Barbara Bush doing her dream job at NBA All-Star

The NBA All-Star Game at Intuit Dome is days away, and no one is trying ahead to it more than Barbara Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush and the NBA’s vice president of social impression. She discovered her “dream job” and is loving every minute of it.

“I played basketball until fifth grade. I grew up in Dallas and everyone watched the Mavericks. Then when I moved to Austin it was all about UT,” she said, referring to the University of Texas. “I never thought I’d work in basketball. For most of my career I’ve worked in global health with nonprofits. During COVID, I started paying more attention to the NBA as it utilized its arenas for vaccination sites and voting centers since you could be socially distanced and compliant by using them.”

While representing the muse for which she labored, Bush attended conferences with NBA executives and sought methods to work together.

“I became more and more interested in what they were building,” she recalled. “So serendipitously I mentioned ‘If you ever have an opening, I’d love to go through the recruiting process and see what happens.’ One year later there was an opening, I applied, and I’ve been with the NBA for about three years now.”

Bush was promoted to her current place in 2023. Collaborating with the Clippers, she is overseeing this 12 months’s All-Star youth and development programming and social impression initiatives, starting with Thursday’s NBA Cares State Farm Assist Tracker Legacy Project Dedication in celebration of the YMCA’s 175-year anniversary at Weingart YMCA Wellness & Aquatic Center in South L.A.

“The YMCA’s been a great partner with the Clippers for years and years and we feel a strong affinity to the Y, given that our sport was created at a YMCA, so it’s been part of the story of the NBA itself,” Bush said. “We, the National Basketball Players Assn. and the Clippers, are renovating youth-serving spaces, including a STEM lab, teen center and basketball court.”

On Thursday evening, seven L.A.-based entrepreneurs will current their corporations to a panel of movie star judges and compete for $200,000 in prizes in the All-Star Pitch Competition at the Kia Forum. Judging might be actress Issa Rae, advertising govt Bozoma Saint John, non-public equity companions Will Bumpus and Ted Oberwager, and Ann Miller, Nike’s govt vice president of global sports activities advertising.

“It’s a ‘Shark Tank’-style competition, we had 200 companies apply, and this will be the final rounds where seven entrepreneurs get to pitch their business to some pretty well-known judges, so I’m sure they’re going to be nerve-racked,” Bush explained. “It’s really fun and inspiring to watch entrepreneurs have the courage to share in front of an audience their impressive businesses.”

The Jr. NBA/Jr. WNBA Day on Friday morning invitations 1,000 local youth from the Beyond the Bell and Woodcraft Rangers applications to take part in clinics instructing fundamentals of the sport.

The 18th annual NBA Cares Day of Service is Friday afternoon at the Convention Center, and 500 volunteers will construct home buildings with Habitat for Humanity and pack important kits for underserved households with Baby2Baby.

All weekend a Basketball Without Borders Global Camp at the Lakers’ apply facility in El Segundo will carry together elite high school-age prospects from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe to participate in taking pictures competitions, life-skills seminars and five-on-five video games guided by current and former NBA gamers and coaches.

“One interesting tie this year is how we’ve reconfigured the All-Star Game so it’s the USA vs. the World, given that so many players are from other countries,” Bush said. “Since NBC is covering the Olympics at the same time, we think it’s compelling to have our format be USA vs. the World.”

Bush is probably most excited about the NBA Total Health All-Star Walk on Sunday morning, a two-mile route in Inglewood.

“We’ll be working with Girltrek, a phenomenal nonprofit focused on walking as a way to maintain your health,” she said. “We expect 1,500 people and it’s open to the public. NBA and WNBA legends are participating, and Evernorth Health Services will do biometric screenings and skin cancer checks to take care of yourself before heading to the game.”

Bush acknowledged the Clippers’ function in planning every thing the NBA is doing next weekend and praised the franchise for its group outreach.

“What I love about my job is I still get to work on health and social justice issues but from a totally different vantage point,” she said. “We’ll have eyeballs around the world watching so we want to make sure we leave the community better than when we arrived.”