Ep. #39 How Ginny Gilder and the Seattle Storm Have Raised the Bar for all of Women's Sports, ft. Ginny Gilder

(upbeat music) Welcome to the business case for women sports, where we explore every corner of the women's sports industry from the field to the front office. I'm Caroline Fitzgerald and I'm here to prove that it's good business to be in the business of women's sports. So let's get after it. Our guest today is Jenny Gilder. Jenny is an Olympic silver medalist in rowing, an author, the founder and CEO of an investment business, and the co-owner of the Seattle Storm of the WNBA. Welcome to the show, Jenny. - Hey, it's great to be here, Caroline. Thanks for inviting me. - Jenny, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You have quite literally been fighting for the rights and opportunities for women in sport for over 40 years. And I just want to start today by saying thank you for your underlenting advocacy and work on behalf of women in sports. - Well, thanks for that. You know, I'm just doing what I love and what means a huge amount to me. So I wouldn't, yeah, I'd say it's kind of selfish. It's like, I feel like it's the, you know, if I can make an impact somewhere, this is where I'd love to make an impact. - Well, you're certainly making an impact and are continuing to do so every single day. And I'd love to start today by hearing about your journey. You're incredible, both personal and professional journey through sport. Can you, can you take us through the story of Jenny Gilder? (laughs) - Okay, how much time you got, girl? Okay, so I grew up in New York City on the Upper East Side two blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it was 1960s. I started, I went to an all-girl school where there were sports, but you don't know a lot of sports. It's not like today where there's select teams and all this stuff that you can do. And sports really wasn't a big part of my life. Big thing was my dad played touch football on Sundays in Central Park. And he took all four of us so that we could run around with all the other kids of the dads who were there, but we didn't play or do anything. So I kind of dabbled in sports. I tried out, I started playing basketball in ninth grade, promptly broke my ankle and never played again. So that was, that's my basketball career. Went to boarding school for a few years. And my high school years were probably the toughest time for me. My parents had split. Our family was really fractured in a lot of ways. And I thought I could escape that by going to boarding school. It didn't really work. Turns out you can't escape your unhappiness. Kind of got to get through it. So I left boarding school after my junior year and started in college. And that was the fall of 1975. And I had seen a rowing event my junior year in high school because I was up in the Boston area. A friend of mine had called me and said, hey, I'm going to the head of the Charles, come hang out with me. And I'm like, what is the head of the Charles? No idea what that was. And, but I was so desperate to leave campus, I'd kind of take any invitation. So I went to the Charles River on a Sunday and saw a rowing for the first time. And it was one of those beautiful fall days in the Northeast. The sun was sparkling on the water. I was really far away from the rowers. I had no idea that I was seeing like grimaces of pain. All I saw was these really elegant shells moving through the water. I thought, I want to do that one day. And it's not like I saw women on the water that day. There were very few women racing, but that didn't really occur to me. So like six months later, I got into Yale and then it was my birthday and I had told my dad, I wanted to try rowing when I got to Yale. I didn't even know if they had a team. And he was like, okay, great. How about if we give you a pair of rowing shoes for your birthday? That was how little we knew about the sport. At that, you know, for the longest time, rowing shoes are just bolted in to the boat. They're not equipment that you bring. So I walked on to the team in the fall of 1975. And I actually saw a rowing shell on the old campus of Yale, which is where most of the freshmen live. And I went up to the coach and he had been like, kind of selectively handing out flyers to women. It turned out he was selectively handing them out based on height and he was not seeking me out. But I started like three days later on, you know, I went to the tanks at the basement of the Yale gym and that was it. And I met Chris Irons, then Anne Warner, who were on the 1975 national team and had just won silver medals at Nadine, in which I didn't know. But very quickly I found out they were training for the Olympics. And in those first six months, somehow I ended up thinking, first of all, I fell in love with the sport. And rowing in at Yale is incredibly beautiful. It's a 12 mile ride out to the boat house in kind of, in school buses. But once you get there, the whosatonic, it's just gorgeous. And you're really away from the stresses of campus. And I just fell in love with the whole experience. And then I had Annie and Chris there going for the Olympic team in '76. And I was just one of those literally see it do it. See it dream at people of, oh my God, if they can do it, I can do it. And of course I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But that was kind of the start of it. - That is incredible. And I know an important part of your time at Yale was part of a really iconic protest that you were part of with the Yale women's rowing team. Can you talk a little bit about that? - Sure, that was early March of 1976. So I was the freshman. I was 17 years old. And I grew up in New York City on Park Avenue. My father was a stockbroker. We, I went to private all-girl school. I wore uniforms. I never thought about money much. I was like the definition of privilege, except for one thing. I was female. And at that time, Yale had gone co-ed in 1969. So this is 1975. It was only a few years of women at Yale. And I think it was about 30% women. So men on the heavyweight men's crew, especially the upward classmen, juniors and seniors, really were not wild about the idea of women invading their space. The freshman, the class that came in with us, actually had a very different sensibility about the whole thing. There was a huge change from our freshman year to our senior year. But that year, we just endured a certain amount of harassment from the men on that side. And then from the university side, there were really no facilities for us. So I talked about how gorgeous it is on the Hussetana. The only problem was the boat house had no shower facilities, no locker room facilities for the women. There was this tiny little bathroom at the back of the boat house where you could go if you needed to use the bathroom. There was no place to put on dry clothes at the end of practice. You get you get sweated on, you get water splashed on you when you're in the boat. And then of course, if it's raining or snowing, which it often is in February, March and April, you're kind of wet. And so we would go out to the boat house with the men, saying buses, everything is intermingled. They'd go change. Would go and kind of just go get ready to row. We all do our separate workouts with our own coaches. We won't talk about the income disparity between our coach and the men's coaches. It was ridiculous. Our coach was a volunteer for many years. I think he started getting paid right before I got to Yale. And then we'd get off the water and we'd go sit on the bus for 20 to 30 minutes while the guys went and oh, showered and changed. So then we'd get on the bus too. We'd go back to campus. Oh, and then we'd eat dinner. We couldn't go change yet because there was only one dining hall that they kept open for us because we'd get back to campus around 7 o'clock at night. Then we would go and get to shower. So it was kind of a problem. And what happened was we got on the water early that year because the ice broke. So we got on the water in early February. If you row in the Northeast, you usually get off the water sometime in November because everything freezes up. So you're doing indoor workouts which are really important for building strengths, but it's miserable working out. You're lifting weights, you're running at Yale, you ran stadiums, stairs, not stadiums. I mean, over and over, you went running outside. So everyone would always just dream of getting back on the water because that's what you live for. So of course, as soon as the river opens, you're out there. So winter of 76, it's an Olympic year. So Chris and Annie are doing double workouts, which we as a university hadn't started doing yet, they're doing everything they can to get ready for the tryouts. And then people started getting sick because of the conditions. And Chris had been negotiating with the University Athletic Department for quite a while trying to address the inequity. And what they were supposed to do was put temporary lockers like trailers outside in our parking lot. But even that, they hadn't quite gotten their act together on. They didn't have the variance they needed from the town of Derby. It was all just kind of very haphazard and no intention behind it. So one of the advantages of sitting on that bus for 20 to 30 minutes without the guys is it was really great bonding time for our team. So we had a sit and talk and hang out. And it was during one of those waiting sessions that Chris and Annie were talking. And of course, you're kind of leaning over the backs of the benches on the bus. And you're just listening because I was a baby. I was 17, right? And these women, they're 21. They're old. 22 maybe. And they started messing around with this idea. What can we do to get the athletic department's attention? And it started as a joke like, oh, we could take a bucket. With a bar of soap and a sponge and going to Johnny Barnett's office and pretend to take a shower. Johnny Barnett was the head of women's athletics at Yale, this poor woman. And it went from there. And Chris was like, oh, we could take off our clothes. And Annie looked at Chris and said kind of the magic words, which were, I dare you. And I think that was the lingo that they used when they were working out together to challenge each other, to lift another set of weights, do more reps of stairs. That was their kind of inner language. But then Chris was caught. So the protest was kind of, in my memory, other people probably have different memories was really the outcome of that conversation. But there was a lot of fury behind it. So even though it was kind of the protest itself came out of that conversation, underneath it was this outrage of what we had to deal with. And remember, the culture was really different back then. This is 1976. I think it was 1972 that the Fair Credit Act was passed. Before then, you couldn't get a credit card if you were a married woman. It really was a different world. So this protest came out of that. And I think it was, I don't remember what day it was in March, but it was 1976. 19 of us got together in the basement of the Yale gym where we had our locker room, which was not a private locker room. It was a locker room where all the other women who worked out at the gym used it. Took off our clothes. We wrote Title IX in Yale Bluink on our backs, put our very fans to be cotton, Yale women's Chris sweatshirts on. And Chris had made an appointment at Joni Barnett's office. So we all trooped up, walked out of the gym, and then went to the athletic department, which was right next door, and showed up to this meeting. How much more do you want to hear? That is wild. I'm just trying to-- 1976. That would be a wild thing to do right now. In 1976, oh my goodness, how was it received? What happened? Well, Joni was only expecting Chris. So we all kind of crammed into her office, which was a good thing, because it was a little chilly. We had brought a Yale Daily News writer, who was also a reporter for the New York Times, the only guy in the room, and a photographer. And so we all came in. We were facing Joni, Chris kind of gave us the signal. We took off all of our clothes, not just our shirts, and turned around, so she could see the title 9. Meanwhile, Chris is standing, but naked. There she is, staring right at Joni Barnett. And so Joni, I think, to her credit, like she knew this was a moment. And so she kind of stood up, I think, out of respect. But the first thing she said was, do you want this man in here? So the writer turns around, and then he's just scribbling and doing his thing. And then Chris had written a manifesto. I'm sure Annie helped, and probably some other upperclassmen. I was not part of that. I was part of the willing participants. My captain had said, we're doing this. I'm like, sign me up, buttercup. And the manifesto started with these are the bodies that Yale is exploiting. And Chris, very smart woman, at an Ivy League school, knew how to write. And it was a very moving thing that she wrote. Said that whole thing. We put our clothes back on, and we left. And then I'll help what broke loose. We hadn't told our coach. He was dragged into the A.D.'s office, and yelled at, why can't you control your women? The article came out in the New York Times the next day and was picked up by the AP wire and went all over the world. And that was the equivalent of going viral back then. There's no internet. One of my teammates, who's today she's my best friend from Rowan, my best friend from college. Her father was stationed in Rome. They saw the article. My father in New York, everybody saw it. And then the president of the university started getting letters and phone calls from alums. And of course, 99.99% of the alums at that point were men, right? I mean, very few women had graduated at that point. And the letters ranged from, why did you ever admit girls to get those women showers? And they built an addition to the boat house the following year. And today, the boat house was completely rebuilt in the late 90s. It's called the Gilder boat house. My dad made the leap gift. And when I went to Rick Levin, who was then president, and said, we want to raise enough money to build a new boat house, he said, no, you'll never be able to raise that money. Why don't you just build an addition? And we were like, no. And we went to the alums. Again, this was my best friend Margaret and I. And we galvanized the entire Yale Crew Alumni Association. And we built a new boat house together. What an incredible story. My goodness. I feel like we can have a whole podcast. I'm so just talking about that. That is so remarkable. And it clearly impacted so much change at Yale and beyond. And the timing of it, of course, like being right on the heels of Title IX. So obviously Title IX was a huge part of the protest. And last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Title IX. And last year, 2022, that's a year we also saw record breaking results across the board for women's sports. So can you talk about just, I guess, generally the connection between Title IX and the growth that now we're finally starting to see in women's sports 50 years later? So I apologize, because I should have said the reason that Title IX was the foundation of why Chris said we're going to do this protest. Because she knew she had federal law behind her. And so we all got educated on that bus on Title IX too. And that was the legal basis for what we were doing. The university knew they were in the wrong. They really didn't have a choice. I mean, universities, colleges, educational institutions always have a choice. As we still see today, but I think they knew we had just totally called them out. So one of the ways that you can track how women's sports has been changed by Title IX is if you look at the participation of women in the Olympics and the addition of women's sports in the Olympics. So starting really, I mean, '84, '86 was a little too early. To start show, we boycotted the summer games in '80. '84, you started to see it, the addition of the marathon, women's rowing. By '88, they were starting to add more events. Women's rowing went from 1,000 meters, because women were too fragile to race 2,000 meters to 2,000 meters. And you started seeing the increase, 88 through early 2000s. All has to do with Title IX. Women's rowing is considered an equalizer sport for Title IX, because you can really have a large number of women on a crew. We had gold medals in the Olympics and the women's A for a streak going. You look at what's happened with women's basketball. I mean, we've six gold medals. I don't know, I can't count anymore. Women's soccer. Those teams are the, I think, the pinnacle of US women's success that goes directly to Title IX. You wouldn't have the WNBA without Title IX. We've now gone through 26 seasons. We're obviously the longest running women's pro sports league in the US. And you have women's soccer starting to get its toe held in a way that they're not going to go backwards. And there's more to come. So without Title IX, we would not have the landscape of women's pro sports. Or, you know, my daughter played select soccer, got a division one scholarship. She wouldn't have had those experiences. You know, I mean, it's up and down, you know, you get to put your five-year-old daughter into swim lessons, right? Conduute gymnastics. There's a ton that you can do now that just wasn't part of the culture back when I was a girl. Absolutely. We're starting to see, and I know it's been happening over 50 years, but like now, I feel like we're really at this tipping point where decades and decades of work and girls being able to play sports is now resulting in these leagues, these teams, these successes for women in sports in the US. I mean, don't let anyone tell you that things were equitable. And that's not about anything other than the culture and what the culture is still willing to accept, you know, like in our league, or, you know, you can blame owners for not paying for things or whatever, but it's really a function of where the business is. And, you know, WNBA teams have not had access to the kinds of investments, the kind of exposure, you know, from corporate partnerships and the media that men's pro sports have enjoyed pretty much since inception. And that is not, that is the effect, it's really the knock on effect of how the culture still views women. It's a long time to change, it takes a long time to change that kind of stuff. Absolutely. So let's talk about the Seattle storm, which of course is the WNBA team that is based in Seattle, that you are a co-owner of. The storm have been part of the WNBA for 23 years, have won four WNBA championships, have broken records on and off the court, talk to us about why you decided to get into the business of the WNBA to sign on as a co-owner of the team back in 2008. Okay. So, set the stage a little. What was happening in Seattle at that point was, so Howard Schultz CEO Starbucks was the owner of the Sonics and Storm back in the early 2000s. He got frustrated because he felt he needed a taxpayer funded injection of money to upgrade what was then key arena. And no one in government was willing to support his request. So he sold to Clay Bennett, who was from the state of Oklahoma, saying, oh, he wouldn't move the teams, but in fact, Clay Bennett decided to move the Sonics and Storm to Oklahoma. And I at that point had been in the investment business for about three years. And it was, I really did it because my father had asked me to do it on behalf of our family. It wasn't like my first career choice. One of the things about being in the investment business, it's still true today, but less so, was that it was very male dominated. And I was flying all over the country. I was feeling a little disconnected from my Seattle community. So I was thinking, I need something to get me more connected to the city again. And I was kind of longing for female engagement, if you will, because I didn't have it in my other part of my professional life. So I was on the board of Seattle Girl School with a woman named Don Trudeau. And I knew she was a huge storm fan. And we had become storm fans in 2004, in my family. We actually watched the storm win their first championship. And then we had become season ticket holders. So I wasn't like Don, I wasn't a, you know, I wasn't a big basketball fan. But I wanted something for my kids. And when we found the storm, we like globbed on. So I saw Don at a game one day in the summer of 2007, right after the, the Sonic set announced that they were taking the team, right? Like Clay Bennett said, we're taking the team. And the legislature was like, we don't care, we're not doing anything. Stay county city, we're not doing anything, see you later. So I don't at a game and she had, you know, courtside seats and I was, I had nice seats, but not courtside. So I, I wrote, you know, I called her on my cell phone and she came out and we talked in the hall. And I was like, Don, do you think you're going to do anything to like try and keep the team here? And she said, I don't know. And I said, well, if you need any help, let me, let me know. And for me, I had started to earn some money in the investment business. I had a little money and I loved sports and, you know, rowing changed my life. Anything that is like any character flaws are mine, but anything like that has, that's worked in terms of what I've been able to contribute is a function of what I learned in rowing. The thing that rowing showed me and that experience of protesting was how important access to opportunity is and it's kind of become, if there's a flag I waive, it's that, how do you generate access to opportunity? And it's not just about girls and women. It's also about getting a broader population across the board. So it's not just white people, right? It took me longer to expand my lens, if you will. But it's the same conversation, like what happens to a community when you increase access to opportunity? It's transformational, not just for the individuals, but for the community. So for me, you know, there's no professional rowing, but there was a professional women's basketball league. So I thought, huh, if I could team up with Dawn and whoever she wants to put together and help keep this kind of gem of the city, in the city, well, that would be kind of my blow for generating access to opportunity for women. Because if you can't have a woman's sports league, can't survive, well, then you're really limiting that, you know, what women can do in terms of pursuing what they love for careers. You know, we, you know, we had this little conversation in the hall outside the arena. I mean, we are in the arena, but, and then a few weeks later, Dawn called and said, okay, I think I'm going to do this. There's another woman I want to include named Lisa Brahmel. Now Brahm is like a, has about 38 million varsity letters from Yale. She's two years younger than I am. So we weren't, we overlapped, but I didn't really know her at Yale. So that was it. It was the three of us. We met at Brahm's office because both Lisa and Dawn worked at Microsoft. Dawn never went to college and was one of the early women who worked at Microsoft and then retired before 2007. Lisa had, you know, worked there, had actually worked for Dawn at one point. And at this point was the head of human resources. So pretty high up in the company. And she, her job was such that she couldn't easily, you know, say to Steve Bomber in the middle of the day, hey, I got to go to a meeting in Seattle. I'll see you later. So we came to her and we had this like for me, and I think for Lisa and Dawn, this pivotal moment in this, you know, lunch of why are we doing this? This was really the question of why are we doing this? And it was a check to make sure we didn't realize it quite at the time, but that we in fact shared the same vision and the same value set. And it turned out we did. There was, you know, a variety of things that people said. You know, Lisa was like, Seattle has amazing fans and the fans don't deserve to go through what the sonics are going through. Dawn is a huge basketball fan, you know, I mean, I literally did not know what a post player was before we bought the team. My wife bought me basketball for dummies. And then I made Brian Agler's first question he asked me. I mean, I was not somebody who knew much about basketball. But the other thing that both Lisa and I said was we have to be able to sell our business someday and make a profit. And again, not because like I wanted to be a billionaire, but because in America, if you can't sell your business, you're not in business, you're a, you're a hobby. And then you're depending on people's largest that, you know, doing something out of the goodness of their heart, it's a, it's a different conversation. And frankly, it's what the European teams do that are over, that the players have, you know, traditionally gone to play in Europe. Those are not, that's not a business. Those are state runs, state funded, you know, it's a hobby. You know, it's, and I don't knock it. It's just we are the only league in the probably in the, certainly in the country, possibly the world. That's a business that's competing for its players, you know, against a non-business model, which I have always found interesting. But the thing that Brum said was, we're going to earn a profit. We are going to be a successful business. So that's always been a focus of ours. And of course, we were taking a team that had been part of an NBA franchise. But we were given financials that were all merged, which turned out to be kind of meaningless. And we were, work, we were kind of taking the tail of the dog, right, the, the tiny part of this big business and making it the dog. And we knew that there were risks involved, but we wanted to be the dog. We wanted our team to be the only thing we were focused on. So that was how it started. Well, that's incredible. And that's 15 years ago. And in my opinion, you guys have built really the gold standard for a business operation in women's sports. I mean, look at the city of Seattle. It is probably the example that all cities in the US look to as far as the successful professional women sports landscape, oh well, rain coming in, having fandom there. This opening of rough and tumble pub, the women's sports bar and ballard, all the success you build in Seattle. What is no coincidence in my head that the Seattle storm have worn one for WMBA championships when they have been part of a successful business operation for 15 plus years. Those things, those things are not coincidental. So, you know, I think it's, it's incredible. Now we're starting to see this uptick of investment in women's sports with new owners signing on all the time to NWSL teams like Angel City FC, the Chicago Red Stars, the WMBA is now starting to bring on more investment all the time. But again, your team did this 15 years ago, before it was, quote, unquote, cool to invest in women's sports. So, what is it like now to see your leadership paying dividends and inspiring more real investment into the space? Well, it's a double-edged sword, but it's in general, it's exciting. First of all, you know, you can never sit still, you can never be satisfied. One of the reasons it's so hard to win a championship back to back is when you win, you kind of think you're all that. Even if you don't say it, even if you think you're not thinking it, even if you acknowledge the competition is tough, you relax for a moment. And that's where, and meanwhile, everyone else has just experienced losing again. And, you know, there's nothing worse than losing. It sucks, like there's no way to candy coat it, sugar coat it. And my freshman year, the first major race we lost was the Eastern Sprints, which was kind of the Pentecostal of the season. And I remember talking to my coach afterwards and saying, "Oh, God, I hate losing. It's awful." And he said, "You learn more when you lose." And I said, "I'd rather be stupid." You know, it's like one of my crystal clear memories. But in fact, I've really taken that. So we have a job, you know, both to build our business and try to always be on top. On the court and off. And because we want to raise the bar, and yet we're now we are raising the bar and everyone is going to do what we've done and better. Which really is what we want, even though we don't want to lose, right? So that's where the double-edged sword comes in. But really, if what you're up about is access to opportunity, you want the lead to grow and be successful. And one of the things that we've done is with the three people who have been part of our ownership group, we have kind of divided and conquered. I would hate to be a sole owner. You know, we each have very distinctive and yet complementary skill sets. So we can cover more when the organization decides to grow in a certain way. And we're always thinking about, from an owner perspective, not what is it that I want to do for the business. But what is the business need from me that I can contribute? So it's, you know, of course, there's always ego involved in what you do. But if you're not putting your business first, like, what is this business need? You're going to fall into some mistakes. And we have each other, so Ron can call me up and say, yeah, I don't know that we should be doing that. OK. She's probably right. You know, and we'll talk about, you know, like we started Forced For Change out of 2020. You mentioned that and it was a really powerful year. And Dawn is the one of the three of us who is most deeply entrenched in a good way in social justice work in the community. So she is our owner who really leads on the Forced For Change effort with Crystal Langhorn, who is one of our players on the 18 and 20 teams who retired after the 20 season. And so we're building out that whole platform, which is really authentic to us as an organization and driven right from the start by ownership. Well, you're doing so many exciting things right now from The Forced For Change, the new practice facility, you now play a climate pledge. So what are the things that you're most excited about on the horizon for the storm? Well, the practice facility is pretty huge. It's a $64 million project. We've had to raise some capital to do it, which has been quite a learning experience for all of us. And it's going to be, you know, 50,000 square feet designed by, funded by, built by women for women. Nowhere else, literally in the world, is there going to, I mean, is there a facility with that tagline? 85% of the people working on the project, our owners rep, our architects, our contractor, subs, our women and BIPOC. And that's, it's really been interesting because I didn't really think about the impact of having, you know, women driving in the project. But what happened when we went out, say, for contractor bids, was the reason we chose Salon. I mean, all the competing contractors could have done the job, right? Really competent businesses. Salon was a local company that's like, we are all in on women and they proved it. They're women on the leadership team. And then they went and reinvented how they choose their subs, that process, the selection process, to make it more accessible to women and BIPOC companies, BIPOC lead companies. Isn't it cool, right? Never would you have thought that just because of how you do business, it's going to influence other people. And now one of the coolest things, I mean, there are so many cool things about this project. We have an art committee that's working on art for the outside of the facility. Lisa and I both have daughters who are artists. So they, along with Lang, are on the committee, you know, looking at furniture on the inside. So it's a family project and harking back to how the Yale Boathouse was done. The first architect that we brought on, when this was, I can't even say it was a dream. It was a fantasy in the beginning because it was so ridiculously huge, was Sparrow, Valovanis. Alicia, Valovanis's father, Alicia is our CEO. So to, again, to get to participate with and witness Alicia and her dad working together on a dream project, it, like for me, it brings back my memories of work. Working with my dad on the Yale Boathouse and it's like incredibly meaningful. It's like all the functional parts of family, forget the dysfunctional parts of family, you know. So the city of Seattle has agreed to let us brand our entire neighborhood. We're building in the inner bay neighborhood of Seattle, which is three miles northwest of climate pledge. This was, this idea came actually from one of the community meetings. So it didn't come from us. This is what I love about Seattle about branding the streets leading up to the boat house, to the, to the boat house, to the practice facility. So they're going to let us paint the crosswalks with storm branding. And, and so we are working on all these like art design ideas for the community blocks away from our facility. And the facility is going to be amazing, you know, two courts, private locker room and, you know, rehab training, you know, strengthen conditioning facilities for our players. It's going to be the offices for our entire staff. We're going to have kitchen facilities and lounge space for our players. And it's going to allow us to do all of our work with youth in our space. We're not going to have to go beg and borrow from other gyms around the city to get to do all of the work that we want to do with youth in the community. So it is a practice facility first and foremost for our players and it's also going to, you know, players all have access to it. Obviously as they need it and then we'll get to do our programs as it turns out youth play usually after three o'clock, right. Players are long gone by then. So it's, it's going to be a full expression of who we are as a business and getting to do it from soup to nuts with my partners. Lisa Brummel and I are the two owners who have really taken this on has just been, I mean, I would never have known to dream something like this was possible. Ginny, it sounds like a full circle moment quite frankly of you being able to work with your team to build the ideal facilities for women athletes that you did not have back in 1975 when you 1976 when you were protesting at Yale. No, I never thought of it that way I thought of it full circle in terms of like who the whole family part but I never thought of it in the way you said and it's absolutely true. Can you remind me what year you're aiming to have this open and operating April 24 24 next year and I'll wait so exciting. Ginny, there's so many things on the horizon for the storm and for women's sports and believe or not we've come to the end of our discussion today I feel like we could talk for hours about everything you've done in this space. But we will wrap this up for our listeners so I just have two last questions for you our closing questions first if you could wave a magic wand and create parity in one aspect of sports what would it be. It would probably be more equitable access at the college level so that I mean very few people are going to make it to the pros right so how do you expand opportunities at a high level so that more and more women and girls. Can experience all the lessons and joys and frankly struggles right all those character building moments that sports offers no matter what sport it is literally no matter what sport it is. Answer Ginny alright last question and it's the question we always close with here on the podcast can you summarize in a few sentences why you think it's good business to invest in women's sports. So you just look at the market share that men have in media rights and corporate sponsorship. We double our our market share we will take virtually nothing from the men's and you double your business oh come on. We have a lot more upside than any other any dimension of men's pro sports women's pro sports has much more upside I'd go with it every day look I've put a lot of money into our facility I'm betting on us. And we are that is such a good answer well said Ginny thank you we're going to close their thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you again for all you've done for women and sports is such an honor to know you and thanks again for making the time. Absolutely remember you got to come you got to come to climb a pledge this summer I will be there to see you retire her jersey. Thank you for listening to the goals podcast the business case for women's sports leave us a review check out the show notes and be sure to follow goals on Twitter and Instagram for the most up to date content on the women's sports industry and remember it's simply good business to be in the business of women's sports. (upbeat music)