Chris Harris has built a motorsports career that almost anyone could envy. He has been the president and general manager of Palm Beach International Raceway and the founder of the International Roll Racing Association, a form of drag racing that uses a rolling start.
From there he went into sports marketing, drawing on his Temple University college football experience, and all of that led him to found the African American Automotive Association, with a goal of “promoting diversity and inclusion within the automotive industry through STEAM-based education and community engagement.”  
In the current political climate, DEI can be a hot topic, so we sat down with Harris to talk about the challenges he faces and his plans for success.

PRI: Tell us who you are and how you got where you are today.
Harris: I’m a New York City kid from the Bronx, and then my parents moved to the suburbs in my high school years. I was getting into the typical city kid trouble, but I was always into cars growing up. There were always races in the street. I spent Saturday mornings looking out the window and seeing the guys washing their cars with the fire hydrant. And my dad was always into cars. I mean Chevy Bel Air and Monte Carlos and those sorts. But being in New York City, I just wasn’t exposed to anything outside of the street racing car show kind of life.
Then my dad got me into NASCAR as I got older, and Dale [Earnhardt] Sr. is kind of like my GOAT [Greatest Of All Time], as he is for so many people. I’ve kind of always been good at a lot of things. Music was one, but football was always my number one love. I went to Temple University and played college football, and a little bit professionally. I got in trouble in college because my coach found out that I was racing in the streets of Philadelphia in my 1993 Honda Civic. It was the slowest thing in the history in the world!
After football, I had a job in corrections at Rikers Island, but I didn’t want to do that, so I found a grassroots organization down in South Florida that was doing car events, and I reached out to them and said, ‘Hey, I think I can turn this into a real business.’ So I packed up the family in 2015 and we moved down to South Florida. Then from there, I eventually moved on and wound up having an opportunity to manage Palm Beach International Raceway.
PRI: What did you learn working at Palm Beach International Raceway?
Harris: I brought in alternative events, any revenue I could find for the facility. Donk racing was one event that I brought into the fold. Sage Thomas, the Donkmaster, came to a couple of events at the facility, and I was able to connect him with my mentor Royce Miller, who owns Maryland International Raceway, and then connect him with the general manager over at Memphis at the time. They didn’t really understand Donk racing. They never really entertained it. I had to explain to them that the culture’s different, but this could be profitable if you just give it a shot.
PRI: How did the African American Automotive Association come about?
Harris: I was helping guys like Sage, and I realized that I wanted to do this on a larger scale. I didn’t want to do it just within the people who were within arm’s reach. So one day during the pandemic in 2020, I was watching the Willie T. Ribbs documentary, and at the very end, there was a blurb that mentioned the Black American Racers Association. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but they started in 1972 and ended in 1978. It was started by four gentlemen including Leonard Miller, who is a mentor of mine, and they wanted to increase diversity and opportunities for African Americans specifically in motorsports. During their height, they had 5,000 paid members of the organization. And to do that in the early 1970s is amazing.
They disbanded because of a lack of funding and support. So I asked, how come something like this doesn’t exist anymore? Then I created the African American Racers Association. It was the Racers Association from 2020 until May of 2023 when I rebranded it into the African American Automotive Association. The reason I did that is first, I had a business partner that I separated from, and then second, I was getting a lot of requests from organizations of people that weren’t specific to racing, but they were in the automotive industry. I decided to change the name to have a bigger blanket and a broader scale.
I brought in the education curriculum and a whole new element. The goal is now not only to highlight the individuals of the past, but to create pipelines from underserved and underexposed communities in our industry. It’s good to be in the driver’s seat, but more importantly for me is being on the board, being a C-suite executive of some of these organizations and companies so they can be decision makers to create true diversity. The first thing that has to happen is awareness of the opportunities and then building the bridges to create a pipeline. That’s our main focus now as an organization.

PRI: How is that going? Are you getting help from the automakers?
Harris: I’ve established some great relationships between racing organizations and OEM companies and been able to build the bridges. So I’ve been able to help people get employment through those companies. Then on the racing circuit, I’ve been able to help make introductions and get people in driver’s seats or with teams. That’s kind of been the way the relationship is growing. I must say that God’s been great in his ability to help connect with organizations that need my help, because one thing I realized is that a lot of the organizations want to do something, but they just don’t necessarily know how or have the ability to touch the people they’re looking for. I’ve kind of been that conduit or that bridge between the two, and it’s been good. We’re growing every day. We’ve given out scholarships over the years, and every day we’re seeing improvement, building new relationships, and getting things done. I’m excited about it all.
PRI: One of the things I wanted to talk about was the scholarships, specifically the Reyana Lobban Memorial Scholarship Fund. Tell us about that.
Harris: That’s brand new. The previous scholarships I paid for through various schools and programs where it wasn’t a dedicated scholarship, which is to say, there wasn’t a dedicated fund for it. I was just helping people along and paying for various programs or assistance to help further their education. Reyana was actually a racer in my grassroots organization. She was 15 when she started. And unfortunately, she passed away. Her passion for racing and for cars was undeniable. I told her dad, I don’t know how, but one day I’m going to honor her and make sure her name lives on. I want to do this because this young Caribbean girl who was so passionate about cars, she would’ve loved to become a mechanic or a professional racer, and who knows where she would’ve ascended to in our industry? So this scholarship fund is our way to keep her name alive by providing for the next generation.

PRI: Is that a scholarship fund to send somebody for continuing education or to get involved in racing?
Harris: All of the above. The application process, when it opens this fall, is essentially that they’re going to have to write down why they want the scholarship. The only caveat is that they have to be going for secondary education, which could be a trade school or a college. It has to be geared to the automotive industry. It is not limited to somebody who wants to be a mechanic or a racer. You might talk about CAD design and automotive design. You might talk about photography and social media and marketing. There’s even journalism. There are so many layers of our industry that I think don’t get their just due in their ability to push our industry forward. So, as long as the pathway is headed into some discipline that’s going to move our industry forward, that money is available to them, and they just have to convey that in the application process.
PRI: I also noticed that your organization prepares internship opportunities. What sort of internships are you able to place?
Harris: I’ve been able to get people into internships at various race tracks around the country. They can work events, they can work underneath the general managers or the staff, the track managers. There was an internship feeder program for OEMs that we were able to get some kids into. Also, a lot of individuals reach out all the time about opportunities in racing. So we are able to steer them and connect them with people. These are the kind of opportunities that are available.
PRI: Let’s talk about simulators and online racing. Do you think that iRacing and other online simulations have the potential to reach a wider group of young people and get them involved in motorsports?
Harris: One hundred percent yes. I’m currently active in that right now with my education curriculum. What we’re doing is tweaking our curriculum to add a racing simulating portion to it. We’re working with the YMCA as well as a company called RaceCraft1 in Indianapolis to broaden that scope. This is important because not only are there barriers of gender and color in motorsports, but economics plays a huge role. Not everybody can get the opportunity to race and show their skills because they can’t afford to get in a car. So iRacing has the lowest barrier of entry. It’s a great opportunity for kids to hone their skills and grow within the sport and show that they have the potential to have that translate into a real car.
PRI: How can the motorsports industry do a better job to be more inclusive and provide more opportunities for people who haven’t grown up around motorsports?
Harris: I think the first thing that needs to happen is the executives and the decision makers need to educate themselves on what DEI really is. There are some natural biases because of the climate of our country, and so naturally, we tend to be so divided on everything because it’s easy to be polarized and have a false sense of what DEI truly is.
So you ask, what is it? Well, DEI is about giving qualified people the opportunity to get in these spaces. We’re not asking about bringing somebody who’s unqualified and giving them the opportunity, but there are clear examples within our society where marginalized communities have not been given opportunities in various spaces. Executives have to take the time to learn, whether it’s through courses or through organizations like mine, to be educated on what DEI is and what DEI means. Then they have that responsibility to pass that knowledge on throughout their company. So not only do they have a better understanding of what DEI is, but their employees do as well.
A lot of times people get triggered about DEI as just a Black-only issue, but it’s not. Women’s rights is a DEI issue. So when we talk about this, while my organization is focused on Black and brown people, it’s not the blanket of DEI. I think once we have the executives educated and we have the employees educated, now these companies can start creating pipelines to these marginalized individuals and communities and let them know that they will be valued and accepted. Then we can provide these opportunities that everybody else is already getting without bias to be a part of the ecosystem and infrastructure.
The companies don’t have to go all the way down to these communities, but what they have to do is meet them at least halfway, and then organizations like mine can be the ones to build the bridges. Because it’s hard to tell somebody anything by screaming from the mountaintop. You have to meet people where they are and be a part of what they’re doing.

PRI: How can people in motorsports reach out into those communities that have not been part of our scene and make them feel like they belong?
Harris: It’s leveraging organizations. It’s the same process of networking in any other part of business. If you’re a racing organization and you want to get better graphics for your race car, you’re going to go seek out designers, you’re going to find out where designers are and find out who’s qualified, and then give them opportunities, right? Because they may not even know there’s an opportunity available at a race team to design the livery of the car. Whatever you decide that you need to change within your organization, you have to go to those areas and make yourself visible and learn about them and let people know that there are opportunities.
The motorsports industry is so much bigger than just sitting in the car. So what happens is a kid may have a dream of being a race car driver and think that’ll never happen. And then we lose them. As an industry, you never know. This kid could be an awesome graphic designer, or he could be a lawyer. We need allies who truly understand our industry. But you can’t do that from the mountaintop. Again, you have to go down there, make yourself accessible, let these communities know that you are welcoming them and go from there.
PRI: Why is representation so important to bring the next generation into motorsports?
Harris: Because if you can’t see yourself in that role that you dream of you may never believe that it’s for you. I’m a true believer that having somebody that you can look up to that looks like you, that’s relatable to you, helps you be able to get to that space if that’s where you want to be. This is why when companies have mentorships and programs like that, they find the right mentor to connect to this person because they’re representative of the company as well as a representative of what this person could be as well. It’s another bridge. It’s just human nature to want to be around people who are like you because there’s an understanding, there’s a level of comfort that you belong.
So this notion that DEI doesn’t work is not true. If it’s not working for you, you’re not doing it right. That’s what I really want to convey. This isn’t a ‘passing the buck’ thing for anybody. Leaders have an absolute responsibility to their company and to society as a whole to make sure their company is inclusive and representative of everybody in this world, whether they’re gay, whether they’re transgender, whether they’re Black, whether they’re white. Your company should represent society as a whole and have a place for everybody.