When Katie Hoffman revealed she was taking a job as an in-house lawyer for NASCAR, initial reactions from her family and friends weren't exactly congratulatory. 

"Everyone kind of laughed," remembers Hoffman, who joined the racing world in 2019 as an associate general counsel at NASCAR's headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida.  

Several of her colleagues, including Nichelle Levy, senior counsel of digital and privacy data, can relate. As a Black woman who has worked in NASCAR's legal department for nearly nine years, Levy has had her share of encounters with people who assume that the purview of NASCAR is limited to white, Southern men.