It all starts with the bench.
The bench is where the game begins, a place of preparation where athletes study the playbook, build stamina and sharpen their edge before they’re called into the game.
The Bench Strategy applies this discipline to capital, preparing athletes to own, govern, and invest with confidence and control before opportunity arrives, not after value is extracted.
OUR VISION
A reimagined women’s sports economy
Athletes shape the flow of capital
Fandom becomes economic power
Wealth is generational, not transactional
Leaderships, ownership & repair extend beyond the game
OUR MISSION
Design & deploy reparative financial systems that turn cultural power into ownership, equity, and generational wealth for athletes & their communities.
↳ A WIN-WIN
Our Services
OUR LEADERSHIP
Jessica Norwood
Jessica Norwood (she/her) is an entrepreneur, investor, author and philanthropist who has spent her career exploring the ways that money can be an expression of repair and spiritual care.
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She is an architect in the reparative finance field, working with a community of investors to provide believe-in-you money in order to create an economy that loves Black people and encourages others to do the same.
As the founder and CEO of RUNWAY Roots and the Rooted Fund, Jessica is widely recognized for her financial activism. Jessica is a former fellow of the Center for Economic Democracy fellow, RSF Social Finance’s Integrated Capital Institute (now called Just Economy Institute), winner of the prestigious Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship, a former BALLE (now called Common Future) Local Economy Fellow, the Political Power and Social Change fellow of the Hip Hop Archive at the Hutchins Center of Harvard University, as well as a lifelong fellow of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Southern University College of Business for Emerging Leaders. Her participation and leadership in these programs has deeply informed groundbreaking work on restorative and reparative economies and Black entrepreneurship.
Jessica’s innovative work has been profiled on NPR and Bloomberg Television, and in Essence Magazine, Next City, Fast Company, and Conscious Company. New York Times best-seller Edgar Villanova, author of Decolonizing Wealth, considers her work the “medicine” modern philanthropy and investment need. She is the co-host of the podcast Road to Repair, has spoken at events for communities of changemakers including Net Impact, Social Capital Markets (SOCAP), Community Capital (COCAP), Slow Money, Social Venture Institute, Social Venture Circle and has served on boards including the Highlander Research and Education Center and Emergent Strategies Institute. Jessica was raised in Alabama, where she continues to work. Her career and approach to reparative economics has been deeply informed by her roots in Chicago, Oakland, and Boston. She currently lives in Kingston, Jamaica where she continues to deepen her commitment and investment in Black joy and liberation across the diaspora.
JODIE TONITA
Jodie (she/they) is an entrepreneur and field builder who has spent her career partnering with women and gender expansive people to drive transformative social change, now bringing this work to women’s sports to reimagine how value and power are created and shared.
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Jodie co-founded The Bench Strategy to explore how the rapid growth of the women’s sports economy can be leveraged to create more equitable systems that build generational wealth for communities. She recognized a powerful opportunity: at the center of this moment are the fierce athletes themselves—leaders whose courage, representation, and fights for greater equity are redefining society. As the primary creators of value in the women’s sports ecosystem, they have the potential to help build a new economy—one where the people generating value have a voice in how it is structured and how its benefits are shared.
Her work sits at the intersection of women’s sports, economic design, and leadership strategy, contributing to emerging conversations on equitable ownership, governance, and investment in the sector. She does this by seeing strategic openings and possibilities in people and systems, and accompanying leaders as they grow their agency and power to reimagine and shape our collective future.
Widely recognized for her systems-changing work in transformational leadership and progressive field building, Jodie is a Leadership Fellow with the Broadbent Institute and a long-time strategic partner to leading activists, artists, and power-building organizations. She serves on the board of the Canopy Planet Foundation and has previously served on the boards of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, Leadnow, and the Canadian Women’s Voters Congress. She is a Donella Meadows Systems Thinking Leadership Fellow and a graduate of the Next Economy MBA program.
When she’s not reimagining the women’s sports economy, Jodie is surfing, practicing ocean rescue, and supporting the keiki of the Waiʻanae Coast to deepen their connection to the ocean and Hawaiian cultural practices.