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Quote

Howard University is my mecca, my center. No matter where I go in the world, whether it be studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain or grabbing breakfast before a football game on Georgia Ave., I will always gravitate back to Howard. I am grounded in this University, the lessons it taught me, and the lifelong friends with which it blessed me. I will definitely return to my mecca when wanting to learn the newest fashion trend or dance move. When I am lost in the world, I can come back to re-familiarize myself with my core, with the tenants of truth and service, and with the place which sent me into the world in the first place.

Biography

Nira Headen is a senior afro-american studies and sports administration double major, Spanish minor from Baltimore, Maryland. She is very active on campus, with affiliations and leadership roles including serving as the elections commissioner, social action chair of Alpha Chapter, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and president of the National Panhellenic Council, to name a few. In addition to her impressive campus participation and academic work, Headen has excelled in various internships during her time at Howard, with positions at Howard University Men's Basketball Team and Sports Information Department, Under Armor, the NBA, Growth by Design Talent and an internship with TLS Talent Agency. Nira is passionate about sports and racial equality and she seeks to utilize sports to make the world a better place.Headen’s favorite thing about Howard is having the space to be unapologetically Black. She states from her classwork and internships to the fashion she wears, her Blackness is celebrated. Ironically, Headen did not want to attend Howard at first, as she has a family legacy at Howard and wanted her own experience. However, after visiting a friend at Howard and attending a lecture, Headen knew that Howard would mold her into the Black woman sports executive that she wants to be. The most important lesson that she has learned is that excellence is earned: “As a student, you are flooded with emails of awards and grants won by the University and so you start to want the same for yourself. But your friends, classmates, professors, and advisors will not give it to you; you must earn it.”