WNBPA STAFF BIO
Erin D. Drake
Senior Advisor & Legal Counsel
Erin D. Drake is Senior Advisor & Legal Counsel for the Women’s National Basketball Players Association. In her role, Drake works closely with players and other staff to address social, cultural, workplace, and legal concerns that arise for players, and prepares the Union to strategically respond to these matters, and any others arising from the ever-changing landscape of women’s sports. She conducts research, drafts reports and correspondence, and designs education sessions as needed for players and staff. Drake serves as a primary point of contact with national and global labor, political, advocacy, and civil rights organizations, in addition to other outside legal counsel and organizations. She co-leads the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion player leadership committee, sits on the AFL-CIO’s sports council, assists with the Union’s internship program, and is a member of the Union’s collective bargaining negotiations team.
She began her work with the Union in 2022 after being awarded a Liman Law Fellowship. Prior to joining the WNBPA, Drake clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Born in Nashville, TN, Drake graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Literature and a citation in Spanish in 2014. She was awarded the Barrett Wendell Prize for exceptional sophomore work, the Paul Revere Frothingham Scholarship Prize for the Harvard senior who best exemplifies the qualities of excellent scholarship and character, and she was selected to be the Class of 2017 Convocation speaker. She also served as a Trustee Board member of the Phillips Brooks House Association and was selected as one of eight Class Marshals.
Drake Graduated from Yale Law School in 2020, after being a first-year teaching Fellow, interning at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization for five semesters in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC), and served on the 2018-2019 Yale Law Women Board. During her Summers, Drake worked as a legal intern at the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee as a 2018 Justice John Paul Stevens Summer Public Interest Fellowship Recipient, a summer associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and the John A. Payton summer associate at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. Immediately prior to law school, Drake worked as a paralegal at the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project.
She is a member of the Tennessee Bar and admitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She now lives in Washington, D.C. and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Constellation Theatre Company’s Board of Directors, and University School of Nashville’s National Board of Visitors.
