When you’re the first to do it, you don’t just walk through the door; you hold it open for everyone coming up behind you. That is exactly what Salli Clavelle has done since stepped into the NFL  as the first Black female scout nearly a decade ago. 

Currently a pro scout for the Minnesota Vikings, Clavelle works behind the scenes, grinding over film, prepping for the waiver wire, and scouting opponents to give her team the edge. But before she made moves in the Twin Cities, she was a standout athlete herself. A former guard at Sam Houston State, Clavelle grew up in New Orleans with football in her DNA as the niece of former Green Bay Packers defensive end Shannon Clavelle.

The transition from the hardwood to the front office started with a grind that many in the industry know all too well. She moved home to New Orleans for an unpaid internship at Tulane University, living with her parents just to make the dream work. She spent those early days as a sponge, sitting in on film sessions and learning the nuances of player traits. That hustle led her to the San Francisco 49ers in 2018, where she officially made history.

After five seasons in San Francisco, where she moved from scouting assistant to pro personnel analyst and college area scout, she took her talents to Minnesota, where she’s now part of a small but powerful wave of women finally breaking into NFL personnel, a space that was almost exclusively male for more than 40 years.