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Sankofa's Isaiah Thomas is nonstop as father, coach, city council member

02/20/2023, 11:00am EST
By Joseph Santoliquito

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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PHILADELPHIA — Isaiah Thomas comes hustling into his Philadelphia city hall office on a Wednesday morning dressed in sleek black sweats with a pressed suit folded over his right arm and already in mid-stride. It’s around 10:30 a.m. and he’s got his kids out to school, while dealing with the fickle nature of a three-month-old newborn daughter, conducting an interview in his car on the drive over, and getting set for another talk in a Zoom meeting with fifth and sixth graders as to what he does as an At-Large Philadelphia city council member.

There was a playful oh-by-the-way jab by one of his staff that his busy day would get even busier when he would later face powerful Imhotep Charter that night, coming off its Camden loss four days earlier.

The Sankofa Freedom coach and At-Large Philadelphia city council member seems to meet everyone mid-stride. It’s because he hardly ever stands still. His walk is equal to most people running. When you’re one of 10 children, as he is, you tend to move fast, or get out of the way of the other nine. One of his staff jokes his spinning plates have spinning plates stacked on top of them.


Philadelphia City Council Member Isaiah Thomas sits at his desk. (Photo: Joseph Santoliquito/CoBL)

Somehow, someway, the 38-year-old, first-term council member, who is a Frankford High grad that went on to get a Bachelor of Arts degree from Penn State and a Master of Education from Lincoln University, makes it work.

He has the energy of the sun — helped by a great support staff, starting first and foremost with his wife, Klissa, and his close-knit political circle of chief of staff Dom Miller, legislative director Daniel Lodise, policy adviser David Maynard and communications director Max Weisman.

Thomas gave CoBL an inside look at a typical day juggling his many roles as husband, father, coach, and city council member — in that order — before a big Philadelphia Public League game.

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It is a loose office. Everyone is casually dressed, some staffers in jeans, and no one buttoned up looking stiff in a suit and tie. It’s what Thomas prefers.

With Thomas, however, nothing can be defined as “typical.” Maybe “normal” by his standards, certainly not routine by anyone else’s. There are always unforeseen bumps that arise, like when Miller, wearing a grim face, had to grab Thomas’ attention during the morning Zoom meeting with the grade schoolers to inform him that an impromptu city council meeting was called to deal with an important city matter. His schedule was suddenly hit with a blip, which like a domino effect spilled over into other scheduled portions of his day.

“Isaiah is the Energizer Bunny,” said Weisman, who managed Thomas’ 2015 campaign and has been with him ever since. “We joke often that he wears all hats at all times, the councilman, the coach and the father and it is a great representation of who he is, but it also forces him to go a thousand miles a minute. This is a chaotic, but a normal chaotic day (laughs). We’re a youth-focused office. Because of the nature of our work, he is often called into a pressing, confidential meeting, like he was today, and between our staff and team’s resources, we want to show young people what their options are. His work here and with the basketball community is so related. We need to give them as many resources as possible. It’s why we bring in so many young people to the office.”

Thomas tries not to schedule anything before 10 a.m.. It gives him some flexibility in a rigid calendar that seems to tighten like a vice grip as the day progresses.

The city council meeting cut into his time with the grade schoolers and forced him to rearrange other objectives that he had planned that day. Fortunately, when Thomas gets pulled apart in myriad directions, his dependable people piece him back together.

“I have great people around me; I have a great office staff,” Thomas injects. “I have great coaches around me at Sankofa. You see the number of coaches we have at Sankofa, and between my coaches, my staff, I have great people around me that definitely includes my wife, Klissa.

“If I had to say what keeps me going, it’s the small victories. When we are able to wake up and point at tangible victories in the differences we’re able to make in people’s lives, to improve the city for people that I’ve never met before is something important to me. Making the small differences in people’s lives keeps me going.

“On the basketball side, the kids keep me young, they keep me informed. The relationships that I have built with the young people are mutually beneficial. I love mentoring them and providing services to them and their families. The kids are under pressures today we try to relate to, with facing COVID, wearing masks, having their sports taken away, having their routines taken away and constantly changed. On some levels, I can relate to it, since I switch a lot of hats all the time.”

Sankofa Freedom coach Isaiah Thomas, front center, poses with his team following a game last month. (Photo: Joseph Santoliquito/CoBL)

Like the Wednesday CoBL visited him.

In October 2021, Philadelphia City Council passed Thomas’ landmark legislation, the Driving Equality Bill, making Philadelphia the first major United States city to ban police from making stops for low-level traffic violations, which research proved targeted Black drivers at disproportionately higher rates. On Thursday, Jan. 26, about a week prior to this visit to Thomas’ office, five Memphis police officers were charged with second-degree murder for the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Memphis Black man, whose traffic stop escalated into his brutal slaying.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, Thomas was in demand by the national media across the country.

“We don’t do this for the money, politics is a lifestyle,” said Lodise, a Roman Catholic and Temple grad who became acquainted with Thomas while serving as chief of staff for U.S. congressman Brendan Boyle during his 2014 campaign. Thomas was supportive of Boyle’s congressional race, and when Lodise, who has two young kids, decided to leave Washington because of the arduous commute he climbed on board Thomas’ team for his 2019 city council race. He was made legislative director after Thomas won his seat.

“I think one of the most frustrating parts of politics is we introduce legislation and our biggest bill, Driving Equality, which took us about 18 months,” Lodise said. “There was a lot of research, negotiations, yelling and screaming with the administration and the police department, and making sure the data is right. We are fortunate with Isaiah.

“In describing Isaiah, I would say it’s as if you woke up one day and your next-door neighbor became a city council member. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill, I’ve worked in Harrisburg, and in center city, and I’ve never met a more pragmatic, down-to-earth guy than him. When they talk about him as a husband, a father, a coach, being a city council member comes fourth. He prioritizes the right things. I’ve been doing politics for close to 20 years, and almost every politician has a touch of narcissism in them. Isaiah doesn’t. He’ll pop his head in and ask how it’s going. It’s everyone before himself. 

“What I like about Isaiah’s work style, and I can relate to this, the busier he gets, the more energy he has. The longer he stays up, the harder he works. He’s very similar to that player who’s exhausted in the fourth quarter and shoots better than he did in the first quarter. Like I said, this is a lifestyle. We get those victories like the 18-month bill. An elected office is what you want it to be.”

Philadelphia City Council members serve four-year terms. There is no limit as to how many terms a city council member can hold office. It is made up of 17 members, which includes 10 district members with an average of around 175,000 per district. Then there are seven at-large members, which Thomas is among, each representing all of the city’s 1.6 million constituents. That’s more than 10 U.S. states. 

In those 17 different offices, there are 17 different dynamics. Some city council members are rarely at city hall and rarely engage with their team.

Not Thomas. He is overwhelmingly engaged. He runs it like a small shop. He created and molded his team in his image.

Maynard, a Bodine High School for International Affairs graduate who played soccer at Utah and received a graduate degree from Penn, met Thomas in 2019. They were supposed to have a lunch meeting, nothing more. ‘Nothing more’ turned into four years working for Thomas.

Maynard’s first call to Thomas in preparation for Wednesday, Feb. 1 was at 7:30 a.m. His last call to wrap up Tuesday’s affairs was 1:30 a.m., six hours earlier. Thomas and his team get a break during the summer. Their days tend to slow down — to 18 hours.

“Isaiah is a combination of two things,” Maynard said. “He is his dad, his dad was a high school coach and teacher and ran the local YMCA. It’s hard not to see the son in the father. As a high school kid, Isaiah encountered a program called Freedom Schools. It originally came about during the Civil Rights movement as a way to integrate young people into the movement. Its focus was a notion called servant leadership. There aren’t many people that I’ve run into in life, clerical, religious, otherwise, who embodies servant leadership the way he does.

“It’s who he is. It’s how he’s built. It is what he is about. It’s his North Star.”

And Miller is his master sergeant. She is a graduate of Science Leadership Academy and prestigious Hobart and William Smith College with a degree in political science. She is the facilitator, the point guard who distributes and keeps the Thomas team rolling. 

Isaiah Thomas, front center, poses with his other team, his city council staff. (Photo: Joseph Santoliquito/CoBL)

Seated behind a pink, sparkling desk name plate that says, etched in black, “Girl boss,” Miller is the one who manages the chaos, like when Thomas gets blindsided with a meeting from nowhere. Her mother was one of his mentors when he began teaching. She still teaches at Sankofa, where Isaiah coaches.

Her first texts from him come around 7 a.m. daily and are constant throughout the day.

“It’s interesting, I loved working with Isaiah for seven years, he responds to the needs, and I wouldn’t be here if it were any other council person,” she said. “We work well together because we’re all great friends. He’s an amazing and a crazy person to work for (laughs). He talks to kids at least once a week. After he’s done here today, he has three more events, his game, a board meeting and then a ward meeting. You think we go through it? His wife Klissa is amazing. I’m used to keeping up with him. It’s a skill. He is a very quick person and we as a staff fit right around how Isaiah likes to work.

“I’ve experienced a lot with him, and he pushes you to be more than you can be.”

With a newborn, Thomas finds himself up at various points of the night. His staff holds a subtle over-under on how many hours of sleep he gets on average. The big money is on under-4. For example, this particular Wednesday started at around 7 a.m. He was on an interview on the way over to his office. The Zoom meeting with the grade schoolers began around 11 a.m. after meeting with his staff to plan the day. During the Zoom, Miller had to inform him about the city council Zoom meeting, which ran about 90 minutes. Then he was off to thank a city committee for endorsing him; then meeting a local reverend to thank him for his support and to see what he can do for that community; then run to Sankofa to prep his team for the 5:30 p.m. Imhotep game, while doing an interview with the New York Times on his groundbreaking driving equality legislation.

By the time he was on the Sankofa sideline, coaching was almost cathartic. He could let loose and get on officials, encourage his team and contort his body in a zillion ways as he watched his Warriors fight, though eventually lose, to Kentucky-bound Justin Edwards and Imhotep Charter, 62-40.

“I’ve played basketball my whole life; basketball is a unique sport that is an emotional game, it’s unlike football or baseball, or all of those other sports,” Thomas said. “You show emotion that you can’t hide behind a helmet. The emotion you’re displaying is out there for everyone to see. I am passionate. I do care about all aspects of the game, because those same aspects translate into the type of man that you become. When we’re asking young people to wake up every day and try their best, that translates into city council.

“You ask your brother the same things that you want for yourself. It’s how you build a quality community around you and how you build a quality coalition that allows you to be successful in life. I wouldn’t be as successful as I’ve been as it relates to my city council hat, or my hat as a head coach without not just quality mentors, but quality colleagues that are willing to invest in me, like they are willing to invest in themselves. The passion and the emotion aren’t just about the game, it’s about the life lessons that we teach and watching them translate not just to basketball, but matriculate off the court and how young people interact and socialize with each other.”

Under Thomas in March 2019, Sankofa Freedom won the PIAA Class 1A state championship, 83-61, over District 7’s Vincentian Academy. It turned out to be a good omen in a life-changing year for Thomas, who went on to win an at-large seat on city council after two previous failed elections. Spend enough time with him and you can see him one day holding a different office in Philadelphia city hall. It’s easy to envision him as a mayor one day. He’s genuine. He cares. He may appear to have two hands, though if you look closer, he probably has tentacles that reach out to the stars.

That’s his intention, to reach and impact as many as he can.

“I can tell you that I won’t be a career politician,” said Thomas, who is in re-election mode in May. “I love teaching and I love coaching, and there’s where I can see my future. But I won’t close the door to other job opportunities.”

After working a 19-hour day, Thomas finally arrived home Wednesday, Feb. 1, around 11ish to answer emails from hundreds of constituents to see what he could do for them.

A few hours later, he shut the light to recharge for the next day.

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Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.


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