In recognition of Black History Month, Toronto FC general manager Ali Curtis opened up about his experience as the only Black general manager in MLS in a video released Saturday on the club's official YouTube Channel.
Curtis has been Toronto's GM since 2019 after previously working as the sporting director for the New York Red Bulls. In Saturday's video, Curtis talks about his perspective as one of the few Black front office executives in the sports world.
"Yes, I'm cognizant of my skin color, whether that's in the board room or that's just kind of outside in the grocery store, but it's OK and I'm so fortunate that I'm surrounded by really, really good people in this organization that view me for me," Curtis said. "I think that myself and everyone else out there, we all regardless of gender or skin color, we all want the same thing: We all want to have happiness in our lives, we want to be able to do our jobs to the best of our abilities, we want our kids to have a good education and be happy and to be able to try to achieve all of their goals and dreams.
"So that gives for me a lot of inspiration and motivation to keep working hard and doing the best that I can such that I can not only do that for myself, but I can do that for my kids, I can do that for all the people that I touch and I'm around and hopefully 20 years from now we all look back and we see that we were part of something very, very special and then as we look at the table that we're no longer sitting at, there are a lot more people that maybe look like us."
Watch the whole segment with Curtis below.
