The 78-page plan her father wrote before she was born worked, and then she wrote her own.
At a glance
- Known for
- 23 Grand Slam singles titles, most in the Open Era
- Before fame
- Trained on public courts in Compton where her family dodged gunfire between drills
- Off-screen
- Runs Serena Ventures, a VC fund with 16 unicorn companies in its portfolio
Rise to Fame
A plan written before she was born mapped out the whole thing. Her father saw a $20,000 check on TV in 1978 and decided two daughters he hadn't conceived yet would become tennis champions. He moved the family to Compton, trained them on cracked public courts where they dodged gunfire between drills, then shipped everyone to a Florida academy.
She turned pro at 14. By 17, she'd beaten world No. 1 Martina Hingis at the 1999 US Open to claim her first Grand Slam, the second Black woman to win one after Althea Gibson 41 years earlier. The plan worked. What nobody planned for was that she'd outgrow it.
In the Spotlight
"Evolution" was the word she used in a 2022 Vogue cover story, refusing to say "retirement." She walked off Arthur Ashe Stadium for the last time after a third-round loss, no fairytale ending. What she's built since makes the tennis earnings look like a warmup.
Serena Ventures manages an $111 million fund with 16 unicorns in the portfolio, and she owns stakes in Angel City FC and the WNBA's Toronto Tempo. None of this is celebrity brand-slapping. She re-entered the drug testing pool, then denied a comeback on X, because keeping everyone guessing is its own kind of power play.
Side Notes
The day after delivering her first daughter via emergency C-section, she told a nurse she was having a pulmonary embolism. The nurse called her crazy. She insisted on a CT scan that found blood clots in her lungs. Her C-section wounds reopened from coughing, and doctors inserted a filter into a major vein.
It wasn't even her first clot scare. A broken glass cut after the 2010 Wimbledon title led to surgery, then a flight triggered an embolism. She turned the childbirth story into advocacy, writing that Black women in the US are nearly three times more likely to die during or after childbirth. The catsuit she wore to the 2018 French Open for blood circulation got banned by the tournament. Her body keeps being the argument other people don't want to hear.