Since being named Vice President and Director of Athletics at the University of Arizona in February 2024, Desireé Reed-Francois has built momentum and cultivated a high-performing culture while guiding the department through a transformational time in college athletics. An U of A alumna, she graduated from the James E. Rogers College of Law at U of A in 1997, and is Arizona’s first-ever full-time female athletic director and the 11th Director of Athletics in the department’s history.
Reed-Francois currently serves as the President of the FBS Athletics Directors Association and as a member of the national Implementation Committee for the landmark House vs. NCAA settlement.
During the 2024-25 academic year, the Arizona triathlon team, in just its second year of competition, won the 23rd team national championship in department history. The women's golf, men’s tennis and baseball teams were also Big 12 Champions in the first season as members of the conference while two head coaches, women’s golf head coach Giovana Maymon and gymnastics head coach John Court, were named Big 12 Coaches of the Year. Arizona student-athletes found success in the classroom, posting a semester GPA of 3.389 for Spring 2025, the highest semester GPA in department history.
Reed-Francois also debuted the ‘Bear Down Blueprint’, a strategic plan that provides a clear direction and reinforces the shared commitment to excellence and Arizona reshaped its financial outlook while continuing to enhance the student-athlete experience and carry on the championship tradition. She boldly brought Arizona’s multimedia rights operation in-house with the creation of Arizona Sports Enterprises (ASE). In the first year of operation, ASE exceeded budget expectations by reaching 114% of its goal and forged over 60 strategic partnerships spanning Tucson, the state of Arizona, and national markets. The Wildcat Club saw an increase in philanthropic donations of nearly $6 million, the department also signed a landmark contract renewal with NIKE that runs through 2033 and strengthens the Arizona brand. Arizona Athletics was also recognized as one of the top five departments in the country for the 2025 Fiesta Bowl Community Service Award.
Prior to her return to Tucson, Reed-Francois was the Director of Athletics at the University of Missouri from August 2021 through February 2024. During that time, she was recognized as the NACDA 2023-24 Athletics Director of the Year and was a 2024 Sports Business Journal AD of the Year nominee. Reed-Francois was also the first female athletic director in Mizzou’s history, the first female athletic director in a public institution in the SEC and was the first Hispanic female and woman of color athletics director at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level.
Her tenure was marked by raising the athletics program's profile to include a top-10 football program, postseason berths across multiple sports, and enhancements to student-athlete welfare and support. In addition to hiring six head coaches, she oversaw the department's first budget surplus in six years; record-breaking successes in fundraising, including securing the largest gift in Missouri Athletics history of $62 million; five straight semesters of record student-athlete GPAs; attendance growth in football and basketball; the opening of the Stephens Indoor Football Practice Center; significant upgrades to the game-day experience for fans; the growth of the Missouri brand across the state and country; and implementation of innovative Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) initiatives.
The football team earned three bowl bids, including the program’s first New Year’s Six game – a 2023 Goodyear Cotton Bowl Championship – and finished the 2023 regular season ranked No. 9 in all three major polls while signing highly touted recruiting classes. Head Coach Eliah Drinkwitz was named 2023 SEC Coach of the Year, RB Cody Schrader was a Consensus All-America choice and won the 2023 Burlsworth Trophy as the nation’s best former walk-on. Multiple players earned All-America and All-SEC honors.
Reed-Francois made six head coaching hires at Missouri, including men’s basketball head coach Dennis Gates, who advanced to the NCAA Tournament in two of his first three seasons, and volleyball head coach Dawn Sullivan, who has also made a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. Reed-Francois also instituted dozens of enhancements to the game-day fan experience, implemented the Black & Gold Fridays across the state, made a 152% growth in Tiger Scholarship Fund membership, retooled the Tigers’ NIL program and created the 24-stop Come HOME Tour, which covered more than 7,500 miles.
Academically, the Tigers posted a cumulative grade point average of 3.35 in spring 2023 – topping the previous record for any semester of 3.32, set in the fall 2022. In 2022-23, six sports programs posted perfect NCAA Academic Progress Rate scores and all 18 programs scored above a 965 for the first time since 2012-13, with 16 teams registering a score above 980. Two teams recorded their best APR score since the first release in 2004 as the Mizzou football program registered a 989 (27 points ahead of the national football average of 962) and men's track posted a 991.
Reed-Francois led Mizzou to its first budget surplus in six years, in part due to innovative revenue-generating ideas including the enhancement and expansion of an in-house ticket sales team with a focus on group and student-ticket sales, the reintroduction of block seating at football games, and a complete retooling of the gameday and in-game experience at football and men’s basketball games. The Tiger Scholarship Fund raised over $41 million in Fiscal Year 2022, the fourth-most productive year in TSF history and the highest total in a year that did not contain a capital campaign.
Prior to her tenure in Columbia, Reed-Francois served as the Director of Athletics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2017-2021), revitalizing the department. During her time with the Rebels, she completed or implemented more than $70 million in facility upgrades; hired seven head coaches, including three who earned conference Coach of the Year honors early in their tenures; oversaw the completion and opening of a $35 million on-campus football training complex; and successfully negotiated a joint-use agreement with the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders with the opening of the new $2 billion Allegiant Stadium.
Prior to ascending to the director's chair, Reed-Francois served several institutions in leadership roles, including as the Deputy Athletics Director at Virginia Tech, as a Senior Associate Athletics Director at the University of Cincinnati and as the Senior Associate Athletics Director at the University of Tennessee. Additionally, she has worked at Fresno State University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, the University of California Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. She also has experience at the professional levels, working with the then Oakland Raiders and the National Football League Management Council.
She is the Vice Chair of the Lead1 Board of Directors and serves on the organization's executive committee, as well as on the boards of Women Leaders in College Sports, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches. Reed-Francois served as Vice Chair of the NCAA Baseball Selection Committee and formerly was a member of the College Football Playoff Committee’s operations committee. In addition, she is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators and has been a presenter at NACDA, NACMA, Women Leaders in College Sports, and Sports Business Journal’s annual conventions.
Reed-Francois earned a Bachelor’s Degree from UCLA where she was also a member of the rowing team, and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Arizona College of Law. She is a member of the State Bar of California and taught law classes at the University of Tennessee and at Santa Clara University. Prior to her work in college athletics, Reed-Francois worked as a legal associate for the Oakland Raiders and the NFL’s Management Council.
She and her husband, Josh Francois, have a son, Jackson, who was a two-year letterwinner on the University of Missouri men’s basketball team and is currently a member of the Arizona Men's Basketball program.
