 2021 through the merger of Fishtech Group and Herjavec Group of Toronto, Ontario. Our global footprint includes six security operations centers and offices in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and India.