After graduating from Boston College with a doctorate degree in law in 2001, landing a job at the Department of Labor and later financial services firm Fidelity, Sonia Raman thought she would be a lawyer forever.
Then in 2008, she left her career in corporate law behind to coach women’s basketball.
“I actually really loved my day job at Fidelity, but I think [my] passion was with coaching,” Raman, 51, tells CNBC Make It. “Basketball just kept pulling me back in.”
It was a “calculated risk,” she says, but one that seems to have paid off: Raman was named the next head coach of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm on Oct. 28. She is the first Indian American to hold a head coaching position in the league.
Raman, who walked onto the Division III basketball team at Tufts University as an undergraduate, says she first developed an interest in coaching her junior year of college while sidelined due to a major injury.
