Serena Williams- Biography
Serena Williams is a world champion professional tennis player.
Serena Williams’s Net Worth & Salary
Serena Williams is a multi-time world champion professional tennis player with a net worth of $250 million. Many consider her to be one of the greatest female tennis players of all time. She is by far the highest-paid female player.
Serena has earned $30 – $40 million in recent years from on-court earnings and endorsements. For example, Serena earned $35 million between June 2019 and June 2020, with endorsements accounting for roughly $20 million of that total.
She and her sister, Venus Williams, were introduced to tennis at a young age.
Both girls were homeschooled in order to maximize their practice time.
Her official coaches were her father, Richard Williams, and mother, Oracene Price.
Other mentors, such as Richard Williams, who went on to found The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis/Tutorial Academy, assisted her in learning the game at a young age.
Serena and her family relocated to West Palm Beach, Florida, when she was nine years old, so she could attend Rick Macci’s tennis academy.
In 1995, their father took the girls out of Macci’s academy and resumed his role as their official coach.
Serena Williams’s Professional Career
Serena Williams has won more prize money than any other female tennis player in history and has been ranked number one in the world eight times.
As of this writing, Williams’ career prize money totaled more than $90 million.
She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles and 14 doubles titles with her sister Venus Williams.
She also won gold medals at the Olympics in Sydney, Beijing, and London.
Williams competed in her first professional tournament at the age of 14 in 1995. A No. 304 ranked Williams made quite a splash at the 1997 Ameritech Cup, upsetting the No. 7 and No. 4 ranked players before losing in the semifinals.
Her career was propelled by the victories, and she finished 1997 ranked No. 99.
The following year saw a string of high-profile victories, including doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments such as Wimbledon and the US Open.
Her first singles title, however, remained elusive.
Williams began to demonstrate her early dominance in 1999, defeating a slew of top players and winning her first Grand Slam singles tournament, the US Open.
She maintained her dominance in the early 2000s, eventually rising to the top of the rankings in 2002. That year, she also won three Grand Slam titles: the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, all of which she won by defeating her sister, Venus, in the finals.
She won her fourth Grand Slam title, the Australian Open, in 2003.
This gave her the title for all four major Grand Slam tournaments at the same time, a feat she dubbed the “Serena Slam.”
During the 2014-15 Grand Slam season, she repeated this feat.
She struggled with both health and personal issues over the next few years, including knee surgery and the death of her half-sister, Yetunde.
While she continued to win tournaments, her ranking dropped out of the top ten, leading many in the tennis community to believe that she and her sister, Venus, were no longer the dominant forces they once were.
By 2008, however, Williams had clawed her way back to the top of the rankings, winning a string of Grand Slam tournaments.
The year 2011 saw the resurgence of health issues. Doctors discovered a blood clot in one of her lungs that year.
She underwent procedures to correct this, prompting many to question whether she would ever return to the sport.
However, she won major titles again the following year, as well as her first-ever women’s singles gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games.
She went on to win the US Open in 2012, the French, Australian, and US Open in 2013, as well as Wimbledon that same year, Wimbledon in 2014 and 2015, and the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2016.
Serena had a difficult year in 2018, losing two consecutive US Opens and Wimbledon.
She has remained a dominant force in women’s tennis despite battling injuries and taking time off to become a mother. She holds several records, including 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
Endorsements
Williams is one of the world’s most well-known endorsement athletes. Outside of tennis, she earns $15-20 million per year by endorsing companies such as Nike and Kraft Foods. Williams signed a $40 million deal with Nike in 2004 to create a fashion line.
Activism
Williams uses social media to advocate for various causes, most notably Black Lives Matter and the LGBT community.
She is also an outspoken advocate for gender equality both on and off the court, and she has spoken out about her experiences as a woman in the tennis world.
She has received numerous awards for her activism, including the NAACP President’s Award.
Philanthropy
Serena and Venus are well-known for visiting hospitals and competing in tennis tournaments to raise funds for Ronald McDonald House charities.
In 2004 and 2005, they had an entire ESPN special dedicated to their charity tour.
Serena established the Serena Williams Foundation, which provides university scholarships to deserving students.
The foundation also contributed to the building of the Serene Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya.
Furthermore, the foundation collaborated with Helping Hands Jamaica to construct the Salt Marsh Primary School for children in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica.
Serena has collaborated with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles and has served as an international Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 2011.
Serena and Venus work together on charity projects and the Williams Sisters Fund. In memory of their late sister, they collaborated to establish the Yetunde Price Resource Center in Compton.
The center offers assistance and services to families who have been affected by community violence. Williams joined the Allstate Foundation’s Purple Purse project as an Ambassador in 2017.
She also donates to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the NHS’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, the HollyRod Foundation, the Eva Longoria Foundation, and several other organizations.
Other Business Ventures
Williams has dabbled in television and voice work outside of the court. She appeared in an episode of The Simpsons in 2001 and provided voice work for Playhouse Disney’s Higglytown Heroes in 2005. She has appeared as a guest star on episodes of The Bernie Mac Show, ER, and Law & Order.
Serena appeared in Common’s I Want You music video in 2007, alongside Alicia Keys and Kanye West. Venus and Serena Williams co-wrote Venus & Serena: Serving From the Hip: Ten Rules for Living, Loving, and Winning in 2005.
Serena William’s Personal Existence
Williams married Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in November 2017 in New Orleans. Beyonce and Kim Kardashian West were among the celebrities who attended their wedding.
Williams accidentally revealed her pregnancy in a Snapchat photo she intended to keep for her own records in April 2017. She had a daughter via C-section in 2017 due to a pulmonary embolism during labor.
Due to a second pulmonary embolism, she was bedridden for six weeks after birth and had to postpone her training. In August 2018, she revealed that she was suffering from postpartum depression.
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Quick Facts of Serena William
- She has been ranked number one in the world eight times and has earned more prize money than any other female tennis player in history.
- She has won 23 singles Grand Slam titles and fourteen doubles titles with her sister Venus Williams.
- She earns $15-20 million per year outside of tennis endorsing companies like Nike and Kraft Foods.
- She has guest-starred in episodes of The Bernie Mac Show, ER, and Law & Order.
- She gave birth to a daughter in 2017 via C-section due to a pulmonary embolism during labor.
