Vanese Barnes is a 2023 Women’s Sports Foundation Tara VanDerveer fellow with Tufts University Women’s Basketball team. At the same time Vanese was a part of a two-year Future Leaders Fellowship program at Tufts, where she earned her master's degree in Diversity and Inclusion Leadership within the Tufts Graduate School of Arts & Sciences in addition to her coaching duties. 

In 2019, Vanese earned a degree in elementary education at St. Joseph's College in Maine, where she was a member of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference championship team. She also played at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine and was captain of the team and selected as a United States Collegiate Athletic Association Academic All-American.

For four seasons after graduating from college, Vanese was an assistant coach for Southern Maine Community College, where she temporarily took over the lead role while the head coach was out on maternity leave. She was also a varsity assistant and the junior varsity head coach at Portland High School for a year. She has also participated in a number of professional development opportunities in recent years, including being a member of the Maine Women's Basketball Coaches Development Series since 2020.

Vanese joins Elizabeth Emery to talk about the NCAA Final Four weekend in Cleveland, the terrific Women’s Sports Foundation panel she was on, the Tara VanDerveer Fellowship, confidence, imposter syndrome, aggression, controlling emotions, her identity as a mixed-race woman, representation, women’s coaching now, burnout, and Dawn Staley.

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