University of North Carolina Athletics
Black History Month Honoree: Martina Ballen
February 28, 2017 | General
By Turner Walston, GoHeels.com
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - When she was a student at Carolina, Martina Ballen (née Kendrick) would spend Saturdays in the fall in the old Kenan Stadium field house. As a 'Sweet Caroline,' she helped in the recruiting of football players like Kelvin Bryant. "That was my first entrée into Carolina athletics," she said. "I helped out football."
After graduating with a degree in business administration, Ballen earned her MBA from Wake Forest. She entered the banking industry, and after training as a credit analyst, returned to Chapel Hill as a branch manager and commercial lender with NCNB. A client, one of her former deans, told her about a job that was being created in Carolina athletics. "He was very vocal that there were no minorities in athletics administration at UNC," she said. But Ballen was intrigued. "At first I thought, 'What do I know about athletics, other than cheering for the Heels?'" she said. "But at that point, I decided I didn't want to make banking a career. John Swofford hired me, and that's how I got here."
And so in 1987, Martina Ballen walked back into the Kenan field house. Only this time, she stepped into her new office as the chief financial officer for Carolina Athletics. The program was in transition. Athletic finance was being incorporated into the greater university purview, and the department was undergoing an audit. Coaches and staff that had been accustomed to a degree of independence had to learn to cope with changes. "A number of things were cited, and I had to be responsible for changing those things," Ballen said. "I became 'Dr. No' very early," she said with a laugh. "I had to steer that process, so I learned to have a thick skin, and understand that it wasn't personal for them."
Then, as now, Ballen was one of few senior-level African-American females in college athletic departments. "When I walk in a room, I'm aware (of race)," she said. "I never felt overt discrimination, but I did feel that there was sometimes a lack of voice, a diversity of thought in some decisions that were being made."
And so Ballen brings that voice to the table, even as college athletics has been slower to adopt diversity of leadership than she would like. "I'm more confident perhaps than I was in the early stages of my career here to speak out about things," she said. "It's important for me to set an example for others coming behind me, that you're here, you're contributing, you have a voice, now use that voice."
As chief financial officer, Ballen works behind the scenes to keep Carolina Athletics running. "With any operation, you've got to pay the bills," she said. For a typical men's basketball game, for example, "you've got to make sure the bills are paid for the Smith Center itself. You've got to make sure that if they need an advance for meal money that we have that for them, taking care of the officials' fees . . . It's everything financially related. We make sure that things are going smoothly." And like an offensive line in football, Ballen is OK that she and her department don't often get the glory. "We're one of the units that, as long as things are going well, things are fine," she said. "We're not highlighted, and that works for me."
As the chief financial officer for an athletic department that fields 28 sports, Ballen loves to see the Tar Heels win championships. But she also loves to see the department get into the black at the end of a school year. "On an operation this size, with the demands and the cost of doing business going up, and not at the same rate necessarily that our revenues are going up, we have to make some sacrifices," she said. "There are challenges every year, just trying to make sure we can continue to do as much as we can to keep our sports funded at a competitive level."
Ballen is also rightly proud of chairing the athletic department's diversity committee three years ago with the Tar Heel Trailblazers program began, to highlight impactful African-American Tar Heel student-athletes during Black History Month. "There are some great stories, and it gave us an opportunity to highlight some of those who came first or blazed trails in different ways," she said. "If nothing else, whenever I do leave here, I will be most proud of that."
And so it's only fitting that Ballen herself, one of the few African-American female senior-level administrators in college athletics is considered a Tar Heel Trailblazer. African-Americans in athletics have traditionally begun in student services, but slowly, senior administrative positions are becoming more diverse. Ballen is a part of that legacy.
The old Kenan field house is long gone; the Loudermilk Center for Excellence rises high where it once stood. But the woman who was once a Sweet Caroline and homecoming queen is still in the building near the east end zone.
"I have come full circle," Ballen said. "I used to come here on Saturday mornings and help recruit football players, and I'm back in this same building all these years later overseeing the finances for athletics. It doesn't get any better than that."
