Industry Voices: Jori Davis & Julie Wotja Build WEVOLV for Athletes

WEVOLV: Where Athletes Own Their Career, Their Decisions, Their Data, and Their Future

For decades, athletes have been told to trust the system. Agents, teams, leagues, brands – all make decisions about athletes to serve the business. But athletes also need to be served as they navigate careers filled with uncertainty and change. WEVOLV is stepping in to provide much-needed resources to athletes.

Founded by professional athletes Jori Davis and Julie Wotja, WEVOLV is building the infrastructure athletes have not had – one that brings career intelligence, data ownership, lifestyle insight, and community into a single, athlete-first ecosystem.

This isn’t about managing athletes. It's about athletes managing themselves.

What WEVOLV Solves

WEVOLV brings critical information into one place, giving athletes clarity where there was once confusion:

• Contract intelligence and salary benchmarking

• Career and market insights

• Education around athlete-specific issues, including data ownership and management

• Community spaces for aligned athlete groups

• Lifestyle guidance for domestic and international players

Athletes aren’t just performers, they are people with careers and aspirations, families and identities, career and long-term physical, emotional and mental health needs.

WEVOLV addresses gaps, providing information and connection for athletes.

Meet the Founders

Jori Davis — Founder & CEO

Jori has been playing basketball since she was a young girl growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States. Her passion for the game has always been intertwined with her belief in community. Raised by her grandmother and surrounded by church and family, Jori knew what true community looked like: a tightly woven support system where she learned early what it meant to feel supported and belong. But after her collegiate career at Indiana University and a stint in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, she launched her international career and noticed that professional sports felt different. The community and connection she knew growing up was not the same in her career. Players were moved, managed, and negotiated on behalf of, but rarely empowered to manage themselves. Community was fragmented. Athletes communicated, but they weren’t truly connected. And most importantly, athletes were rarely in control.

“I wanted to manage myself,” Jori says. “Not be managed by others. But I didn’t know how.”

Despite being a top scorer in the Italian league — four times by her seventh year — Jori wasn’t being paid what she was worth. As a Black woman, she saw inequities clearly: preferential treatment, unequal pay, and unspoken limits placed on who she was allowed to be. She looked for solutions. She chose to take charge of her future. And in doing so, she is creating a path for others. Rather than accept those limits, she rejected them. Jori’s personal mission is to always evolve and grow. Her mindset became her fuel: speak it, go get it, and don’t let anything block you. That decision and her resilience – visionary, bold, and unapologetic - became the foundation of WEVOLV: a platform built from lived experience, resilience, and the belief that athletes deserve more than survival inside broken systems.

She sees it as a community issue. “Athletes need more help,” she says. “And we need to build solutions instead of pretending the problems don’t exist.” Her mantra – “Always evolving and growing” – isn’t branding. It’s how she lives, leads, and builds.

Athletes, she believes, must be allowed to evolve naturally by being informed, learning, changing, strategizing, connecting, and working together. The problem wasn’t just hers. It was systemic. It was about communities of athletes who needed more support, more transparency, and more ownership over their paths.

Today, Jori leads the way she lives: visionary, resilient, bold, and coachable. She uses her voice with intention, knowing that growth doesn’t come from staying still. It comes from evolving and bringing others with you.

Julie Wotja — Co-Founder & COO

Julie’s path to professional sports was anything but planned. She grew up in a small town of 600 people in Wisconsin, United States, playing every sport simply for fun - basketball, volleyball, baseball, football - with no expectation of going pro. Despite winning numerous awards and attending camps during her high school basketball career, she received only one college offer – from the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay – redshirting her freshman year and proving to be a top player. Throughout her college career, Julie received numerous accolades and set program records, opening doors for her to play for the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx and San Antonio Silver Stars.

Julie assumed that her basketball career would only last a year, but that was nearly 14 years ago. Julie made a move to play overseas and everything changed. On her days off, she explored. She traveled through Europe, finding new places, people, languages, foods, and activities like hiking and going to beaches. Julie also found that she loved visiting places to enrich her experience and learn new things. She asked questions. Her world view expanded – and so did her awareness of how little athletes are taught about the business of sports.

Athletes sign contracts without understanding them. They move cities every eight to nine months. They navigate new cultures, languages, and expectations, and they do it alone. Consequently, Julie’s experiences helped her realize she needed more information and so did other athletes to help them make better decisions as they consistently navigated so many changes.

She wanted to address the lifestyle side of being a pro athlete:

• Where to live

• What to expect from a team

• How to adapt quickly

• How to feel grounded in unfamiliar places

Julie started to build something that would give athletes more control over their careers and futures. Julie believes the skills athletes develop naturally — adaptability, curiosity, creativity, networking — translate directly into business and leadership. She lives that philosophy every day. After starting a company to help other athletes, she joined forces with Jori to provide support and resources to professional athletes, something that neither of them had.

Julie continues to be driven by her work and by meeting new people, understanding new perspectives, and expanding her world view. She leverages her strengths – being curious, adaptable and resourceful – to grow WEVOLV and support athletes everywhere.

Building Together

Where Jori is the advocate and visionary, Julie is the operator and supporter – checking assumptions and aligning values – then together they ensure the platform serves athletes’ real lives.

The WEVOLV platform is a members-only network of global athletes, providers, and resources sharing information and allowing athletes to have instant clarity on their contract terms and rights so they can make confident decisions. This allows athletes to control the outcomes of their careers. WEVOLV’s primary product is the first athlete-driven contract tool designed to help athletes understand their worth, plan their careers, and negotiate deals that meet their future goals - before they sign.

WEVOLV helps athletes know what to do, what to expect, and how to focus — so they can perform better, play well, and build a sustainable livelihood.

Why Data Is the New Power for Athletes

At the core of WEVOLV’s vision is a belief Jori articulates clearly athlete data is deeply personal – and athletes should decide how it’s used.

Jori wants to look beyond box scores. She’s focused on statistical, historical, and social media data together to create a holistic view of an athlete’s career and value. Not just how someone performs – but how they grow, influence, and evolve over time.

The long-term vision is bold:

• Athletes own their data

• Athletes decide what they share, when, and with whom

• Athletes can create marketplaces around their data

• Brands, teams, and partners come to the athlete

• Athletes generate long-term income, not just short-term contracts

“Data shouldn’t be locked away or sold without athletes knowing,” Jori explains. “Athletes should get their data for free, use it how they want, build prediction models from it, and decide what value it creates.”

But before that happens, education has to come first for WEVOLV and for athletes.

Why does this matter?

• Better performance in-game and in life

• More influence and followers

• Stronger personal brands

• Higher contract value

• Better long-term decision-making

WEVOLV sees itself as the right partner to help athletes understand why this matters, how to align strategically, and how to ensure everyone involved is committed, values-aligned, and clear on how value is created and shared.

What’s Next for WEVOLV

WEVOLV is building an athlete intelligence infrastructure — boldly and intentionally.

Coming in Q1 2026:

• Contract intelligence tools

• Salary benchmarking

• SaaS platforms with private community spaces

• An intelligence layer for advocacy groups and athlete-owned businesses

They’re launching their advisory board, raising funds, and partnering with aligned organizations — all through a B2B2C model rooted in athlete empowerment.

Why This Matters

If you care about athlete empowerment, you care about:

• Families and personal development

• Financial literacy and long-term security

• Mental health and belonging

• Grassroots access and community foundations

Athletes should be able to manage what is theirs. They should be equipped to control their path, their data, and their future. WEVOLV isn’t just building technology. They’re building agency. And for athletes who have felt isolated, undervalued, or unheard, that changes everything.