Can you believe the opening ceremony for the Olympics is just around the corner: July 26th. San Diego will be well represented at the 2024 Paris Games, but nowhere more than in the skateboarding category, where five of the 12 members of Team USA’s skateboard team hail from San Diego County. Can you say, STOKED!

And of those, maybe the most interesting participant is Neftalie Williams – that’s Doctor Williams to you. You see, besides being a shredder on a skateboard, Williams is a sociologist who holds a doctorate and title of assistant professor at San Diego State University.

He is guided by a consuming passion: to use skateboarding to help bring people together and heal the rifts that are currently dividing our society. The director of SDSU’s new Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports and Social Change, Williams is an envoy for the U.S. Department of State, who has launched innovative skateboarding programs throughout the world, including Cuba, Asia, and Syria; for example, he used skateboarding to help the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands to integrate and assimilate young refugees from Syria into Holland.

Next on his agenda: Paris, France. While at the 2024 Paris Games, the sociologist skateboarder is planning to use skateboarding as a catalyst for uniting young people and channeling that energy into something positive. Williams told NBC 7 San Diego that, “We start to engage both in this instance, the city of Paris, community centers and community advocates and leaders to think about how skateboarding brings young people together, and how we as adults can sort of tap into that and help them think of themselves as global citizens.”

Williams hails from Massachusetts, where, as a kid, he developed his skateboarding addiction. He liked skateboarding ramps and doing tricks, but what made it different, say from playing football or basketball, was that there were no rules or coaches telling him what to do. He thinks that’s what makes skateboarding ideally suited for sparking change in America’s communities. As he told NBC 7 San Diego, “When we saw the murder of George Floyd and that sort of the aftermath of that, what we really saw was that skaters were out in the streets working together and also talking about that shared history that they had.”

When Dr. Neftalie Williams isn’t skateboarding or helping communities come together, he’s a well-respected professor and academic. He is proof that as skateboarding becomes more mainstreamed, the rebellious, anti-authority stereotype is beginning to fade. Skateboarders are doctors, professors, attorneys, teachers, plumbers, mechanics, and artists. Before coming to SDSU, Williams earned the title of USC Provost’s Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, and Yale Schwarzman Center Visiting Fellow in Race, Culture and Community. His expertise includes the investigation of how skateboarding culture and action sports in general can be used to create a sense of community and identity for young people who might otherwise feel they don’t belong.   

According to his website, he is an author too: Hatchette Books and UC Press will soon be publishing his books on skateboarding culture. Williams, who has been quoted in the New York Times, ABC, CNN and other media outlets, co-founded a non-profit devoted to encouraging young skateboarders to pursue college, which also provided them with scholarships, without which they could not afford college. The skateboarding professor serves on numerous philanthropic boards, including the Tony Hawk Foundation.

Editor’s Note: Skateboarding will take place during the Paris Games from July 27 to August 7. Featuring 44 men and 44 women, participants will compete in both a skateboard park and street settings in the heart of Paris.