Bron

See which workplaces made this year's list.

GPTW Real Estate Small and Medium 2024-Bron, Inc._US1__20240712204502_1

Employees say:"The amount of genuine care and investment employees have in the wellbeing and success of the company, as well as themselves."

Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Real Estate

These are the best workplaces in the U.S. that employ between 10 and 99 people.

100 Best Small Workplaces

Employees say: 
 
"The company promotes a culture of collaboration and open communication that I have not seen in my previous work experience. My coworkers actively build me up and are always willing to assist me."

Best Large Workplaces in Real Estate

GPTW-Small-58-Bron, Inc

Employees say: 
 
"Bron has shown a tremendous amount of employee support and community outreach over my tenure here. As of recent, Bron's culture was fully on display when the employees and management helped donate almost 10k to support children in Haiti."

Best Workplaces Small Companies-2020-Bron

Employees say: 
 
"They go above and beyond for their employees. They are constantly giving back to their employees, show genuine concern for all employees, and truly want to see all employees become better each and every day."

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Bron Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Bron Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

On the latest episode of Executive Exchange, host and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh sits down with DraftKings cofounder and CEO Jason Robins to discuss the partnership between LeBron James and how their deal came together right before Super Bowl LVIII.

Jason discusses how the NBA changed the rules to allow active NBA players to endorse betting companies and that LeBron was their top target to sign. DraftKings also recently partnered with Barstool Sports once again and talks about why it made sense to bring them back as a sponsor.

Finally, Jason touches on the 9/11-themed 'Never Forget' parlay bet that was issued last September 11th and how to deal with situations that are challenging when running a company. He gives insight on making mistakes that you can learn from and turning that into a stronger person.

How DraftKings got LeBron James to join its lineup

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Ruth Umoh sits down with DraftKings cofounder and CEO Jason Robins to discuss the partnership between LeBron James and how their deal came together right before Super Bowl LVIII.

How DraftKings got LeBron James to join their lineup

On the latest episode of Executive Exchange, host and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh sits down with DraftKings cofounder and CEO Jason Robins to discuss the partnership between LeBron James and how their deal came together right before Super Bowl LVIII.

Lebron James is now a brand ambassador. He showed up for the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, a sponsor in the brand. How that collaboration come about? Well, we've been friends with the, you know, folks in lebron Circle for many years, Matt Carter has been a good friend for a long time. Um You know, we've gotten to know Rich Paul recently too. And so, uh when the NBA changed the rules recently to allow athletes to allow active NBA players to do endorsements for betting companies. Um he was our top target and um thankfully they were interested in doing something together and um I think it's going to be a great partnership for many years to come even when eventually, hopefully no time soon he's not playing. I think um there will be even more we can do because we can't do things oriented towards betting on NBA while he's an active player, for example. So he was doing a lot of stuff like the Super Bowl and everything for us. Um But very exciting one. I mean, I think lebron is one of those figures that just he transcends sports and transcends generations in a way that, you know, I think there's probably count on one hand athletes that you could even consider putting in the same category I want to really dig into, you know, my bet and obviously it's not legal in any, in every state, but the ease of access to betting as, you know, sports betting in particular can increase the likelihood of, of a gambling addiction. You know, one could be bedding away their entire house without any real friction. What role do you play in combat and that any potential of related mental health effects? Well, first, um, we take responsible gaming very seriously and I think one of the things that's important is it's not this black and white line between, I'm either, you know, somebody that is playing completely the way I should be or, uh I'm somebody with a real serious issue. Uh There's a lot of things everyone can do to play responsibly like knowing what is my monthly limit that I'm not willing to go over. And we actually provide tools that say I can set that where if you want us to make it so you can't spend more than X in a month or you can't play for more than, you know, this many days or whatever it is, we have tools like that, that can set those types of uh ability. And I, I think it's something we encourage everyone to use. Not just people who think, you know, if you think you may have a problem, you shouldn't be playing at all. Right. Um So I think it's really about using those tools if you're somebody that wants to play and can play responsibly and it's helpful to you versus having to mentally keep track of a budget to use the tools we provide. I think that's a very important part of it when you're talking about the, the, you know, very small percentage of people that do truly, you know, do not have the ability to play and just shouldn't be playing at all. Um I think our role is to one help identify those people and to help them get the help that they need. In the end, it's up to them, we can't force somebody to do that. Um But we can certainly point them towards the resources. All of our advertisements have that listed very prominently. We also publish those things to customers. If we uh you know, suspect that somebody has an issue based on what we're seeing, we have direct interventions that we do with them at times to ask them questions and make sure that they understand where they can get help. So I think this is a real opportunity that we have to take activity that really no matter what we do is gonna be happening one fact or another and put it in an environment where we really can make a difference in this area. Um It doesn't mean that, you know, it's something that, that we're going to completely fix anymore than anyone can fix anything where people have addiction issues. But I think much like, um, you know what you've seen, uh, in other industries, I think that it is something that we can play a real role in and should play a real role. Oh, you, so you do think that the onus is partly on companies as well or should fall on customers. It's both. So I'll give you an example. It is absolutely on us to make sure that we do not let a minor register for an account in play. However, I cannot stop a parent if they're in their home from handing their phone to their kid and saying, make a bet for me on this account that I the parent registered and properly KYC any more than I can stop them from going down to the store and buying a six pack of beer and bringing it home and giving a beer to their kids. So there is some onus on the individuals in, in these situations too, but there's a role we also have to play. We have to make sure that we're both doing what we can do to prevent it and that we're providing the tools and the education to help people understand this is where you can go. This is what you can do if you got an issue that we're flagging things that we see they're problematic. But in the end, it's a delicate line. Right. I mean, you go to somebody and you think maybe there's something there and they insist that it's not, and by the way that person is down money and then you tell them I'm cutting you off, they get upset with you. Right. So there is some level of, and by the way, the other thing is if you get them to go self exclude properly, they go through a statewide list. That doesn't mean they can just hop over to the next operator. That's something we're trying to work on together as an industry because it shouldn't be that hard to do that. But there, there are very strong benefits to getting somebody to self identify just like with anything else because ultimately, that's what's going to get them to get the help that they need. And in the end, you can't make someone go get help for something. You can tell them that you're not comfortable with what they're doing with you, but you, it has to be on them to decide that they want to change that behavior. All right. Well, I have to ask because we did talk marketing draftkings famously, you know, had that 911 promotion last year in which users could bet on several New York sports teams winning their games that day. You obviously faced a swift backlash and were decried for being tone deaf who got fired that day. Hopefully he got fired. We don't fire people over that. But we, we definitely made sure the person understood they made a mistake. I mean, it was a young 20 something who is like really hard worker, um, uh, person from another country that didn't understand the context and made a mistake. It sounds like you're taking the blame it on the internal loophole. No, it's not that you have to look at context for everything. I mean, you know, in this case, I, I think it was an honest mistake by somebody who otherwise was a strong performer and, you know, you make mistakes and you learn and um, some mistakes I think based on the way that they, you analyze them, maybe do deserve something like that. But this, this was ii, I really think that, um, if you have a culture where people are fearful that they make a mistake and they're gonna get fired, that also creates a lot of negative, not a negative aspects too. I mean, what it's been 13 years or so since you launched, I'm sure there've been many challenges of the year. What, what, what have you learned through? What, what, what immediately comes to mind in terms of challenges and what you learned from it. You know, I think the most important thing I've learned is just try to stay even keel. I had somebody uh at our company who's been with us for a long time, um, about six months or so ago. I was having dinner with him and he said, like, you've mellowed a little bit. I said, thank you. I guess I've like, you know, gotten beaten up a lot, uh along the way. But like, you know, you just learn not to freak out when like, challenges and just focus on what do I need to do to solve it? And same thing on the other side of it, like, you can't get too excited when you have a great day or a great month either. I mean, you know, it's good to celebrate. Everybody should recognize, especially recognizing employees. But if you allow yourself to get too up or too down, I think it's just, it's too much you can't survive. Um, the swings are just too great. Has there ever been a time where you blew up in the past? No, I wouldn't say blew up. I just, like I would say, I, like, I was much more stressed about it. Like, I, I like to the point where, like, I couldn't sleep or like, I, like, I never really got to up but I mean, we went through some really tough stuff at times and it was very stressful and I think anytime you go through anything that's really hard, um, the next thing just seems like, ok, like I'll figure it out because we got through that. And so I think a lot of the early ups and downs just really solidified for me, like, ok, I'm gonna be, even if I feel stressed now in some period of time, a month, three months, like it's gonna be fine. So, you know, can you give us an example because we want color for the article? Can you give it, for instance, you said you went through some really tough stuff. I mean, in 2015, late 2015 when we, you know, had the New York Attorney General coming after us and all these states and stuff and like, um, you know, we're getting beat up in the press and we were still as a company, a private company losing money, like very reliant on investor capital. Like I didn't know, like I had weeks where, like, I was like, I don't know if I'm going to make payroll next week kind of stuff. And like, you have all these people that are there relying on you and I mean, that takes a toll on you, especially when you also have media and other stuff covering it. It's very public. I went um and, you know, a short period of time from having a company that was very unknown to being, you know, just again, the seasonality of it, there was this big advertising campaign between us and Sandel in 2015 and ended up creating the whole New York situation and everything else. And um that was a very stressful period for us. But, you know, also you look at it and most things have a silver lining. That's what led us to become a regulated business, which is what ultimately opened the door for us to have a lot of the regulatory, you know, KYC, all the other infrastructure we needed to go into the regulated gaming business and the Supreme court overturned pass. But so actually ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to us. So that's another thing you kind of tell yourself is like, you know what, even the worst things that felt terrible in the moment that you were going through. Um Usually there's something positive that comes from it, even if it's just something you learn. Um, most people don't learn as much when things are going really well as you do when there's hard times that's what causes you to learn and evolve. So I think if you can go through enough of those experiences, you can channel that every time something challenging comes up, remind yourself one, I've been through this other thing this whole past two and two. How do I actually reorient myself towards getting the maximum benefit from learning something here.

Mellody Hobson, President and Co-CEO, Ariel Investments Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE


MPW Summit 2023: Leadership Lessons With Mellody Hobson

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You Community Melody. Hobson is CO CEO of the Global Asset Management Firm, Aerial Investments. She's chair of the Starbucks Board of Directors, a board member at JP Morgan Chase and an influential force in the world of finance. Melody is a longtime advocate for closing the racial wealth gap. And earlier this year, she launched project black, a groundbreaking fund designed to create and support minority owned businesses of scale. She's known for her business acumen and recently shared her wisdom, teaching a master class on strategic decision making. Melody is no stranger to Fortune's most powerful women in business list ranking once again in 2023 her fifth time on the list. We're delighted to have her with us at the summit to talk about her recent projects, the the decisions that shaped her career and to offer lessons in leadership, she joins Mahala Brahm for this conversation. Please welcome them to the stage. Thank you for joining us Melody. Um So you literally uh taught the master class on strategic decision making as we heard and I wonder if you could start out by just sharing with us? Where do you feel like your lessons in strategic decision making um throughout your career, where, where, where did most of that come from? Was it from the boardroom from your childhood? From somewhere in between? So, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I always love coming to this conference and I used to dream of being here when I was really young and reading fortune. So it's very exciting to sit on the stage and to be on the list and just meet and be with so many amazing women. Um My strategic, my point of view around strategy came through growing up. My mother had really practical advice for me all the time. From my life experience, generally, the hardest things and the worst things taught me the most about strategy when things weren't going well. And then I've had the opportunity to work with some iconic leaders like Howard Schultz, Jamie Diamond, Jeffrey Katzenberg, being in a room with David Gethen. Um people who John Rogers be married to an icon like George Lucas. And so those titans all have been great um uh advisors and I try to eat up and soak up wisdom. Uh best lesson from your mother though was what? Well, I was telling some of my mother's stories in the green room, which were hilarious. Um But I think in work, her number one lesson was make myself indispensable. She always said, make it so you couldn't lose your job that everyone would want to work with you. And I used to joke with John Rogers when I first started Ariel, I want one of me because I really did make myself indispensable. But this was also the mother who told me which I made the joke in the other room. No one wants to see you eat all of that. So she would say if you're out at any kind of event, you know, with dinner with people half she's like, never or does anyone want to see you eat all of that? That hilarious. That's hilarious. True. It started at very young. So it wasn't like at 13, she started saying it, she started saying it very young. That's very funny. Um, so you were a four year old who left half your plate as it started pretty, I was like, oh, I supposed to eat half. So, um, one of the things you've talked about in the past and the master class as well is kind of the, the, the art of having tough candid conversations. And, um, I wonder if you could just give for us, like some of your biggest lessons over the years when it comes to that something everybody in this room has to deal with. And so many of us have a hard time doing. Gambi Sa Moyo was the person who crystallized this for me. She's one of my best friends. We're doppelgangers. She grew up in Africa, I grew up in America and was an economist. Right. And um she always used to say to me in the very early years, feedback as a gift, it is not a right. And that was something that I realized was really important. I think people think we have a right to feedback when we don't. And so she was like, what, wherever you can get it, however you can get it, you should be excited about it. We had a coach inside of Ariel who always used to tell us that um you, we'd ask permission to get feedback because he, he said everyone doesn't want it. So when we were in a situation, we would say and still at Ariel, do you want feedback? And don't say yes if you don't want it. And so getting feedback in that situation. And then last, lastly, don't qualify feedback by who gives it to you. I think what typically happens is we say I don't really like that person. So therefore I'm going to discount everything that they say when sometimes someone you least like admire maybe think has the values that you have. There is a kernel in there that could be helpful to you. And so being accepting of feedback from anyone at any time anywhere is the goal that I've always had. And then I can tell you, you know, being willing to accept it. And there have been many times in my life where the feedback was extremely tough and I have had a rule do not cry. Because if someone gives you feedback and you start crying, then they have to spend a lot of time putting you back together and they never want to do it again. So they're thinking to themselves like, I don't have 30 minutes to give melody when I give her this feedback. So do not cry. I tell people, you know, if you cry, you sort of ruin the possibility of getting feedback again. Don't cry. Eat half your plate. What does he eat all of that? Um So Alan Murray, our CEO and I recently interviewed the Newish CEO of Starbucks for our, our podcast leadership. Next. And it was fascinating hearing him talk about his sort of immersion into Starbucks, not just doing the, you know, typical listening tour, but actually taking months getting to be a certified barista working as a barista across the world. And, and this is something that you and Howard Schultz really put to Howard really thought of it. So I want to give Howard credit because that's really the person Howard said, let's give him six months to get totally immersed. And during that time, he said I'll stay longer because he was supposed to leave earlier than he did. I'll give him that time where no one is reporting to him. He doesn't have to make any really hard calls and he can spend the time just learning the business from the ground level up. And then we slowly layered on, um, reporting responsibilities. But he was unencumbered for a long time to really move around the world and be behind the counter and in being behind the counter, it's the way you really learn the business. You got to spell everybody's names. It's not easy. If only it were just that. Yes, I'm sure the baristas is hard. I have zero doubt. But one of the interesting things to me was that he mentioned, as we were asking him about this process that in kind of the Western mentality, it's like, oh my gosh, how did you take so long to train for this to do this, you know, immersion and the Eastern mentality is why was it so short? Just six months? So can you talk about just your role and and in in shaping that helping to shape that? And why as chair of the board um of Starbucks, you decided that this was really worth his time because the culture of our company is so important to our success and understanding that culture is truly um critical to understanding the customer, the partners who work inside the company and what makes us different. And you know, when you think about it on the one level, we sell a commodity. On the other level, we sell an experience that is so ingrained in cultures, not only here in America but around the world and it's so important to people and they choose this third place because it makes them feel something like they belong or special or um valued. Noticed it's the name on the cup. All of those things. They set us apart from a traditional um mind competitor. No disrespect. And I think making sure that someone could really assimilate inside of that culture was, was very important. When you think about many careers, you know, there were jobs where you were an apprentice for a long at aerial. We talk about our analysts being apprentices, their apprentice, they're an apprentice for a very long time where they're just learning the craft. And that's what Lakshman had the opportunity to do. Again. It was Howard's idea. And as a board, we were fully, fully behind that idea based upon we thought what we thought ultimately would be important to his success and therefore the success of the company. Amazing. Um I know this audience loves to hear from you. So I definitely want to give you all an opportunity to ask melody some questions as well. Please raise your hand and we'll bring a microphone over to you. Um But I, I wanna pivot a little bit in the meantime, um we saw so many um diversity initiatives um after the murder of George Floyd in particular um and so many commitments um and, and, and, and statements put out and um and now we're seeing at least uh in some companies uh de prioritization um of those commitments of those initiatives. And so obviously, this is near and dear to your heart and to Ariel and the whole mission from the get go. But what's your advice to other companies on how to, how to keep your eye on the ball, how to keep it a priority and why? What's the argument? The argument is very simple. So my perspective around diversity and initiatives, inclusion belonging is that if you want to be a world class 21st century company, if you want to understand your potential customer, if you want to understand the people who work in your company, you need diverse perspectives, diverse ideas, diverse backgrounds, all to come together for better outcomes. If you don't want that, then stay monolithic and over time you will disappear. And I think that, you know, people are trying to make this about the right thing to do. This is good corporate governance. This is about being a fiduciary to all the stake holders that are important to a company. And unfortunately, the pullback after the horrific murder of George Floyd that shined a light on an issue that anyone who was black or brown already knew about. There was no revelation for us is that the pullback has certainly been been directly related to the Supreme Court decision with Harvard in the sense that they're coming for us. If we have diversity on our agenda, I say don't give in to that. I think companies have to stand firm because this is ultimately in the best interest of the company, the shareholder and our society. Are you? And we have a question over here, but I wanna just real quick ask a follow up. Are you concerned about the legal landscape? You've got projects Black, the, the fund that you started? Um Does that concern you? How are you navigating? No, I'm not concerned at all. We've looked at all of the legal possibilities and we feel very, very strong and, and confident in our point of view about what we're doing to grow and scale minority black businesses, uh minority businesses, black and brown in the United States. So this is a good business decision and that's ultimately, you know, what matters over time. Hello, um The Hair Washington, Ceo of Otri M Melody. I just wanna thank you for your leadership example. Um You spoke, uh my company is Index back and um you spoke at a conference earlier this year and you looked across the room and you asked where were the Black and Brown founders and CEO S? And you know, if you saw me, I was one of the ones, but I wanted to thank you for at least for example, 11. Exactly. That was meant to say that you often speak truth to power in rooms that need to hear the message. So thank you for that. The question on a lighter note, I'm a Seattle Seahawks fan. So when Russell came over to the Broncos it was definitely one of those who had mixed feelings. I wonder how your ownership in the Broncos with the sports franchise has changed your leadership or perspective on winning and losing in business. Curious, since it's so public and emotions run so wild. So, first of all, I just want to be very clear. Never in a million years did I imagine I'd own part of a football team just so like, just to be super clear, I didn't like grow up thinking that's what I'm going to do. But what I will tell you is you can learn anywhere and I've learned one a lot from sports. It's hard, it's a very hard thing. And I have two takeaways that I think have really influenced me in the last year of ownership. One, I was on the phone with Sean Payton, our coach very recently on a Zoom and he said you have to earn the right to coach hard, wrote it down. And I was like, you have to earn the right to coach hard in any setting. And I thought about why I could co chart at aerial after 30 years or how I show up in boardrooms because I've said in those rears for a lot rooms for quite a while, but you have to earn the right to coach hard. I think that's a really intuitive statement. The other thing that I learned from and I, I used this example with my young colleagues who are very excited about hybrid work and maybe never done it before. And it's not my favorite thing. I'm being very honest and I always told them, I said, listen, I want you to just imagine the Super Bowl huddle. I want you to imagine the two teams on each side. I can assure you neither was hybrid, even like the time in the weight room is together. It, you can't win like that. And so, you know, just using that as a real life example, it's hard to argue with, but it's true at melody. Super, super quick. What's next for you? Like what's on your, you know, we talked about vision boards earlier. You've done so much. Is there something that you're like, just dying to, to, to own or to, to work at, or to accomplish that you haven't done yet? There are so many times that I wanna do. I mean, I, I can't even, my list is long. Um, you know, I, I, there's so much, I mean, it's, it's hard for me to, I want all kids to learn financial literacy in schools. I mean, that's one of the things I wake up every day thinking about. I want Ariel to be um great and that's, you know, so I've never looked for another job or something else that I wanted to do. I wanna do a really good job as chair of Starbucks because, because right now, which is tragic of the Fortune 500. I'm the only black woman chair that doesn't make sense. And so these are things that are all really important to me as understand being cognizant of the fact that they set trails for other people and needing to do a good job. So there's a lot, I, I think we're all in awe of your to do list. So thank you for coming and sharing with us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits—including the opportunity to socialize and build community—and investors big and small have picked up on the trend.

How pickleball became the fastest growing sport in America

Sports

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream and attracted big-name investors due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits.

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream and attracted big-name investors due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits—including the opportunity to socialize and build community.

there's this massive explosion and it's just really taken off first time hit the ball. I was like in love with the sport and I think once people play it, they become addicted to the point where they don't ever want to play anything else. Pickleball is a paddle sport, combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis. It's similar to tennis where you're trying to get your opponents to make an error either by hitting into the net out or letting the ball bounce twice and you're trying to score points. So first team to 11 wins the game, the dimensions are exactly the same as the badminton court, so it's 20 ft wide by 44 ft long. Pickleball was started and sort of 1965 by the pritchard family from Bainbridge island Washington and in Washington they had these boat races where they would have a boat which is the stronger rowers and then the B boat which was kind of random people thrown into the boat together and they would call that the pickle boat, they were looking for a game for their kids to play. They had ping pong paddle ball, they were trying to play badminton, they didn't have enough stuff and so they set it up and started playing the game kind of took off from there When I discovered pickleball, it was the middle of the first summer pandemic and I think there were the ideal conditions for the sport of pickleball to kind of really thrive. It was a game that families could go outside, you can easily set up a net in your driveway. Once people started playing it really kind of took off. Pickleball has a very low barrier to entry. You can learn the game in 10, 15 minutes. So relative to other sports where the learning curve can feel quite steep before you can actually play a game of all, you can really just jump right in from the get go. It's a low price point from an accessibility perspective when you play it, you can play it at a very active manner. You can play it very casually from when I first started playing, I played with my grandfather and my mom and I can still play with my grandfather and my mom. So I think this is really cool that you can just play with all eight Throughout your family. So I just think it's a sport for everyone and that everyone can do together. And so there's a really fun, joyous element to it as well. As of today we've got about five million active players growing at 30, We expected to be close to 40 million players in the next 10 years. If that happens, it would be the largest participated in the us, my friends when I first started playing pickleball had absolutely no idea. But then once it kind of exploded there, like seeing me on tv and stuff and they're like, oh my gosh, this is like a real thing, I would say in the beginning of my pickleball career when we would go and travel somewhere and we would tell someone why were in town, they would be like, what's pickleball? And we'd have to explain it to them and now when we go and I'm like, oh my gosh, I love pickle ball, I played all the time or I just started playing pickle ball. I feel like everyone knows what it is when you look at sort of the amateur grassroots game and you have five million players going to 40 million. That would be more than tennis or golf. So you have a mass population of players playing when people are playing games, they're gonna obviously buy equipment, they're gonna buy merch, they're gonna join clubs, they're gonna watch professional league. So when you think about that huge community, uh, there's a tremendous investment opportunity. There are a number of celebrities and athletes that have a real passion for the game. And as a result of that passion, a significant amount of them have been investing in MLP and other ventures in Pickleball. The Kardashian started playing it. Vanderpump rules, it was featured on there, some major athletes like Lebron James and Draymond and kevin Love and tom brady and kim clijsters started purchasing major League Baseball teams, longoria visit Azul Heidi Klum, I met Jamie Foxx, Michael Phelps, Larry Fitzgerald, like I played pickleball with all of them, there's like so many celebrities that are getting into Pickleball or that have pickleball courts at their house or investing to pickleball, there's just a lot of engagement because people fundamentally are looking to invest in where they have a passion and I think a lot of these folks come from a passion of playing and then they recognized that sort of growth in the game and that's the reason they come in to invest. Community is such a key aspect to pickleball. Once you get into it, once you start playing it's very easy to have this passion for it and want to play it every day. So when you find others who share this passion you instantly have this connection. It's one of these games where if you've never played it before you can show up to a court and people will always embrace you. They're really interested in teaching other people how to play it within a couple of games, you'll know all the roles and you're never gonna leave that community. Um It's really fanatical in that way which is really wonderful. I really look forward to it growing. Two point where 40 million people are playing in the U. S. And that number more than doubles globally. I think if we can do that it unites people, it brings people into community. It brings a lot of things that we sort of need in the world in the country and I'm pretty excited about all those things

What WNBA star Sue Bird learned during the pandemic

Commentary

What WNBA star Sue Bird learned during the pandemic


So do I hear even you are working out at home early in the pandemic? Yeah we um at some point the W. N. B. A. Decided to do what we affectionately called the wobble season and that's when it started to get serious and I was like well how am I going to get ready for this? And I think what I learned in that pandemic as it pertains to working out was um There's always these small gains to be had. So even you know Heidi mentioned like a 10 minute intense workout, 10 minutes sometimes if that's all you can get in it's enough it's enough to to kind of get you set off in the right direction. And so I just in that moment decided like I can't be too hard on myself. Yes I'm trying to train for a season but nothing is as it was of course. So if I couldn't get on a basketball court I was like all right I'm just gonna go to try to go find a playground. A lot of the nets were tied up. Some of the rims were taken down and I literally would shoot into the air like just pretending you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Um But I think we all learned in that moment like how resilient we can be how you have to adapt and adjust and just because you know and I'll speak from a basketball perspective just because my training wasn't gonna look exactly the same. I didn't mean I couldn't get the results I needed just because it wasn't gonna be that same route that made me feel comfortable doesn't mean I can't get there in a different way and still have, like I said those results, so that's 100% what I learned. And then, you know, we lived in a wobble and that was bizarre. Tell us about it. What was the experience of being in the wobble? Like I mean this is the bubble WNBA's you following it? So yeah, so what was, what was it like um you know, it was, it was um you kind of got sick of seeing people uh particularly like, you know, other teams, other coaches, maybe you're playing them that night and you're in the elevator like, hey, how's it going? I actually don't care, but I'll ask anyway, the hardest part was actually seeing the referee's, Oh yeah, that was not an amazing because, you know, our relationship kind of strained as it is. Um So it was kind of interesting, but we learned a lot about ourselves I think as a league we learned um yeah, we were there to play basketball. It was amazing because it was the pandemic. The one good thing that came from it was we got way more tv coverage and now we're able to kind of ride that wave a little bit, The ratings have been way up, way up, way up. I mean, what do you know, you put it on tv everything a shocker. A shocker. Um but the other thing we learned was that when we, in terms of the social justice, when we, when we unify our voice, when we're one voice, that's where our power was. We don't necessarily have, You know, the individual platform to kind of make a message as big as we wanted to, but Wow 144 of us when we came together, I mean, some might say we helped flip the senate seat and and there's something really powerful in that and I think women, we collaborate in that way and and we, we already knew that about our our league, but it just, it just hammered it home and now we'll never do anything if we're not in lockstep. It was really, really incredible to watch. Um and you know, I was thinking about that and your relationship with Nike and the fact that, you know, Nike is also a company that has a history of engaging on social justice. Um you know, I think probably the most memorable for a lot of people recently would be the Colin Kaepernick ad. Um and you know, when you do that, you have a bunch of consumers, lots of different people buy shoes. Um you're gonna alienate some of your shoppers. So talk us through like what, what part of Nike's DNA allows you to take those stands and I know a lot of people are having these issues with their own companies. So if you have any advice please share that as well. Sure. Well this is probably worth a session zone we can talk about. But you know, I'd start with, you know, just the fact that it's uh easier to take a stand uh if you know who you are and what you believe. And like that's the advice right there, you know, as a person, as a company and you know, what drew me to Nike is that we've always known who we are, what we believe. And you know, I actually get up in the morning and think that, you know, we might be able to move the world like we move the world physically, but I actually think we can move the world and and you know, I I uh and we're and you know, Phil Knight always reminds us, you know, always reminds us that it's our job to listen to the voice of the athlete and you know, where we know we're better if we know what we believe and um if we listen to Sue, like literally listening to do and you know, so and I would just say especially uh you know, you talk Kaepernick, but especially as it relates to level playing field and uh and you know, so I think, you know, we'll talk about players because that's really important, but one thing I'm really proud of is Just um living our values with our employees and level playing field. And uh we have just announced over the last six months in our impact report that we're going to um we have targets of representation um through to 2025 um listed and named in our impact report and executive comp is tied to that. My comp is tied to those targets and I'm telling you that I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I look at my stats and my numbers every day. Um I'm proud that I can tell you that we're making progress and I can see it in the numbers already, just months out of the impact report and and and you know, really impressive, you know, progress there. I think we're making a ways to go and then okay, now I'm just gonna then talk about, you know, athletes because you know, probably the most visible way you see us taking stands is through voice of athlete and you know, um and we love the level playing field conversation Kaepernick, you know, with his dream crazy and dream Crazier was something we're really proud of and again, lines back to our values, but what I love about that, it wasn't just Kaepernick, it was then Serena and it was Lebron. And uh and I think Lebron's message was uh basketball players don't change the world until they do

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