Virginia women’s basketball head coach Tina Thompson has announced the hiring of three members of her office staff.
Fran Harris has been named the director of communications and community engagement and is responsible for overseeing multi-channel local initiatives with coaches, staff, student-athletes and fans as well as creating and administering personal and professional development, teambuilding and championship culture training programs for student-athletes.
Anna Cho has been named the director of basketball operations and will oversee all operational and administrative aspects of the program. This includes building and managing the annual budget, supervising office personnel and student-managers, coordinating team travel and practice schedules, managing the Nike apparel budget, serving as the liaison between the head coach and all aspects of UVA athletic administration, and collaborating with various departments within the University, athletics, and conference office.
Jama Sharp is the new director of scouting and video services.
Harris previously spent four years as the coordinator of community engagement at her alma mater, Texas, before coming to UVA. She is an accomplished businesswoman, author and broadcast personality with more than 20 years of experience in the sales, sports media and sports marketing industries. A former Procter & Gamble sales executive, teambuilding expert and organizational development trainer, she recently hosted Home Rules, a life and home renovation show on HGTV, where her candor and insights reached millions of viewers each week. She has made hundreds of appearances on TV and radio shows including The Today Show, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, TLC, Comedy Central, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Oprah’s Radio Network and many others.
In 2011, Harris bested over 15,000 candidates to be named Good Morning America’s Advice Guru runner-up. That same year, Harris was one of eleven contestants appearing on the NBC competitive reality television series America’s Next Great Restaurant. Harris is the founder and publisher of The College Athlete magazine, which debuts online in the Fall of 2018. Her most recent book, Bullyproof My Company (May, 2018), is a guide to help organizations and companies eradicate workplace bullying and mayhem.
The Dallas native was a student-athlete for Naismith hall-of-fame coach Jody Conradt from 1982-86 during the most successful era of women’s basketball at Texas. Harris was named Southwest Conference Player of the Year in 1984-85 and was twice voted team MVP, including on the historic 1985-86 squad, which became the NCAA’s first undefeated women’s college basketball championship team. Harris’ 1,798 career points at Texas currently ranks seventh in program history.
After graduating with a communications degree from UT, Harris served as a graduate assistant on Conradt’s coaching staff during the 1988-89 season, earning a master of arts in journalism from The University of Texas in 1991. In May 2018, she graduated from UT’s McCombs School of Business with a master of science in technology commercialization.
Harris played two seasons in the WNBA as a member of the Houston Comets’ WNBA championship team in 1997, and with the Utah Starzz in 1998. Harris also played on several gold medal USA national teams before being named alternate on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team. As a professional she competed in over 30 countries, while leading her Italian and Swiss teams to 2nd and 3rd place finishes.
From 1994 to 2001, Fran Harris served as a sideline reporter, studio analyst and game analyst for women’s and men’s basketball for ESPN. She returned to ESPN in 2011 as women’s college basketball analyst and play-by-play announcer for the ESPN family of networks including ESPN, ESPN U, Longhorn Network and the SEC Network.
She is a member of the UT Athletics Women’s Hall of Honor, and was recently inducted into the Dallas Independent School District’s (DISD) Hall of Fame.
Cho first began working with the Cavaliers in 2014 as a student-manager for the Virginia Women’s Basketball program and was elevated to Head Manager and Assistant to the Video Coordinator during her undergraduate tenure. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor’s degree in both Media Studies and Foreign Affairs in 2017, she served as a Graduate Assistant for the program while pursuing her Master’s degree in Education, focusing on Social Foundations.
Cho was the recipient of the 2017 Bob Goodman Award, presented annually to the student manager of the year as voted by the UVA head coaches. During her time as a student-manager, she spent two summers in Liberia working in youth development through Managers on a Mission (MOAM), a Christian non-profit committed to developing future leaders in sports. Currently, Cho serves as a Board Member of MOAM overseeing communications and multimedia efforts.
Prior to this role, Cho also worked at the UVA Alumni Association, U.S. Department of State, and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She currently serves on the Post Grad Trustees for UVA’s Class of 2017.
Sharp previously spent two seasons at Texas, serving as the women’s basketball video coordinator where her duties included oversight of video exchange and the breakdown of opponent and individual video scouting. Sharp joined Texas women’s basketball staff from Florida, where she had served as the women’s basketball program’s assistant video coordinator.
The former two-time Atlantic Sun All-Conference selection, Sharp played basketball for four seasons at Stetson University, where she was named the 2015 Female Athlete of the Year. The former point guard played in 133 career games with 98 starts, scoring 1,261 career points, which ranks 12th all-time in Stetson history. She finished her career as one of only two players in school history with more than 1,000 points, 400 assists and 250 steals. Sharp graduated cum laude in 2015 with a bachelor of business degree in sport business.