Former AT&T Executive Cynthia Marshall Takes Over As Dallas Mavericks CEO
Dallas – The Mavericks introduced former AT&T executive Cynthia Marshall as interim CEO on Monday (Feb. 26).
The move comes just a week after a Sport Illustrated article shed light on a bizarre culture of alleged sexual harassment that has festered in the business operations of the NBA franchise, dating back to before the time that owner Mark Cuban purchased the team.
“I’m not saying that I am coming here to be the savior of the world,” Marshall said at a Monday press conference. “Transformation is what I do, it takes a team and a village and we’ll get this done.”
Marshall, a California native, begins work in an immediate capacity, charged with moving the organization through an investigation that will pursue any and all previous and current claims by employees.
“The process failed somewhere,” said Marshall, who retired from AT&T last May with more than 30 years of telecommunications experience going back to 1981 with Pacific Bell. “I don’t know why it failed. And so that’s what we have to dig out. So I will be meeting one-on-one every single employee of the organization. I’m calling it my own `March Madness.”’
Marshall’s one-liner drew laughs during what was a mostly upbeat news conference for what seems to be a welcomed addition. Her arrival was praised by Rick Carlisle as ”dynamic” and ”charismatic” after Marshall met with him and was introduced to the players by their coach.
She is a graduate of Cal-Berkeley and brings three decades of human resources work into the interim position.
Marshall used the news conference to assert her marching orders from Cuban by intercepting a question directed at the Mavericks owner on how the arrangement would work between the two.
“I was getting ready to share with Mark, a 2-pager I worked on this weekend that lays out our vision, our values and our top priorities and I wanted him to see the plan. He just said, I don’t want to see it. I knew when you left my office last week that I picked the right person and this is yours. And I told him, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear because that was a test.”
Sports Illustrated reported that former team president Terdema Ussery made sexually suggestive remarks to female employees. Ussery, who left the Mavs in 2015, took over as the franchise’s CEO in 1997.
The SI report also said team website reporter Earl Sneed was twice involved in domestic assault cases while working for the team. Sneed and former human resources director Buddy Pittman were after this report.