INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) \u2014 At Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Saturday, the Indiana Fever honored Val Ackerman, the WNBA\u2019s inaugural president, with the Lin Dunn Inspiring Women Award as the league marks its 30th anniversary.<\/p>\n
Ackerman served as the WNBA\u2019s first president from 1996 to 2005, guiding the league from its launch to national prominence. Her leadership helped build critical infrastructure, expand visibility for women\u2019s basketball, and open pathways for thousands of young women to pursue professional careers in sports.<\/p>\n
In remarks reflecting on the league\u2019s beginnings, Ackerman credited former NBA Commissioner David Stern, NBA owners, and Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon for helping bring the WNBA to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was part of a small group at the NBA that was monitoring the growth of women\u2019s basketball during that time, and we had a very motivated leader in David Stern who really believed that women were going to be critically important to the future of the game of basketball,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith his help and the help of the NBA owners at that time \u2014 eventually Herb Simon here in Indiana \u2014 the league became a reality. The NBA deserves all the credit in the world for the support they\u2019ve given the league. To see where the league has come over the last 30 years \u2014 and the last 10 or so, in particular \u2014 has really been amazing,\u201d Ackerman said.<\/p>\n
In addition to leading the WNBA, Ackerman is a past president of USA Basketball, a member of multiple sports halls of fame, and currently serves as commissioner of the Big East Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) \u2014 At Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Saturday, the Indiana Fever honored Val Ackerman, the WNBA\u2019s inaugural president,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-731568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}