Good morning! Blue Origin’s flight takes off, married women could be disenfranchised by new legislation, and there’s power in starting from scratch in the WNBA.
– Fresh start. The 2025 WNBA draft is today, and choosing players for the first time in a collegiate draft will be the Golden State Valkyries, the new expansion team starting play this season. It’s one of the only things the Valkyries are doing traditionally. The Bay Area-based team sold 10,000 season tickets—the first team in the league to do so. They signed a multi-year deal with Sephora, including naming rights for the team’s Oakland practice center, which will feature Sephora branding and products throughout its courts, locker room, and player lounge.
It’s been both harder and easier to achieve those milestones as a team building from scratch—the first to do so since 2008.
Valkyries GM Ohemaa Nyanin has seen the difference between a rebuild and a fresh start in action; she came to the Valkyries from the New York Liberty, an original WNBA franchise that was rescued from a near-death in 2019. “Recreating ‘What is Liberty basketball now?’ was really hard because people just wanted to see what they knew,” she says. “The difference here is we are creating what we want people to know. What is Valkyries basketball? We’re taking our sweet time to define that, because once you define it—coming from experience—it’s really hard to change it.”
Rather than focusing solely on basketball or business skills in hiring, Nyanin says her top priorities have been finding people with an entrepreneurial mindset and aptitude for problem-solving—although those skills have some overlap with the grit required in sports. “To be an entrepreneur is to create, to either thrive or fail, and regardless of the results, continue,” she says.
On the business side, president Jess Smith has been thinking equally creatively (see: that Sephora deal, plus another new one with United Airlines). Last year, she told me she was thinking about how the team can be bigger than basketball. Before the team had players, it had violet t-shirts and a partnership with the sports media brand Togethxr. Smith was considering a podcast. “What do those moments feel like when our brand is bigger than sport?” Smith said.
The Valkyries drafted most of their roster through an expansion draft in December, and with today’s collegiate draft (featuring projected No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers, who is expected to go to the Dallas Wings) will fill out the team. And they haven’t had to build everything from zero—the team has the same owners as the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Nyanin and Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase know what they don’t want to replicate: “treating athletes as just athletes,” and not full people, is the worst habit they’ve seen elsewhere, Nyanin says.
“We can write our own story now, right?” Nyanin says. “We don’t have to inherit anything.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- 3, 2, 1... Blue Origin’s spaceflight of all female flyers—from Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez to activist Amanda Nguyen and aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe—is taking off this morning. Stay tuned for more from Emma on the ground tomorrow. CNN
- Free freeze. Cofertility raised $7.25 million in Series A funding, led by Next Ventures and Offline Ventures, to further its mission of “removing the taboo of egg donation,” per Lauren Makler, who cofounded the company with Halle Tecco in 2022. The startup provides free egg-freezing services to women who donate half of their retrieved eggs. TechCrunch
- Name change. Last week, the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which is said to be aimed at stopping non-citizens from voting. It may also make it harder for people to vote if their birth certificates and legal names don’t match—as is the case for millions of married women in the U.S. The 19th
- Second best. Usha Vance’s first interview as Second Lady is with the Free Press, which calls her “the most impressive person in the job since Abigail Adams.” The Free Press
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Matilda Djerf’s clothing and lifestyle brand Djerf Avenue appointed Nanna Hedlund as interim CEO. Hedlund was previously group CEO of Royal Design Group Holding.
Honeywell (no. 114) appointed Su Ping Lu as SVP, general counsel, and corporate secretary. She succeeds Anne Madden, who will serve as SVP of portfolio transformation and senior advisor. Lu is currently the company’s VP, corporate secretary, and general counsel for ESG and international.
Degreed, an AI-powered learning platform for companies, named Nicole Helmer chief product officer. Helmer was previously the company’s VP of product management, skills, and AI.
Sollis Health, a 24/7 medical services provider, named Katy Marshall chief growth officer. She most recently served as chief operating officer at Thesis.
Unanimous Media, which was founded by Stephen Curry and Erick Peyton, appointed Sharla Sumpter Bridgett as chief content officer. Most recently, she was a producer at Chernin Entertainment.
ON MY RADAR
As DEI fades at tech firms, women are still uncommon in the executive suite Barron’s
Sexual assault allegations seem to be a badge of honor in Trump’s America. Was #MeToo an epic failure? Guardian
How I came to understand Taylor Swift—and what she gets right about success Fortune
PARTING WORDS
“[People] couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”
— Michelle Obama on doing what’s best for her
