In the world of women’s basketball, Alana Beard is a name you don’t easily forget.

When it comes to women’s basketball, Beard boasts a hefty resume. After a college career at Duke filled with accolades, she was drafted as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft by the Washington Mystics. She won a championship in 2016 with the Los Angeles Sparks, while also racking up multiple All-Star honors and other awards throughout her time in the WNBA.

And, she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame this year. A legend.

When Beard spoke to Swish Appeal toward the end of June, it was imperative to get the obvious question out of the way: Is coaching in college or the WNBA in Beard’s future? After all, it seems incredible that someone with her accomplishments isn’t leading a team somewhere. It turns out, that’s not because there aren’t any offers.

When she retired from the WNBA in 2020 Beard entered the venture capital space. The intentional switch afforded her the time and resources to build up the 318 Foundation, a Shreveport, Louisiana-based organization that offers girls from underserved communities the support they need to approach life—and basketball — successfully.

Beard and her team at the foundation have created a “mentorship ecosystem,” making sure to include sports in the programming, although the sports component was intentionally introduced last. As Beard explained, “Because what I understand sort of being born and raised, you know, in a community like Shreveport is that we at times believe that sports is the only way out.” She continued:

And that is not the case. It’s about who you are as an individual. We wanted to make sure that that was the core of our programming and getting them to understand that you use sports as a vehicle to get to where you want to go and it’s only a small part of who you are.

That’s an especially salient point to underscore for young women who are navigating college as an athlete. As Beard emphasized, many of them are just focused on playing basketball—just like she was at the same age. But in 2025, there’s a key difference: “These kids are now a business,” Beard said. “They’re branded as a business, and you have to dig into the layers that comes with that to understand how to, to manage all of it.”

The task of Beard and leaders like her is to “provide the fundamentals of the game, or whatever sport these kids are playing, and you have to do it from a financial literacy standpoint, from a mental health, health and wellness standpoint and from a leadership development standpoint.” She continued, “You’ve got to figure out how to implement those core resources, and that’s exactly what we are doing.”

Even if Beard has no intention of going into coaching, she respects those in the profession. And if there’s one person Beard especially admires, it’s her friend and colleague Kara Lawson.

Lawson, of course, is in charge of the Duke women’s basketball program. She also recently steered Team USA through a dominant run at the 2025 FIBA Women’s AmeriCup Tournament in Chile, where college standouts Flau’jae Johnson, Hannah Hidalgo, Olivia Miles and their equally-talented teammates offered a masterclass in hoops against women who are already in their professional careers. In other words, Lawson just knows how to win—and that’s exactly how Beard thinks of her.

Both are ultra competitors, including when they matched up as collegians at Tennessee and Duke. In the 2003 Final Four, Lawson’s Lady Vols defeated Beard’s Blue Devils, although Beard and Duke had gotten the best of Lawson and Tennessee when the teams met at the beginning the 2002-03 season. As Beard recalled, “When we step on that court, we’re going to compete. We’ll shake hands and hug kind of afterwards.”

But these days, Beard has nothing but effusive praise for the work Lawson is doing at Duke. She effused:

Seeing what Kara has been able to do since she’s been back at Duke has been phenomenal. I know that a lot of people don’t like change, right? They don’t like when someone comes in and do things a little differently. But I love that Kara has stayed steady in her plan to get Duke women’s basketball back to the pinnacle of the game.