University of North Carolina Athletics
Staff Directory
- Title:
- Director of Athletics
- Email:
- Phone:
- 919-962-6000
Steve Newmark has come home.
The Chapel Hill native and respected NASCAR executive with vast experience in leadership, sponsorships, marketing, team operations and contract negotiations officially took over as the University of North Carolina’s athletic director on July 1, 2026. He had served as UNC’s executive associate athletic director since August 2025.
As director of athletics, Newmark oversees a broad-based, 28-sport program defined by the mission “We educate and inspire through athletics.” During his tenure as executive associate AD, he helped lead the creation of a new strategic plan for the department, “Together We Lead,” which prioritizes cultivating a championship culture, elevating experiences and driving revenue in order to propel Carolina’s tradition of excellence on the field, in the classroom and in the Community.
Before coming to Carolina, Newmark spent 15 years as president of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, one of NASCAR's marquee organizations. With an ownership group that included Hall of Famer Jack Roush and the Fenway Sports Group, Newmark helped build RFK into one of the sport's most recognizable brands. During his tenure, Newmark and his team negotiated commercial deals exceeding $825 million, earned more than 60 national marketing awards and established RFK as the first carbon-neutral race team in American motorsports. He appeared regularly as an industry voice on media outlets such SiriusXM, FS1, ESPN, NBCSN, CNBC, the Weather Channel and Yahoo Finance.
Newmark also was among the founders, in 2014, of the Race Team Alliance — a collective representing all full-time NASCAR teams, approximately 3,000 employees and more than $800 million in annual revenues. He then co-led the negotiating group that produced the NASCAR Charter System in 2015, a landmark governance framework that fundamentally changed the financial and operational structure of the sport. He also served as Co-Chair of the Team Owner Council from 2018 to 2019, representing all team owners in interacting with NASCAR, participated on the NASCAR committee that redesigned the Cup Series racing format, and was a member of the four-person Team Negotiating Committee designated by the team owners to negotiate the Charter renewal from 2022 to 2024.
Prior to motorsports, Newmark spent 12 years as an attorney at Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson in Charlotte, where he specialized in sports and entertainment law, mergers and acquisitions and private equity. His work included representing the NCAA in negotiating the $11 billion CBS/Turner multimedia rights deal for the NCAA Tournament and advising the Southeastern Conference and Conference USA on multimedia agreements with ESPN, CBS, Fox and other partners across more than six years.
Newmark clerked for Judge W. Earl Britt of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and for Judge Dickson Phillips on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit before entering private practice. He holds a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif and served on both the Virginia Law Review and Virginia Tax Review.
He earned his undergraduate degree — a BA in history and psychology, Magna Cum Laude — from the College of William & Mary, where he was a Frederick Taylor Scholar and President's Aide.
Away from the office, Newmark has a long record of civic service in the Charlotte community, including board service with Crisis Assistance Ministry, the Arts & Sciences Council of Charlotte, ArtsTeach and the Carolina Raptor Center. For more than a decade, he coached youth basketball, baseball and soccer in Mecklenburg County.
At every stop in his career, Newmark has retained strong ties to Chapel Hill. He served on the advisory committee that assisted in hiring eight-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick as Carolina's head football coach as well as the advisory committee that hired current Rams Club executive director Seth Reeves. He savors the memories of being on Franklin Street with his dad in 1982 celebrating Dean Smith’s first national championship, and he also witnessed multiple national championship runs for Anson Dorrance’s women’s soccer dynasty, Karen Shelton’s groundbreaking tenure in women’s field hockey and Roy Williams’ three national titles for the storied men’s basketball program.
As AD, Newmark looks forward to championing Carolina’s student-athletes and coaches while making more memories with his two sons, who reside in New York and San Francisco.
