Packers LB Zaire Franklin Makes Big Impact on Field; It’s Far Bigger Off It

New Green Bay Packers linebacker Zaire Franklin is one of the top players in the NFL. What he’s doing off the field, however, will far outlive the impact he makes on Sundays.

In 2019, Franklin founded Shelice’s Angels, a nonprofit named after his late mother.

“I was raised by my mother and my grandmother. Both of them passed when I was 16, two months apart,” Franklin said.

The lessons poured into him by Shelice Highsmith and Juanita Highsmith-Bailey were taught from an early age.

“Growing up, my parents and my family ran the polls in the neighborhood,” the Philadelphia native said. “So, every Election Day, it was their job to open the polls and pretty much make sure that everybody in our neighborhood voted. And that was a generational thing. And I think from a very young age, it just taught me that you always serve your community and try to help leave the place better than you found it.

“When my parents passed and when I first got to the league, I wanted to do something to give back, but I just wanted to do it in a different way. No disrespect to the football camps, but I really wanted to impact our youth in a different way and I really wanted to honor my mom in a way of doing so.”

She’d be proud. Shelice’s Angels is dedicated to opening doors for young women from the Philadelphia area. And not just any doors. Franklin has opened some of the biggest doors imaginable, such as Google, Meta and the 76ers, and introduced them to, as Franklin explained it, “a panel of similar women and backgrounds to talk about the perseverance and everything it took” to become a success.

Football Opened Doors for Zaire Franklin

Being a professional athlete is great, of course, because of the fame and fortune that comes with it. But for Franklin, he especially relishes the doors it’s opened to make a difference in the lives of people he never would have met.

“Believe it or not, I got in Google headquarters and I didn’t play a defensive snap,” Franklin said. “Sometimes I think as professional athletes, we underestimate the reach and the power that the (NFL) shield affords us. You know, so often I feel like we want to use it for other things, whereas sometimes people just want to be around you.

“People want to talk to you just because of what you’re a part of. They want to know what the environment is like in a locker room, what it’s like to work for a company or organization such as Green Bay, so use that to your advantage. I’ve been blessed and humble enough to use the shield to get me in rooms that maybe I didn’t deserve to at the time. Now that my career has actually blossomed, it’s prepared me to be in those types of situations and get the most out of the conversations that I’m having.”

That was evident on June 13, when Franklin hosted The Business of Women’s Sports brunch and panel. He was the moderator of the event, which featured Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon as the keynote speaker and included NFL senior vice president Tracy Perlman as well as more than 80 leaders across professional sports, youth sports, media and corporate and community development.

Blessed with Opportunity!
Green & Gold feels right

Go Pack 🧀 pic.twitter.com/lcuPJjfXUH
— Zaire Franklin (@ZiggySmalls_) May 29, 2026

That same weekend, he hosted a Girls Flag Football Jamboree for kids in sixth through 12th grade. About 200 girls from Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey participated.

“I just felt like young women were an overlooked group at the time” he started his foundation, he said. “I know women’s sports is like the crazy craze, but I just felt like young women needed that assistance and wanted to help give them the opportunity. So, we created a foundation in the name of my mom, and I have a scholarship to my high school in the name of my grandmother. We do all kinds of cool things. It’s been really dope to watch it grow and develop over the years, too.”

Along with promoting careers in technology and celebrating academic achievement, Franklin has brought in experts to talk about financial literacy and entrepreneurism. Through Shelice’s Angels, he’s touched the lives of hundreds of girls

“We’ve had a couple of really, really dope success stories, I would say,” Franklin said. “Young girls that we get them to do a PowerPoint about what they want to be when they grow up and who inspires them.

“Doing this program now for seven years, which is crazy, it’s cool to kind of just see some of them actually achieve their goals. The first time they were able to put it on paper was when they did it to apply for our program. I guess that’s the work speaking for itself.”

Impressing His Seventh-Grade Self

Through what he’s accomplished on the football field, Franklin has it all. After playing mostly on special teams for three seasons, he earned second-team All-Pro in 2024 by leading the NFL in tackles and forcing five fumbles. If he plays out his two-year contract with the Packers, he’ll have made more than $46 million in his career. He’s got a wife and two young kids.

His off-the-field work keeps him grounded, he said.

“When I’m with the kids, whether that’s the flag event that we had out here in Green Bay or with the young ladies in Philly, it just takes me back to when I was in seventh grade,” he said. “When I was a kid growing up in Philly, I used to always wonder, ‘What would it be like to meet the Eagles? What are they like to be around?’ They were almost like fake people. They were just like TV guys.

Angels watching over me 💙

Happy Heavenly Mother's Day 💙👼🏾 https://t.co/AXQJW4CJPP
— Zaire Franklin (@ZiggySmalls_) May 14, 2023

“But that’s why every time I’m around the kids, I just want to let them know, ‘Look, I’m a real person with real emotions, real humor.’ It reminds me why I’m doing it. I’m really doing it just to impress my seventh-grade self. Honestly, it’s nothing better than learning from a win or a loss than serving the community after a game because it just reminds you that we just play a game, at the end of the day. And there’s real issues out here. There’s real things that people are facing out here that they need attention to.”

Shelice Highsmith was the first in the family to attend college, but she dropped out to raise Franklin after he was born in 1996.

Unfortunately for Franklin, she wasn’t around to see him become a three-time captain at Syracuse, to earn a degree in finance or to rise from seventh-round draft pick to star.

Those are all great accomplishments, but perhaps none of them measure up to the impact of the foundation he created in her name.

“Oh, man,” he said. “I think they would just be proud, just telling me to keep going. You know, my mom, she really told me to dream bigger than what was around me, and I think that’s just the message that I’m trying to give the young women that I’m able to reach.

“You’re bigger than your environment. You can go as far as your imagination can take you. So, I take it as a personal responsibility to help build their imagination to different areas of sports or life that they have access to.”

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