Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the full issue here.
The first word that Natalie White ’20 learned to say was “ball,” so it’s fitting that at 26 years old, she’s the founder and CEO of the top women’s basketball brand, Moolah Kicks. While her business instincts have landed her products in stores across the country, her driving force is less about entrepreneurial dreams and more about building a community for women’s basketball fanatics just like her.
White loved sports from a young age, playing soccer, football, lacrosse, and basketball all by the time she was a high schooler. She began her college search interested in Boston College—White wanted to study business and her older sister Whitney was already on the Heights—but what sealed the deal was getting to try out for the varsity lacrosse team, even after a high school injury. “Boston College was the type of school I wanted, where everyone gets a shot,” White says.
Natalie White '20
She didn’t end up on the lacrosse team, but while exploring academic life at the Carroll School as a finance and entrepreneurship student, she decided to join the women’s club basketball team. She later also became a manager for the women’s varsity basketball team. Despite spending so much time thinking about basketball, White hadn’t thought much about the fact that she was wearing men’s sneakers on the court.
The shoe choice wasn’t a preference, but a necessity. The vast majority of basketball sneakers marketed to women are just smaller versions of men’s sneakers. “I saw this ad with four WNBA players holding sneakers named after NBA players,” she says. “You can be the best in your game, but at the peak of your career, you’ll still be promoting products made for someone else.”
Women’s feet typically have a higher arch than men’s, not to mention a slimmer width, a narrower heel, and a shallower lateral side right above the toes. “When we wear shoes built for the male foot, we’re more at risk for knee, ankle, and leg injuries,” White explains. Seeing that advertisement was the moment she knew she had to change the industry.
“The toughness of the industry is matched by how tough she is,” says John Fisher, a senior marketing lecturer and former CEO of athletic shoe and clothing company Saucony. Fisher was a mentor to White in her time at Boston College, but he initially tried to steer her toward any other career path. He told White: “Basketball is the most important category in the athletic footwear market. When they spit on you, it’s gonna be like a fire hose pounding your way.”
White took the reality check in stride. “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what the community needs,” she says. If no one else was solving the problem, why couldn’t it be her? “The outstanding attributes that she had from minute one were the stubbornness and drive to succeed,” Fisher says. To White, Moolah Kicks is a product of Boston College, especially the women’s basketball community on the Heights. “They believed in [Moolah] when it was just an idea,” she says of her college teammates, who supported her dream by assisting with everything from initial concept ideation to testing out early prototypes. “That is the reason we’re here today.”
“The goal for me was never that I wanted to start a company. What I wanted was for the world to see women's basketball the way that I do. ”
A year after graduating, White launched a Moolah Kicks presale
campaign without having a single pair of sneakers ready. “There was one shoe and it wasn’t even all the way put together,” she says, laughing. That didn’t stop her—White and her friends made Moolah Kicks shirts and shot a promo video in Brooklyn. As the story got picked up by The Boston Globe and industry publications like Sneaker Freaker, Moolah Kicks saw $30,000 worth of sales within the first three weeks of the campaign. Then White heard that Dick’s Sporting Goods was looking to put an emphasis on women’s sports. She leveraged her industry connections, aiming for an introduction. It felt like a full-court shot—a bold move to get Moolah Kicks the attention it deserved.
She got her chance to pitch to Dick’s in June 2021. By that fall, Moolah’s first production run was in 140 Dick’s stores—a number that has grown to 570 stores nationwide. Moolah Kicks now counts Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban among its investors and has endorsement deals with WNBA players Courtney Williams and Sug Sutton. White also landed a spot on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Natalie White '20 shows off some of her Moolah Kicks, which counts Mark Cuban among its investors and has endorsement deals with WNBA players Courtney Williams and Sug Sutton.
“Being a woman in sports, it’s a smaller community,” says Boston College women’s club basketball team president CeeCee Van Pelt ’24, a finance and accounting student. “Having people like [Natalie] at the forefront, it’s really encouraging for all of us.” The women’s club team currently wears Moolah sneakers even though New Balance is the official athletic footwear and apparel provider for all Boston College varsity teams. “I used to play with men’s shoes. You don’t realize they hurt until you put on a shoe that actually fits,” she says.
White is currently a jack-of-all-trades for Moolah, which makes her grateful for the Carroll School accounting and operations classes she took, as well as the college art classes that taught her about design. Moolah recently added warm-up gear and a low-top sneaker model to its product line, and it’s “continuing to get shoes on feet,” White says. “There are challenges every day, but you have to see those as opportunities. How do we keep getting better every season?”
The answer is simple: She has to make sure women and girls know there are basketball sneakers made by and for women ballers like them. “The goal for me was never that I wanted to start a company,” White says. “What I wanted was for the world to see women’s basketball the way that I do.”
