Business Elevated

When the WNBA awarded the Bay Area an expansion team in 2023, the franchise had no name, no colors, no roster and no fans. Two years later, the Golden State Valkyries had sold out every home game of their first season, set league attendance records, and built a season-ticket waiting list. The executive who led that build, team President Jess Smith, is the inaugural recipient of the Sports Innovator of the Year award at the Bay Area Sports Business Awards.

The first ever winner of the Bay Area Sports Business Awards is the Bay Area Women's Sports Initiative (BAWSI), recipient of the Sports Business Advocate Award. The award recognizes bold thinkers who have reshaped how the industry operates and cleared a path for those coming up behind them, and BAWSI has spent two decades building that path.

Ravi Bapna, an AI and digital transformation scholar who has spent 25 years studying how platforms shape human behavior, from early internet auctions to online dating to AI, recently joined the Leavey School of Business as dean, arriving from the University of Minnesota.