Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian offers to provide gear for young Filipino athlete Rhea Bullos

Serena Williams' husband, Alexis Ohanian, recently offered a helping hand to an 11-year-old Philippine athlete, Rhea Bullos. Due to financial issues, Bullos couldn't afford to use track shoes in one of her local meets in 2019.

Owing to this, she wrapped plasters on her feet and participated in the race. Despite these hardships, the 11-year-old put up an impressive performance and finished the competition (Iloilo Schools Sports Council Meet) with three gold medals over the 400m, 800m, and 1500m distances, and this news of Bullos has been making the social media again lately.

Ohanian reacted to this news recently on his X (formerly Twitter) handle and asked someone among his followers to get him or the Athlos group in touch with Bullos' family. The Athlos founder also assured that he would buy Bullos all the necessary equipment for her track season. He wrote:

"Someone please put me / @athlos team in touch with Rhea's family. I'm gonna personally buy her all the gear she needs for a season."

Ohanian has helped female athletes in recent times. The Athlos founder also made news during the 2024 Paris Olympics when he helped a US athlete, Veronica Fraley, pay her rent. Notably, rapper Flavor Flav had also chipped in to help Fraley.

Alexis Ohanian highlights the issues associated with the investments in women's sports

Alexis Ohanian with Serena Williams and daughter Adira during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics (Image via: Getty Images)

Serena Williams' husband, Alexis Ohanian, shed light on the issues associated with the investments in women's sports. This came during his time at the 2025 Forbes 30/50 summit.

During a conversation, Ohanian said that several investors in the women's sports circuit invest in it with the motive of doing charity, and also affirmed this puts a restriction on the success of the circuit. Additionally, he also mentioned that several of his partners in the Angel City Ownership group also have a similar mentality. He said (via Forbes, 00:37 onwards):

"I think a lot of well-intentioned people were investing in things like women's sports as charity because they had daughters, granddaughters and as soon as you compartmentalize anything that way, you're setting a bar on the success and you're setting a restriction for yourself."

"We would never talk about an investment that way if we thought it could one day be worth billions of billions and sure enough when I brought a expansion franchiese in NWSL which became Angel City, all the owners, the best ones, thought of it as charity."

During the conversation, Alexis Ohanian also playfully remarked that he invested money from his pocket into building the women's-only meet, Athlos, so that he can boast about it to his daughter and granddaughter.