{"id":332246,"date":"2025-12-08T11:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T11:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/332246\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T11:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T11:24:09","slug":"val-ackerman-wnba-usa-basketball-big-east-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/332246\/","title":{"rendered":"Val Ackerman, WNBA\/USA Basketball\/Big East Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Getty Images <\/p>\n

Influence 125 highlights the most influential sports business figures of the past quarter-century. See the list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Val Ackerman<\/a> was the inaugural president of the WNBA in 1996, becoming the first woman to launch and operate a women\u2019s sports league. Ackerman also bears merit as one of the most crucial people in the rebirth of the Big East<\/a>. Following her time in the WNBA and a three-year term as president of USA Basketball, she came into the college space in 2013 needing to rebuild the once-proud basketball conference and has done so with flying colors<\/a> \u2014 negotiating numerous television contracts<\/a> and maintaining a steady presence at Madison Square Garden. Ackerman oversaw the league\u2019s recent move into offices in the Empire State Building, and has been a mentor and role model for many female executives in sports.<\/p>\n

More from the SBJ archives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Images Influence 125 highlights the most influential sports business figures of the past quarter-century. See the list.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[146345,49,48,146341,39932,82,1981,630],"class_list":["post-332246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-big-east-conference","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-most-influential","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-usa-basketball","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}