Hokie ClubTere Williams played on the Virginia Tech women's basketball team from 1997 until 2001. She averaged 14.8 points per game and 7.2 rebounds per game. Her 1998-99 team advanced to the Sweet 16, the program's furthest tournament run until this season. After concluding her college career, she became the first Hokie to be drafted in the WNBA. When her playing days ended after stints overseas, she returned to Blacksburg.
Williams applied for the NCAA Degree Completion program and re-enrolled at Virginia Tech in 2011 and graduated in 2012. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, she was accepted into the Virginia Tech Post-baccalaureate Research and Education Program, which is designed for students interested in pursuing behavioral/biomedical sciences and engineering.
You rarely hear about student-athletes after they graduate. Fans cheer them on in Blacksburg for four years, and then they go off into the real world. Williams demonstrated how college athletes can use their experience to thrive post-graduation.
"I really put in the work and that showed," Williams said. "The fruits of that were evident two years later."
Williams visited Virginia Tech last week as the SIRC Investigator Series's second annual Athletes in Innovation speaker. For the previous two years, the SIRC Investigator Series included a presentation by a former women's athlete at Virginia Tech, who went into a career in science and technology. This year, Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance (SIRC) partnered with the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) and the Post-baccalaureate Research and Education Program (PREP) to bring Tere to Blacksburg for an in-person presentation.
Almost finished as a Ph.D. candidate at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Williams co-founded a biotech startup, DUB Biologics. Williams, along with another co-founder, Dr. Audrey Bernstein, is working on developing an siRNA therapeutic for wounds in Syracuse, New York. She studies how immune cells work together in your body during illness, specifically studying Chagas disease, which is caused by a parasitic infection.
Additionally, Williams founded a consulting company during the COVID-19 pandemic, SIMON|PETRk Co., which helps early-stage biotech startups determine what they need to commercialize their product. She advises which diseases to prioritize – known as indication prioritization – and helps with competitive intelligence.
Reflecting on her undergraduate experience, Williams believes her time at Virginia Tech as a student-athlete set her up well to succeed. For one, she had to adhere to standards by coaches and staff to maintain her scholarship.
"I never really appreciated fully those things that were already built into the support of me, because I didn't have to think about it," Williams said. "I just had to show up when I was told to show up."
Being around a team, she learned to work with difficult people and handle conflict. While she was close with her teammates, personalities clash, especially after spending so much time with the same group of people.
"Just because you might not have the same personality that gels well with one person, doesn't mean that you can't work together and still find synergy," she said.
Being a college athlete, especially before the NIL era, many student-athletes wrapped their entire identities around their athletic careers, creating identity crises in many situations. Williams counteracted this difficulty with separating her athletic self from the future of her life. She found passions that weren't related to basketball and found an avenue to thrive when she entered the workforce.
"I think the most important thing that young people should be focusing on, at this time in their lives, is finding out what makes them happy," Williams said.
Despite the occasional challenges, her favorite part of being at Virginia Tech was being around her teammates.
"Obviously, having some success makes it even sweeter," Williams said.
She still keeps in touch with everyone from the 1998-99 season; they all have a WhatsApp group chat. Watching the 2022-23 women's basketball team eclipse many of their records, many of her teammates trekked to Dallas to see the Hokies in the Final Four.
"I'm just proud," she said. "It's like fangirl, but it almost might be obsessive at this moment."
As Williams prepares to earn her Ph.D. and advance further into immunology, she knows her time at Virginia Tech impacted where she is today.