Interview: Ginny Gilder, Seattle Storm co-owner

Ginny Gilder, co-owner of the 2020 WNBA Championships, the Seattle Storm, talks to Lindsay about the Storm's endorsement of U.S. presidential candidate, Joe Biden.

Ginny Gilder, co-owner of the 2020 WNBA Championships, the Seattle Storm, talks to Lindsay about the Storm’s endorsement of U.S. presidential candidate, Joe Biden.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello flamethrowers, Lindsay Gibbs here, holding down the interview this week. I am so incredibly honored to be joined by the great Ginny Gilder, a Title IX trailblazer and champion rower, silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics, successful businesswoman, entrepreneur, and author of a book that was the Power Plays book club selection, Course Correction: A Story of Rowing and Resilience in the Wake of Title IX. But that’s not really why she’s here today. Today she’s on the podcast to talk about her role as the co-owner of the Seattle Storm, the team that, if we can remember back to about a month ago, just won the WNBA championship for the second time in three years. Ginny, finally got you on Burn It All Down. Welcome!

Ginny: Thank you for inviting me, it’s great to be here.

Lindsay: First of all, congratulations on your third ring. How was the celebration in the wubble? [laughs] How did you all celebrate that moment?

Ginny: Well, the first thing was, you know, we were in the wubble, which was great, but we were on the outside of the wubble. We had decided we didn’t wanna get anywhere near the players to distract them, make them worry, especially after the false positives that the team had endured at the start of the semi-finals. We were actually much more freaked out than they were. You listen to Sue’s postgame interviews, they were like, “We’re chill.” But we were not exactly chill! [Lindsay laughs] Not that we were crazy, but we were just really cognizant that we wanted to make sure that we were very respectful. Then the league said to us, you know, in the event you win you must retain your masks, you must keep social distance from the players. We’re talking about after the game, after the ceremony on ESPN. So we were like, okay, we’ll do that.

Lindsay: Wow!

Ginny: And here it is, you know, just like everyone else we haven’t seen our players since 2019! We haven’t seen them. We’ve talked to them, we’ve texted, everybody has their relationships. So we were standing on the side during that amazing confetti storm which, for me, gonna be a highlight memory. It was so well done, it was so beautiful, and listening to Jewell, Stewie, Sue…It was really quite moving, and also just a little deer in headlights because when this happens, you know, the game is over, even though by the end of the third quarter it was starting to look like this is gonna be a hard game to lose. I still am like, it’s a game, sports are played til the last minute, you never know til you know. But still, it’s a stunning moment when you win the championship. It’s just a little like, wow, this really happened. So we were standing there afterwards and the first thing that happens is Stewie comes running over [Lindsay laughs] and she says, “The wubble is broken!” And we’re like, okay, our MVP just…And she’s hugging all of us! Then the rest of the players are coming over and hugging all of us, and we’re like, okay, we’re taking our players’ lead. That’s what we’ve done the entire season, it’s what we do as a franchise anyway in so many different domains. We’re hugging our players.

That was how it started, and it was such a joyous moment to be there with them. Obviously we’re the owners, we have a certain kind of relationship, but we are also in that moment, a very unique moment, a stand-in for all the fans across the country but especially in Seattle who really wanted to be there and deserved to be there to celebrate really an incredible run and an amazing team. So it was joyous and, for me, it was also a little bittersweet because we didn’t get to share it with all the people in person who we so wanted to be there and who wanted to be there.

Lindsay: I just love that image of Stewie being the one, like, all these rules set, she’s like, “NOPE! We’re going for it!” Who’s gonna stop Breanna Stewart in that moment, after all she’s been through to get there? That’s incredible. So, you’d think that you would maybe all take a vacation, relax a little bit, but last week your team took a step that we’ve rarely seen from a pro sports team, and you officially endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. How long have you all been considering this? What were those conversations like, and why ultimately did you decide to make this step and do the official endorsement from the team account, not from your individual accounts?

Ginny: So, I don’t know that this specific conversation has been in the mix for months and months. I mean, you’ve seen us. We are a certain kind of franchise, a certain kind of ownership. I think we’ve been building towards this moment, frankly. We’ve owned the team…I think this was our 13th season, you know? We’re no longer new kids on the block, and there have been many moments in our tenure as owners where we have taken a stand, maybe publicly, maybe privately. You know, when the whole Isiah Thomas matter came up several years ago with the possibility of Jim Dolan making him an owner of the Liberty, we were in that conversation. Did we do anything publicly? I don’t know. I frankly don’t remember. I don't think there was a lot to do publicly. Then Trump was elected and there’s I think among many many people around the country a feeling of powerlessness, of, “Wow, so many of the values that I hold dear as an American are being threatened, and what can I do about it?”

That was when I think the three of us started thinking about how do we use this amazing platform of the Seattle Storm to promote the values that we as an organization have, certainly we individually have, and get out our point of view? Because if we can make a difference at all we want to. Mind you, the players already had started before that with Black Lives Matter, and we had already made the decision that we were backing them, even if the league wasn’t gonna back them, and we made that clear to the league. So this is just another step in kind of the progression of who we are. You remember of course Planned Parenthood – that was the first time when we decided we’re using the platform in a certain way. So, we won the championship actually less than three weeks ago, right? The first week was celebrating – and this is gonna sound ridiculous – but it is actually exhausting to win a championship, [laughs] and I do not know how the players do it.

Lindsay: Yeah. [laughs]

Ginny: I don’t know how they win and then fly off to Russia, because we just flew home…Maybe it’s because I’m 30, 40 years older than some of them, but it takes some time to recover. It is this constant flood of adrenaline that has no outright, right? Other than cheering and interviewing and talking. So it was really after that, and we had been talking already about what’t the last push that we do for the election because, again, building on the players, what the players have been talking about, supporting the players. So much of it this whole season has been dedicated to social justice. Yes, there was the Say Her Name campaign, but underneath that and through that was “Vote!” So, we started talking about how can we use the platform to inspire and invite our fan base to do whatever they can. This is no longer about giving money but it was actually about volunteering. How do we support get out the vote?

I and about 11 friends and family, we are actually traveling to Michigan next week to serve as poll watchers, right as COVID is peaking. It’s like, oh my gosh. But the night that Trump was elected my then 24 year old daughter said to me, “Mom, we are gonna do whatever we can next time.” And my sister who lives in New York said the same thing, so she’s driving with her 18 year old from New York and we’re flying to Detroit. It was that sense of, “How do we outreach to our fans and encourage them to join us on the ground?” – not flying and serving as poll watchers, I realize that’s a little extreme for many people. It went from there to another conversation of, are we gonna take the final step? So it’s a progression that’s not one moment, not months and months in this direct conversation about are we gonna endorse.

The way Lisa, Dawn, and I work is we talk, we text, we email and it’s all or none. We don't say, well, two of us agree so we’re gonna do it. It has to be unanimous, and it’s not even that it’s a stated rule. I think it’s just the way we flow and it’s the way our partnership works. It’s an issue of respect and also that each one of us wants the same thing for the Storm and if any one of us disagrees that means there’s something we can’t ignore. So that’s how it worked, and then there’s Alisha who's saying, “You can do this, you can do that…What do you think?” 

Lindsay: Just in case people don’t know, she’s the general manager and CEO of the Storm.

Ginny: Right, of Force 10 Sports. She keeps her fingers on the pulse of social media and the impact that she thinks the Storm can make actually much more carefully and astutely than the owners, so she said if you do this this might make a splash. I was like, nah, it’s not gonna make a splash. And we’re not thinking about whether it makes a splash, we’re thinking about is this gonna forward what we're committed to as an organization.

Lindsay: What has the response been from all around – players, the city, the fans, and even others in the WNBA ecosystem? Have you heard from anyone?

Ginny: We haven’t heard from anyone in the WNBA which is not surprising. I don’t expect to have heard from city officials; have heard from many many fans. I haven’t heard directly from players; have heard from employees. Overall, look, if you know the Storm, this is not a surprise. 

Lindsay: Right. [laughs]

Ginny: This is not really a stretch. So I would say by and large people were positive. In this day and age you’re never gonna get 100% support. There are certainly people who are Trump supporters who are WNBA fans if they’re not Storm fans. I think there are even Trump supporters who are Storm fans, and of course that’s challenging, right? And there are also still many people who believe that sports and politics should have a very bright line between them. People who have not had the kind of life experience frankly that I’ve had, started at age 17 when I had started trying to become an elite level athlete; experiences that every WNBA player has had since the league started, whether they were Black or gay, they were female. So I hear that that is something that people wish, it’s just not a reflection of how the world is.

Lindsay: No, it’s not all reality.

Ginny: So that’s how the response has been. I’ve also heard from people who said, “You’ve just got a whole lot of new fans,” because I just shared this with everybody in my community, and they are amazed. A lot of people who say this was so courageous, it doesn’t occur to us that it’s courageous. It occurs to us that this is who we are and this is what the moment calls for.

Lindsay: So, for those of you who don’t know, Ginny co-owns the Storm with Lisa Brummel and Dawn Trudeau, and they make Force 10, which are one of just two of the all-female ownership groups in the WNBA – and the only one that we officially recognize here at Burn It All Down! Over the last couple of weeks though there’s been a lot of attention on what’s been happening with the Dream, and then there’s a new National Women’s Soccer League team in Los Angeles that’s gotten a lot of attention for its star-studded female ownership group. But I’ve been kind of surprised at how many fans are not familiar with the story of the Storm ownership group, so I’m gonna take us back in time a little bit, fill people in. So, the Storm first came to Seattle in the year 2000, I believe. Were you immediately a fan?

Ginny: No. 

Lindsay: Oh!

Ginny: I’m the Jill-come-lately. [Lindsay laughs] I was a huge baseball fan, historically. My dad had brought me up on the Yankees, then we switched to the Mariners, and I had raised my kids on the Mariners. By 2004 I was really fed up with Major League Baseball and steroids; their response was horrible and I was looking for a new team to support, and that was when the Storm won their first championship. So we went to the final and fell in love, and that was when we became Storm fans and season ticket holders. 

Lindsay: That’s amazing. [laughs] At that point did you ever envision you’d be the owner of the team, just 3-4 years later?

Ginny: Oh, that is so crazy. No, I will tell you though that Dawn Trudeau, one of my co-owners, was one of the leaders in bringing the Seattle Reign, the ABL team, to Seattle.

Lindsay: Oh!

Ginny: Before the Storm. So she and Lisa were very involved from the beginning of women’s pro basketball in Seattle.

Lindsay: So, it’s about 2006-2007, the Storm are owned by the group that owned the Supersonics, sold to a guy who keeps threatening to take the team to Oklahoma City. At what point do you all kind of join forces, no pun intended, and start talking about, “Could we do this?” [laughs]

Ginny: It was the summer of 2007 when Clay Bennett had said he was gonna move the two teams, the Sonics and the Storm, if public funding to upgrade KeyArena wasn’t forthcoming. The state legislature slammed the door on that after the county had said no, and it was in early June that I started talking to Dawn. Dawn and I had served on the board together of an independent all-girls school and that was how I had met her. I knew she was a big Storm fan, and she had courtside seats, and I had seats, like, row 14 – great seats in the Key, still have them, although it won’t be the Key anymore. I couldn’t get to Dawn because she was at courtside and courtside is special. So I texted her and she came out to the hall behind where our seats are and we started talking. I said, Dawn, are you going to try to do anything to keep the Storm here? I don’t even know why I thought that! She said, “I dunno. I’m thinking about it,” and I said, “Well, if you need any help, let me know.” Because I had gone into the investment business and I finally was earning some money, and she called me like 10 days later, and that was the beginning.

She and I and Lisa Brummel, who was then a high-up VP at Microsoft, she ran HR. So we went to her office out in Redmond and the three of us had this lunch where we literally whiteboarded why we would do this, what were our reasons. Because in my world if you’re not aligned from the beginning from a values and vision perspective you’re just gonna have a really hard time getting anything done. We were actually quite aligned, so we’re like, okay! We hired Anne Levinson, who ended up being a minority owner for a couple years to help get the deal done with Clay Bennett. So we had our proxy and she said to us, “This is a long shot.” We’re like, yeah, it's a long shot! [Lindsay laughs] You know, why not? No guts, no glory. In December, I think right around Christmas, she called us…Maybe it was October, she was making rumblings of, okay, we’re making a little progress, but it was really I think the end of December, middle of December, she’s like, “This is happening.” We’re like, “What?!” [Lindsay laughs] That’s how it happened.

Lindsay: That’s so incredible. Let’s go back to that whiteboard. What was on that whiteboard?

Ginny: It was really, “Why would you wanna do this?” There were 2 or 3 reasons. The first, that I really remember from Brum, was: the Seattle Storm fans deserve to have a team. We have an incredible fan base and we can’t do anything to stop the Sonics fans from getting hurt but we can do something to save this fan base from getting hurt, and this fan base deserves to keep its team, you know? So Brum kind of put a stake in the ground on, ‘this is a fan-oriented team’ – we are part of the fabric of the city, and our city deserves this. That’s part of who we are, is this is about our fans. Another, which was really…I think Dawn and I talked a lot about this. This is a phrase I use a lot, the easiest way to say it is the Storm and now the WNBA lives at the intersection of business, sport, and social change – and I love living at that corner.

As I’ve gotten older but even really from the beginning with my own experiences as an athlete I’m really committed to generating access to opportunity through sport, and so the chance…You know, I was a rower. Well, there’s no professional rowing. You can’t invest in the sport of rowing and, you know, generate more equitable access to opportunity like you can with a professional women’s franchise. So the idea that we could showcase the best women in their sport and promote their opportunity to do the sport they love for a living the way men do, that was right in my wheelhouse. But then the other one was: we are not gonna run this as a charity. We are gonna run this as a business to make money, not because we need the money, but if you want the WNBA to succeed you have got to be able to sell your franchise at the end of the day and that means it needs to be a viable business enterprise.

Lindsay: So, for our listeners, I met Ginny back in 2017 when the Storm were holding a Planned Parenthood night. It was a nationally televised game, and the entire night was a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. There were Planned Parenthood signs on every single seat, there was a rally out in front of the stadium for Planned Parenthood, and one of the things I’ll remember always was how unapologetic that rally was and how bold it was about the entire mission statement of Planned Parenthood. You talked to me kind of about “the Storm way,” is I think how you put it, the Storm way. What is the Storm way and why did that eventually lead you to that Planned Parenthood rally?

Ginny: Okay, I think if you go up to each one of us we’d probably say it differently, so recognize that especially in this moment I’m probably speaking more from my perspective than Lisa and Dawn’s perspective also. All together you would get a fuller picture than just talking to me, so just know that. For me the Storm way is you start with relationship and connection. You treat the people that you interact with…Doesn’t mean you agree, but you’re gonna create a space where people can show up as who they really are. The other thing is that we are vision-driven. We know who we are and what we’re about, so when we’re making big strategic decisions…And frankly this has to do with who our coaches are, who our players are, of course who our employees are, who our partners are – are we in alignment in terms of what our values are and the dream that we have, if you will, for humanity? I mean, that sounds so hokey at a certain level. [Lindsay laughs]

Again, Lisa and Dawn would not talk this way, but that’s how I talk about it. So, the Storm way is it’s a business and it's about something that is so core to humanity. It’s about sports and sports…Remember, I went to Greece a few years ago. Every ruin there has a sports arena. You know, sports is not something new. It’s part of what human beings do. It calls us to greatness and it creates community. So, the Storm way is building on that continuing that human historical tradition, if you will, but rooted in a value set that’s geared to inspire people to become their best selves, along with the team being its best self on the court. But these are my words! [Lindsay laughs] Not completely different, but you would definitely get a different hit of it from Lisa and Dawn.

Lindsay: This year…Gosh, I can’t believe this was actually this year. [laughs] It was a different lifetime ago. But the WNBA unveiled this historic new collective bargaining agreement and we’ve heard a lot about it from the players and from Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner. But I wanna know as an owner what you thought of the new CBA and the process and, you know, what does it mean? It’s been talked about as this monumental maybe blueprint for women’s sports going forward. Is that how you view it as an owner?

Ginny: This CBA would not have happened without the owners. When I again think of the WNBA I think of the owners and the players together forging new ground. There are, again, reasonable people disagree. It makes sense that the players will want more than owners might feel they can provide in any given negotiation, right? That’s the players’ job, and frankly it’s especially the job of feminists and young people because they should not be satisfied with the level of equity in pro sports today. Then obviously as business owners we’re trying to weigh the present vs the future and how do we make it all work. But fundamentally I believe that we as a league have an opportunity to forge a relationship with our players where it’s not always a given that it’s us against them. What our commissioner did…The commissioner, remember, she’s hired by the owners. She represents who we are as owners, and she put the players front and center. Why? Because that’s what the owners believe. I think what’s hard is no one in the WNBA is satisfied with the compensation that players have received historically, and we keep comparing ourselves to the men. Now, I understand it from a dollars and cents perspective but it’s not the model I wanna follow in terms of this idea that sports is about players and owners, because the third leg is the community. The amount of subsidies that tax payers have invested, and when it comes time for those sports arenas to make it possible for women’s teams to play in those arenas, suddenly they’re privately-owned arenas. 

Lindsay: Yup.

Ginny: So, the negotiations with the players, it was how do we forge together the future for the W? How do we go big on the WNBA without breaking it? Really what it was was it was a decision to invest. Let’s invest. Let’s take some risk. That’s what the owners did, is the owners stepped out and said we’re gonna take some financial risk, we’re gonna do the #1 thing that my dad always taught me which is bet on yourself. We’re gonna bet on our business and the dream of this league, and that’s what the owners did. Yeah, the players were tugging at us and they were ahead of us in some ways, no question. That’s the job of the players, especially because they’re young and they have more energy than we do, and they are more irreverent than we are. I was young once, I was 17 once, stripping my clothes off, not caring if the university got mad, right? That’s the job of youth, and I do not mean that in any disrespectful way because without the players’ commitment and frankly their intolerance for all the intolerance about women in pro sports, we would not have made the progress that we’ve made in the last few years. Notice how players are no longer apologizing or trying to defend the ‘get back in the kitchen’ comments. They are saying, “What?!” They’re like, “What is your problem?” That is so fabulous.

Lindsay: If anybody’s confused about Ginny’s comments about stripping, I will put the link to the historic Title IX protest that she was a part of during her college days – I wrote about it for Power Plays, and it’s a big part of her book, so I’ll put it there because she’s being…That’s literal what she’s saying. [laughs] You might think she’s being metaphorical but she’s being very literal there. I just get chills hearing you talk about all of this stuff. So, after game 3 of the WNBA finals as the players and coaches are celebrating…I guess before Stewie officially broke the wubble, the ESPN camera panned over to you, Dawn, and Lisa. I believe Alisha was there, I think your wife and Lisa’s wife were standing there watching the celebrations and to me it was just…We’re so used to seeing these images of the owners standing there in their suits and ties, so to see a group of women, and queer women, standing there as the owners of this team, it was just so powerful. But how do we get more, and how do we expand that so there’s more women of color, more queer women, more women from marginalized communities into ownership positions in sports?

Ginny: Remember, the NBA trophy was hoisted by another woman.

Lindsay: Yes! Yes. That was exciting.

Ginny: I think first of all, because there are now women in that position it’s easier for others to see it and go, oh, I can do that, I wanna do that. I think you see what’s happening down in LA with the newest pro soccer franchise. I think women are starting to see it’s possible and starting to realize that they have something to contribute here, they have something to add. The fact of the matter is it still costs money to own a franchise, and I can tell you that the value of WNBA franchises are increasing. But you also have to wanna do it. I think more and more girls and women are acknowledging what they want and developing themselves to be able to successfully pursue what they want. I think leagues have to start thinking about a more diverse ownership, right? What are the criteria for owning a team? We certainly talk a little about that in the WNBA right now. 

Lindsay: I know everyone’s hoping for expansion in the W, at some point, that it’s at that point, it’s exciting to hear you talk about the cost of franchises going up because that’s good and what I’m seeing from my perch just kind of watching everything is that it feels like more women in business, more women in media – not just sports media but media at large – are seeing how sports have been used as a method of power and a method of excluding women from power and looking for ways to change that narrative, and I think that’s some of what you’re seeing from this LA ownership group and it’s something that the three of you at the Storm were able to see 13, 14 years ago, that you could change this narrative, that you could come together and put your resources together.

Ginny: You know, I think it starts with what you really want. It can’t be something artificial like, “I should do this,” like, “I have a responsibility to do this.” It’s the same thing even with the Biden-Harris endorsement. It’s not about, “Is this gonna make a splash?” It’s about, “Is this authentic to who we are as an organization and who we are as individuals?” So, I think people have to be willing to look at themselves and decide whether they’re gonna embrace the challenge because there are still many more barriers for women than men. I mean, you see this on the presidential ticket, right? The different dialogues that are addressed towards Kamala Harris vs even a Joe Biden when he was running for VP. Certainly there's an undercurrent of it in a lot of businesses. You just have to be ready for what you’re taking on and you have to be doing it because it’s consistent with what you say you want for your life and who you are. 

Lindsay: Final question: what’s next for the Storm? We’ve seen you all…Seems to keep setting the bar, whether that’s your intention or not, that’s what we’re seeing. What can we expect next from the Storm?

Ginny: Well, we’re gonna go for another championship! Sure. [Lindsay laughs] Try and tape Sue’s knees up for another year if we can. But seriously, you know, building a business, that’s what we’re up for. We’re building a business and we’re building the WNBA and we got a lot going a lot of positive traction this last year. We have players who are deeply committed to promoting what’s best about America and also to playing awesome basketball, so that’s the adventure, the next steps of the adventure. How do we build the W and build the storm to represent the best, certainly of the country, but of Seattle. We care about Seattle. How do we represent our community and give our fans what they want, which is a chance to root for a team that they can be proud of on and off the court and that also, as corny as it sounds, calls them to their own greatness in their own lives, right? You see somebody outperform, doesn’t it kind of touch you at a certain root somewhere in yourself, like, “Oh my gosh, she can do that…Well, there’s this thing I wanna do.” Whether it’s on a field of play in sports or something else in life that matters tremendously to you – and probably matters to other people also. It’s business as usual for us.

Lindsay: [laughs] Which is not business as usual for everyone, but certainly I wish it was. Well, listen, thank you so so much for being here on Burn It All Down. It’s always a blast to talk with you. Thank you so much, Ginny, and we’ll look forward to…Gosh, I hope sometime during the 2021 season I can see you in person. [laughs]

Ginny: That would be great. 

Lindsay: Life will be back to normal.

Ginny: Thank you so much for inviting me! I really appreciate this chance to talk about the W and the Storm, always.

Shelby Weldon