Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman is retiring after 13 years in the role, “bringing the league back to its historic place in college athletics after nearly coming close to extinction,” according to Scooby Axson of USA TODAY. Ackerman, a member of SBJ’s 2011 class of Champions, will “leave the position, effective Aug. 31,” and a “national search for her successor will start immediately and be led by the conference’s Board of Directors.”
Ackerman said, “It just felt like the time was right for me. … I did what I was hired to do, which was to put the pieces back together again when this storied league broke up.” She added that she is “leaving on her own volition.” Axson notes the NBA first hired Ackerman as a junior lawyer at the league office, before she was “asked to be the WNBA’s first top executive.” Ackerman went on to serve as WNBA president for eight years. She said, “I hope I showed what women can do, and I hope I’ve been at least, in a modest way, an example to women who are either in the business and want to move up, or women who want to get in the business. It can be done, ladies” (USA TODAY, 4/20).
