Into the spotlight in her hometown

New Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan has deep roots in Las Vegas

By Sam Gordon Las Vegas Review-Journal

Raiders training camp is underway, and silver bleachers line the north end zone at the practice field outside their Henderson headquarters. They are reserved the first Saturday of camp for family members and friends of Raiders players and coaches, or other organizational dignitaries — like the first Black female team president in NFL history.

Except Sandra Douglass Morgan chose not to sit there. She didn’t care for the isolation, preferring bleachers on the sideline among the staffers and their families, the people she’s grateful to lead.

“She knows she holds this prestigious position, but she’s still Sandra Douglass Morgan from the east side of Las Vegas,” said her husband, Don, four years a safety for the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals.

“It didn’t change her. People expected it to change. But it didn’t, and that’s why people gravitate toward Sandra.” And why the Raiders hired her.

Douglass Morgan was chosen last month to stabilize the Silver and Black, colors as synonymous with dysfunction as they used to be with Super Bowls. The franchise’s second season in Las Vegas was the most tumultuous in its 63-year history, fraught with turnover in leadership that marred a 10-7 record and its second playoff berth since 2002.

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Finding home

For now, Douglass Morgan equates Las Vegas with opportunity. “Endless opportunity,” she says, pausing after pondering its personal significance. It’s where her father Gilbert, a retired Air Force master sergeant, met her mother Kilcha, a former keno runner at Binion’s Horseshoe, Landmark and Imperial Palace.

A fortuitous meeting at the Hilton became a family on the city’s east side near Nellis Air Force Base, complete with Douglass Morgan and older sister Sonya, now a graduate professor in the Ivy League at Columbia. Douglass Morgan was actually born on a base in Missouri, but her family moved to Las Vegas when she was a toddler.

Click here to read the full story and see photos from Sandra's childhood.