Cathy Engelbert, WNBA Commissioner

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Illustration by Monica Ahanonu

Organization: Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)
Title: Commissioner
Industry: Culture, media, entertainment and sports
Hometown: Collingswood, New Jersey
Notable in 2023: Oversaw the most successful, most-watched season in the WNBA's history.

Ahead of the first game of the 2023 WNBA Finals in October, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert joked with reporters at a press conference that she was going to need a new pair of high heels.

Given the transformation the nearly 28-year-old league has seen under Engelbert, one could assume she had worn out her previous pair traveling across the U.S. and to boardrooms helping the league set new records in attendance, revenue and viewership.

While all those things are true, Engelbert's need for a new pair of shoes came after she announced a new expansion team would be coming to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2025 to be owned by the Golden State Warriors — her current shoes have the other 13 team logos on them.

Engelbert's appointment in 2019 as the first-ever commissioner of the WNBA caught many in the sports industry off guard. She had recently retired as the CEO of Deloitte, where she became the first woman to lead a U.S. Big Four Firm in 2015. But while she was well known for her business and auditing acumen, her basketball roots ran deep: Engelbert played college basketball at Lehigh and her father was drafted by the NBA.

Her focus on bolstering the visibility of women's basketball through further empowering WNBA players and engaging fans, as well as via sponsors and media rights partners, has paid off for the league, with revenue more than doubling in the last three years.

In basketball, big shots – the buzzer-beating, game-winning kind – are never a sure thing. They always involve risk. Balancing risk and opportunity, as well as encouraging people to 'take the shot,' is one of the most important things a leader can do.
Cathy Engelbert
WNBA Commissioner

There are additional opportunities for growth on the horizon for the WNBA. The league's media rights deal is up for negotiation in 2025. Additional expansion teams seem likely as well, with Charlotte, Denver, Portland and Toronto previously rumored as landing spots.

An investment in women's sports had long been viewed as a passion project, not always a business decision. Engelbert is one of the key people changing that perspective.

"The goal is to keep growing the business and building the league to grow this legacy of these players, and for the next generation of players in the longest-standing, most-tenured women's professional sports league in the country," Engelbert said at that press conference last October.

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