Strike Out the Stigma

Drew is entering his fifth full year under the baseball operations side of the San Francisco Giants organization assisting Dr. Shana Alexander and Dr. Emily Cheatum in the mental health & wellness department. He is in charge of creating a Peer Support Program throughout the organization to help players & staff start their own conversations regarding their mental and emotional wellbeing.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, Drew signed his first professional player contract with the Texas Rangers out of high school and went on to play parts of 12 seasons with Rangers, Cardinals and Giants while spending parts of 3 seasons at the major league level. In February of 2020, he and ESPN released an E60 documentary on his survived suicide attempt and eventual comeback to professional baseball after losing his right eye in his incident, in hopes to create awareness and end the stigma surrounding mental health. He hopes his story will help people share his passion to be vulnerable with different self-care techniques to avoid getting to the headspace he experienced that lead to his attempt.

Dr. Shana Alexander Director Mental Health & Wellness, & EAP Dr. Shana Alexander enters her seventh year with the San Francisco Giants as the Director of Mental Health & Wellness & EAP, where she is responsible for both on and off the field mental health needs and performance enhancement of players and staff.

Alexander earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Davis and her master’s and Doctorate at Argosy University in the Bay Area, CA. She was trained as a generalist but specializes in sport and health psychology. Alexander has also worked internationally in Sydney, Australia and in many other diverse settings. She was born in Lawrence, KS but calls Northern California home.

David Dombrowski was hired as the Phillies’ first-ever president of baseball operations on Dec. 11, 2020. Philadelphia marks his fifth organization in charge of a baseball operations department, following stints with the Montreal Expos (1988-91), Florida Marlins (1991-2001), Detroit Tigers (2001-15) and Boston Red Sox (2015-19). Throughout his distinguished career, David has built two World Series-winning teams in Florida (1997) and Boston (2018), and his clubs have won five pennants and eight division titles. In 2022, when the Phillies captured their eighth National League pennant, David became the first head of baseball operations to lead four franchises to the World Series.

In addition to his extensive accomplishments relating to on-field baseball performance, David has also been involved in areas off the field around the game. In April 2013, former Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig named him chairman of the Commissioner’s On-Field Diversity Task Force, which addresses the talent pipeline that impacts the representation and development of diverse players and on-field personnel in Major League Baseball, particularly African Americans. While with the Tigers, also in 2013, he accepted the Commissioner’s Award for Philanthropic Excellence on behalf of the club for their Anti-Bullying community program.

Throughout his career, David has received numerous awards for his achievements in baseball, including Baseball America’s Executive of the Year award in both 2006 and 2018. At MLB’s annual General Managers Meetings, he has been recognized several times with the John Schuerholz Longevity Achievement Award for his years of service as a general manager and president of baseball operations, most recently in November 2023 for reaching 35 years in those roles. David was a co-recipient of The Sporting News’ Executive of the Year Award with Milwaukee Brewers GM Doug Melvin in 2011 and received the Andrew “Rube” Foster Award the same year presented by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum as AL Executive of the Year. In addition, he was named Sports Executive of the Year at the 10th annual March of Dimes National Athletic Awards dinner in February 1998. In January 2012, David was inducted into the Lou Boudreau Hall of Fame by the Pitch & Hit Club of Chicago.

A native of Chicago, David is a graduate of Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill. He attended Cornell University – where he played football – for one year, but later transferred to Western Michigan University where he earned a degree in business administration in 1979. His alma mater recognized him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1998. David and his wife Karie have dual residences in Philadelphia and Nashville. The couple has two children, a daughter, Darbi, who is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and a son, Landon, a graduate of Wake Forest University who now works as a scout for the Seattle Mariners.

Dr. Deanna Nobleza is Director of Mental Health for the Philadelphia Phillies. In this role, she oversees the implementation of mental health services and programming for players, coaches, and staff. Dr. Nobleza completed her medical degree and combined residency in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She was the first staff psychiatrist at Princeton University where she worked with Division I athletes. Prior to joining the Phillies, Dr. Nobleza served as assistant provost and student counseling director at Thomas Jefferson University and helped develop the COVID-19 behavioral health response for the Jefferson Enterprise.