Staff Directory
- Title:
- Director of Athletics
- Email:
- Phone:
- 882-2055
• Named Director of Athletics At The University of Arizona (Feb. 20, 2024)
Desireé Reed-Francois Served as Mizzou’s 21st Director of Athletics
Since her appointment as Director of Athletics in August 2021, Reed-Francois has been transforming Mizzou Athletics in every way: from department culture to the student-athlete experience; from facility enhancements to fundraising; and from community engagement to the fan experience.
Among her early successes are the construction of the Stephens Indoor Practice Facility for football; the hirings of Dennis Gates – Whitten Family Men’s Basketball Head Coach, Dawn Sullivan – head volleyball coach, Kerrick Jackson – head baseball coach, Bianca Turati – head tennis coach, Glen Millican – head men’s golf coach and Caroline Westrup – head women’s golf coach;, dozens of enhancements to the game-day fan experience; the implementation of Black & Gold Fridays across the state; a 152% growth in Tiger Scholarship Fund membership; a retooling of the Tigers’ NIL program and the creation of the 24-stop Come HOME Tour which covered more than 7,500 miles.
During her tenure so far, the Mizzou wrestling program, anchored by two-time national champion Keegan O’Toole, won a pair of conference titles and had back-to-back Top 10 placings at the NCAA Championship. Sullivan was named 2023 SEC Volleyball Coach of the Year following her team making the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
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.
In 2022-2023, men’s basketball posted its highest win total since the 2013-14 campaign and was ranked No. 23 in the final Associated Press poll of the regular season for the first time since 2012. Men’s golf grabbed its first NCAA Regional bid since 2018, gymnastics placed in the Top 10 at the 2022 NCAA Championship and softball hosted an NCAA Regional for the second-straight season.
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.
Reed-Francois came to Mizzou after serving four years as the Director of Athletics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 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 and opened the new $2-billion Allegiant Stadium.
An adept fundraiser, Reed-Francois led a $60-million development drive at UNLV, resulting in an $8-million estate gift, the largest estate gift in the school’s history. Football season ticket sales and premium revenue jumped by 200% and 70%, respectively, and Reed-Francois introduced a new apparel agreement with Nike.
Prior to arriving at UNLV, Reed-Francois served as the deputy athletics director at Virginia Tech, overseeing external relations, the day-to-day operations of the department and football and as a senior associate athletics director at the University of Cincinnati. At the University of Tennessee, she became the first woman to oversee a men’s basketball program in the SEC, which followed stints at California State University-Fresno, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco.
Reed-Francois earned a Bachelor’s Degree from UCLA and a 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 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 recently 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.
A former rowing student-athlete at UCLA, Reed-Francois is 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.
She and her husband, Josh Francois, are the parents of current Mizzou men’s basketball student-athlete Jackson Francois.
