Lee’s relationship with Vanderbilt goes way back. She’s a three-time graduate (undergraduate, master’s, and doctorate degrees) from the university, where she also played basketball. Like many collegiate hoopers, her dream was to go pro, but injuries ruled her out of contention.

As she told The Next in an exclusive interview at the McGugin Center, Lee arrived at the school when she was 17, and though she was recruited by several other universities, the opportunity to compete in the SEC was just too good to pass up.

“It just felt like there was no other place like this, and it had such an incredible impact on me.” Lee paused before adding, “It’s very meaningful to me to now be in this role, and to be able to support student athletes who are getting, hopefully, an even better experience than what I’ve had.”

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Candice Storey Lee as a leader for women in athletics

As the first Black woman — the first woman, period — to be named athletic director in the SEC, Lee is a trailblazer, even if it’s not a term she’s particularly fond of. She was appointed to the position in 2020, and emphasized she is proud to represent women, and Black women especially, but she also thought there might be more women in such roles by now.

“I kind of have mixed feelings about it,” she said. “On one hand, in general, it’s been tremendous. My colleagues have been wonderful, and I’m so thankful that we’re in the SEC because I think [Commissioner] Greg Sankey is a great leader. So getting to learn from him and be sort of in partnership with him as we navigate the new world [of NIL] has been pretty great.”

Her relationship with Sankey and her SEC colleagues is also lengthy, and began when Lee filled in for what was meant to be a temporary role due to a coworker’s maternity leave. She was 24 years old at the time, and marveled at having the opportunity to see other women (such as Arkansas’ former director of Women’s Athletics and former associate vice chancellor and executive associate athletic director Bev Lewis and Tennessee’s women’s athletic director Joan Cronan) in the same room “right there at the table” during meetings.

That experience solidified something in her. “I think even probably unconsciously, I was like, ‘Oh, you could also be here. You could be at this table,’” Lee recalled.

“You know, it’s really important for people to sort of speak possibilities into you,” she added, “because sometimes they can see things that you can’t see. And so that’s a long way of saying [that] I didn’t know at first that it was possible.”

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Another important trait to know about Lee is that she’s the type of person who will also speak possibilities into other women and who will say the names of other women who inspired her. That’s not always easy to find in people who hold high-powered positions, but Lee is nothing short of effusive in her praise for others and their impact.

“When you think about [athletic director] Carla Williams and her role at Virginia, and [vice president, director of athletics and adjunct professor of business administration] Nina King and her role at Duke, I hope student-athletes see us now and know that you know you can do anything, including being an athletic director or being a conference commissioner, or whatever it is you aspire to be,” Lee said.

But still, after a powerful statement like that, Lee admitted she wants to collectively move beyond the “trailblazer” title. “I celebrate being a woman in this role, [and I’m] certainly proud to be a Black woman. I’m proud of who I am,” she said. “I think that when you think about the fact that … people start talking to you about being groundbreaking or being a trailblazer, and I’m like, I mean, if you give me a minute, I will name for you many, many, many women who can lead departments right now, right?” Those women, she continued, “just have not been given the opportunity.

“So I hope that all of us sort of say, ‘Gosh dang it.’ You know, that was 2020 when I got the job. Like, we are still breaking records in 2020? We’re still being groundbreaking?” Lee continued. “Or are we just perhaps not always considering people who really have earned the opportunity. I feel like I earned this opportunity. I just know that I’m not the only person who can lead a department that looks like me or is a woman.”

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Lee’s relationship with Shea Ralph goes back decades

One of the women Lee has brought into the fold at Vanderbilt is the highly accomplished Shea Ralph. As an athlete, Ralph, who was part of the UConn team that won the NCAA championship in 2000 and later helped lead the school to six more NCAA tournament wins as an assistant coach, enjoyed an elite collegiate career. She was introduced to basketball by her mother, Marsha Lake, an All-American who played for UNC and represented the United States at the World University Games in the 1970s (just before women’s basketball was added to the Olympic Games in 1976) — and who happened to be good friends with Tennessee’s legendary coach Pat Summitt.

When it was time to make a college decision, Ralph had to choose between the Lady Vols and the Huskies, among others. Decades later, it’s that decision that set her on the course that ultimately brought her to Vanderbilt in 2021. Ralph spent 13 years coaching alongside Geno Auriemma, but when Lee called her to inquire about whether or not she’d be interested in departing Connecticut for Nashville, the decision wasn’t a complicated one.

“I remember when we announced her, people were like, ‘We never thought she would leave UConn,’” Lee explained. “You know, people make a lot of assumptions about people all the time. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, well, I called her,’ and after talking to her [for] an hour, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is our next coach.’”

Beyond the hiring process, the relationship between the pair actually spans decades. They first met in an elevator in Colorado as teens, when they were both trying out for a USA Basketball team. Lee was “overwhelmed” to have been one of 100 players invited to the event, she shared, but she wasn’t surprised Ralph was there.

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On one of the first two days, the players were told that if their name was called, they were cut, and they needed to leave immediately, Lee recalled. Lee heard her name and exited the gym.

“So I get my stuff, I get on the elevator. The elevator doors are getting ready to close, and then, you know, here you see this hand come through to open the doors,” (at this point, Lee mimed one hand desperately reaching through imagined elevator doors), “and it’s Shea Ralph.”

Lee was blown away. “I’m standing in the corner, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God. If she’s on this elevator… my 15-year-old self was like, ‘It’s encouraging, right?’” But Ralph was in an entirely different world. “I will never forget [it],” Lee continued. Ralph was “in the corner” and clearly upset. “And I go, ‘Are you okay?’”

Lee added, “There was some colorful language” from Ralph, whom Lee tried to reassure. “I said, ‘Girl, they don’t know what they’re doing. You don’t worry about it, right? Don’t worry about it,’” Lee said, laughing at the memory. “And she was pissed.”

The pair exited the elevator. “She’s pissed and I’m fine,” Lee continued, noting that at the time, the fact that both teens were cut meant to her they were on the same level as players. “And one thing she said to me, I will never forget this part: she’s like, ‘I swear to you, this is the last team I’ll ever get cut from.’” (Spoiler: Ralph was correct.)

Years later, a friend shared a photo with Lee of herself and Ralph at the very competition where they met. “We look so youthful,” she said. “I treasure that picture, and I’m telling you this to say — she’s still that intense.”

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How Ralph’s leadership dovetails with Vanderbilt’s aspirations

Ralph won’t deny those charges — not only is she intense, she said, but she wields that intensity like a superpower and instills it into her players, on and off the court. But if you catch her outside a game, Ralph is also one of the warmest, most easygoing people you could meet. Her office, tucked into the Huber Center and lined by windows that allow her to look directly onto the women’s practice gym, is also covered in drawings and Legos that belong to her 7-year-old daughter, whom she shares with husband Tom Garrick (a member of the school’s coaching staff).

When she was brought on board in 2021, Ralph was faced with an enticing opportunity: restoring a program to its former glory. Though Vanderbilt is more frequently associated with powerhouse academics than athletic prowess, that wasn’t always the case.

The 2025-26 season will give her the “opportunity to grow and to keep moving in the right direction with our program,” Ralph told The Next during an interview in her office. “I think we’ve had a steady climb, and it’s been fun to really, essentially revitalize a program that was such a strong national program for so many decades, you know, and Vanderbilt was up there, an Elite Eight, Sweet 16, even a Final Four in the ’90s, and so it’s been fun to kind of reimagine in the new landscape what that looks like.”

That’s been possible through the combined efforts of the entire organization, from admin to athletes to parents to donors, she said. It’s not about focusing on the highest heights — at least, not yet — but on building day by day, brick by brick.

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Ralph sees herself as a “connector” more than anything. Basketball is “pretty much what I’ve done my entire life,” she continued, and her years at UConn gave her “a pretty good blueprint of what it looks like to have sustainable success and excellence.”

Having said that, she’s not looking to recreate what Auriemma has done. “It won’t be [the same],” she said, “because Vanderbilt’s a P4 (Power Four) school and a high academic institution.” There are also other factors — the school’s location in Nashville, for one — that Ralph has “no control over, but in the current landscape, they are huge pluses — huge pluses.”

Ralph is also clearly enormously grateful to work under Lee, who she said is “an amazing athletic director, and who is personally invested in our program and women’s basketball and women’s athletics and athletics in general.” According to Ralph, Lee is “an incredible leader” who has “this way of connecting with community and connecting with athletes and connecting with the academic side, connecting with coaches, and making sure that we’re all raising our bar up to hers.”

That’s a challenge that Ralph and her team, including recent AmeriCup MVP Mikayla Blakes and returning senior Sacha Washington, are happy to meet. “My role is to be an extension of [Lee] to my players, and our community, and to my staff,” Ralph said. “My role is to make sure that the resources that she gives us, we use them wisely and we show the country what it looks like to be invested in as a women’s basketball program.”

To that end, Ralph has already more than proven that her actions are aligned with her words. Her coaching record sits at 73-59 after four seasons, and she is responsible for steering the Commodores to back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time in over a decade.

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Ralph will take credit for some of that, but like Lee, she also makes sure to acknowledge that her work is only possible through that of others. In this case, Lee has made all the difference. When asked about Lee’s Colorado story, Ralph laughed and pointed to it as a supporting detail of exactly that.

“The fact that we have such a long-standing relationship is really special to me,” she explained. “What does it look like to work for someone so invested? It’s hard to put that into words. I think even four years ago, neither one of us had any idea where this would be four years later, in terms of the way the landscape is with NIL and transfer portal and all the narratives around college sports and athletics.

“And what does that look like for women? I think we can all create a story in our minds, whether it’s good or bad, but I don’t know that it’ll do us any good. I think what I love about working with [Lee] is that she’s invested in creating the best college student athlete experience in the country no matter what, and the landscape is going to be what it is, and the narrative is going to be what it is, but we’re at Vanderbilt, and we have the support of our chancellor and of our community and our alums and our donors. We have amazing opportunity, and that’s how we have to look at it. So what I love about working with her is that she puts that spin on it every time.”

The work at Vanderbilt is about changing the narrative, Ralph emphasized. “Let’s show people what it looks like if you can approach it with positivity, if you can utilize the resources that you do have to be great, absolutely, and then that’s what people before us have done.” The program may not be quite where they want it to be yet, but to them, they “are the torchbearers of women’s athletics.”

“I’m the torchbearer of Vanderbilt women’s basketball, in terms of where we’ve been and where we’re going and how we utilize what we have now to our benefit,” Ralph said. “And that includes Candice, right? So we have the best leader in the country at this institution, in terms of college sports, and maybe in general.”

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Vanderbilt women’s basketball has seen a few recent (and big) changes

It would be remiss not to mention the sudden and surprising dismissal of rising junior Khamil Pierre, who left Vanderbilt in late June after previously affirming her plan to stay at the school. The 6’2 forward averaged 20.4 points, 9.4 rebounds, and 2.9 steals for the Commodores during the 2024-25 season.

“Khamil is a great player and I have no doubt she will have success in the future,” Ralph announced via social media on June 30. “Ultimately, it was determined it would be best for Khamil and our program to go in different directions. We wish her the best of luck.” She declined to elaborate or offer any further details while in conversation with The Next. (Pierre signed with NC State on July 15).

Pierre’s departure also came months after Ralph vehemently defended the then-sophomore after she was snubbed by the SEC in March. “My staff and I are extremely disappointed that Khamil didn’t receive any All-SEC honors,” Ralph said in a statement released via social media. “She is having an All-SEC type season and is putting up numbers that are among the best in the nation.

“Our team would not be as successful this season without her incredible contributions all year. With that being said, we know she is one of the best players in the country. We don’t need awards or recognition from outside of our program to validate Khamil’s talent. We know how amazing she is on and off the court. We know her value to our program and to our league,” Ralph concluded.

Though it’s unclear how the Commodores will fill the gap left in Pierre’s wake, what is clear is that Ralph has a plan. If there’s one thing the team needs to improve ahead of the upcoming season, it’s consistency — and she thinks they’ll get there.

“It all has to matter,” she said. “So it can’t just be our games or when we get to the NCAA tournament, or when we’re playing well, it has to be all the time. Everything we do matters. Everything: our sleep, our nutrition habits, the way we treat each other, the way we show up to practice, the way we show up in strength and conditioning, the way we show up in class. Every single thing matters.

“Because to me, that’s the difference between good and great and between great and elite,” Ralph added. “When you start to understand that everything you do is going to point you in one direction, [that] who you are sometimes is who you are all the time … you have to be a certain way [to behave] if you want to be great, and you only have this much time to do it.”

In Lee and Ralph, Vanderbilt clearly believes it has the leadership team to reach greatness in a short time, perhaps even as soon as this season.