Staff Directory
- Title:
- Director of Athletics
- Email:
- Phone:
- (310) 506-4749
Tanner Gardner was named the director of athletics at Pepperdine University in March of 2024 and began his duties in June 2024.
Since being named to the position, Gardner has hired new coaches to lead the men’s basketball program (Griff Aldrich), women’s basketball program (Katie Faulkner), baseball program (Tyler LaTorre), women’s tennis program (Tassilo Schmid) and swimming & diving program (Dan Marella).
The 2025-26 season saw paramount success on the field for the Waves, who took home the Division I-AAA All-Sports Trophy, solidifying Pepperdine as the top athletic program among the approximately 100 NCAA Division I schools that do not sponsor football. Pepperdine also took home the WCC Commissioner’s Cup & Women’s All-Sports Award, solidifying the Waves position at the top of the West Coast Conference.
The academic year saw Pepperdine claim six conference championships, have six teams reach the NCAA Tournament, five finish in the top-16 at an NCAA Championship or Tournament, while six teams finished nationally ranked. Pepperdine's six conference championships marked its most since the 2004-05 academic year. The six NCAA tournament teams also marked its most since 2021-22.
In addition to the trophies won on the field, the athletic department saw record-breaking success in the classroom, achieving a record department-wide 3.37 GPA. Pepperdine Athletics also had a record-breaking fundraising year, amassing $17.2 million committed plus an all-time record number of donors (1,688) to go along with a record-setting $1.48 million Waves Give Day.
Gardner launched the Waves Excellence Fund in August 2025, an initiative dedicated exclusively to supporting strategic investments in student-athletes made possible by the recently approved House v. NCAA Settlement. The fund enabled the department to strategically participate in revenue sharing and expanded scholarship opportunities which began in the 2025-26 academic year.
In Gardner’s first year, Waves student-athletes saw great success, with the women’s soccer, women’s tennis and men’s golf teams winning West Coast Conference championships, along with women’s swimming & diving and men’s volleyball claiming MPSF championships. Gardner’s first fall also saw the department achieve a five-year high in tickets sales for women’s volleyball and women’s soccer and a 79% growth in men’s basketball ticket season sales.
The 2024-25 fiscal year also marked the highest totals in both dollars raised and number of donors in the department's history, seeing a 69% percent increase from 2023-24 with over 550 first-time donors.
Prior to Pepperdine, Gardner served at Rice University’s athletics department as the Deputy Athletic Director for External Affairs. While at Rice University, Gardner and his team were responsible for a growth of more than 85 percent in transactional revenue. Achievements include record highs in season ticket sales across all sports and sponsorship revenue. His team also oversaw the 2016 brand refresh of Rice Athletics, including a partnership with Adidas, leading to unprecedented licensing revenue. Gardner also played a pivotal role in the development of Rice Athletics’ strategic roadmap, “Vision for Victory,” in 2018. His leadership directly contributed to securing an invitation to the American Athletic Conference in 2021.
A distinguished scholar-athlete at Stanford University and member of the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame, Gardner received a bachelor of arts in public policy and a master of arts in sociology and was a three-time All-American in wrestling, a two-time Academic All-American, and the recipient of the Pac-10 medal. Gardner went on to receive his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Prior to his professional career at Rice Athletics, Gardner worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, a corporate strategy summer analyst at Nike, an assistant wrestling coach at Harvard, and as a senior staff project manager at Stanford Athletics.
He and his wife, Emily, enjoy running, golfing, and traveling in addition to parenting their children, John Henry, Lucy Grace, and Boone David.
