A National Mission, Recognized in Los Angeles
On June 9, 2026, the Los Angeles Business Journal gathered business and civic leaders at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown for its 2026 Women’s Leadership Symposium & Awards — a half-day program of panels on leadership, mentorship, and work-life balance, capped by an awards luncheon honoring women driving change across the region.
We’re proud to share that our founding President, Dr. Mimi Nartey, was named this year’s Community Impact Advocate of the Year.
Playing for Keeps is a national organization — our team is based in Los Angeles, but our work reaches communities everywhere, from a new turf field at Burckhalter Elementary in Oakland to our upcoming Awards Dinner & Fundraiser in Atlanta this December 3rd. This honor, presented by a Los Angeles publication, recognizes leadership that started locally and has scaled nationally: the same equity-of-play mission that guides every field Playing for Keeps builds.
In its honoree profile, the Business Journal described Dr. Nartey as “an educator, interdisciplinary scholar, and nationally recognized community advocate whose work bridges public health, education, and youth development.” Her path there wasn’t a straight line. She holds degrees in Environmental Biology and Climate and Society from Columbia University and completed doctoral studies in Public Health with a minor in Comparative Education. Before any of that, she represented Ghana in the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup and earned a silver medal at the 2002 African Women’s Cup of Nations — the athletic career that first showed her, as the Journal put it, “the power of sport to transform lives.”
Today, alongside leading Playing for Keeps, Dr. Nartey serves as Head Coach of the Wiseburn Da Vinci High School Girls Soccer Program, where the Journal noted she has “led a measurable cultural transformation centered on excellence, accountability, and character development.”
The Argument Behind the Award
The Business Journal didn’t just profile Dr. Nartey — it gave her the floor. In the same special section, she wrote a guest column making the public health case for play access, one that’s become the intellectual backbone of Playing for Keeps’ work nationally.
“Across America, too many children are losing access to one of the most essential ingredients for healthy development: opportunities to play.”
She traced the consequences in plain terms: when recreational infrastructure shrinks, kids don’t find safer alternatives. They simply stop playing.
“Play equity recognizes that access to safe recreational space is uneven. Children in well-resourced communities have options; those in underserved areas often do not.”
And she was direct about what the moment demands — not a choice between environmental responsibility and access, but both at once.
“This is how we move forward: by safeguarding children’s health in every sense—through access to activity and the use of better, safer systems. Because play is not optional. It is a fundamental right of childhood.”
Why It Matters for the Work Ahead
This recognition lands on ground that Playing for Keeps has been building for years. Youth sports have become increasingly pay-to-play, with the average family now spending more than $1,000 per child annually just to participate — pricing many families out entirely. Children from lower-income households are two to three times less likely to take part in organized sports than their peers. Every field Playing for Keeps installs, every policy conversation our Association arm joins, is aimed at closing that gap.
An award is a marker, not a finish line. What Dr. Nartey and the Business Journal are really pointing to is a body of work still very much underway: safe fields in communities that have gone without them, evidence-based policy that doesn’t treat safety and access as opposing goals, and a growing national coalition of partners who believe, as we do, that a child’s zip code shouldn’t determine whether they get to play.
Playing for Keeps is a national nonprofit building safe, sustainable spaces for youth play and advocating for the policies that protect access to them. Learn more about our work, our Fields of the Future program, and how to support it at playing4keeps.org.
Source: Adapted from the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2026 Women’s Leadership Symposium & Awards coverage (June 15–21, 2026 print edition, Vol. 48, No. 24) and Dr. Nartey’s guest column, “Play Isn’t a Luxury — It’s a Public Health Imperative,” published in the same issue. Honoree profile: labusinessjournal.com. Event details: labusinessjournal.com/events/wlsa2026.
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