The Golden State Warriors have announced multiple events surrounding the team’s annual LGBTQ Night, slated for Wednesday, October 30 vs. the Phoenix Suns at Chase Center.
The Warriors will host a postgame panel, presented by Accenture, highlighted by two-time FIFA World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist Megan Rapinoe, three-time WNBA champion and four-time Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird, and Warriors President and Chief Operating Officer Rick Welts. The panel also features Monica Boll, a managing director at Accenture and global sponsor of the company’s Pride network, and David Kelly, the Warriors Chief Legal Officer and founding member of the organization’s Diversity and Inclusion Council. Meena Harris, Founder and CEO of Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, and Uber’s Head of Strategy and Leadership, will moderate the discussion.
The postgame panel will start approximately 20 minutes following the game and will take place in section 110. Fans entering from the concourse should use Portal 10 to access section 110. The panel is open to all fans attending the game, which tips off at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for Wednesday’s game are still available at warriors.com
Other events during the game, celebrating LGBTQ equality and inclusion, will include:
- Prior to tip-off, Donna Sachet, a San Francisco-based drag actor, signer and activist, will perform with members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and the San Francisco Flaggers, and one of the original rainbow flags created in San Francisco by Gilbert Baker.
- The San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Freedom Band will perform the National Anthem.
- Cheer SF, founded in 1980 as the world’s first LGBTQ-identified cheerleading team, will perform at halftime.
- The Warriors Dance Team will use their performances to celebrate uniqueness and the achievements and rights of the LGBTQ community.
Rapinoe, a two-time FIFA World Cup Champion, was recently honored as The Best FIFA Women’s Player and named to the FIFA World11, recognizing the top 11 women’s soccer players internationally, at The Best FIFA Football Awards in Milan, Italy. Following Team USA’s 2019 World Cup win, Rapinoe took home the FIFA Women’s World Cup Golden Boot, given to the top goal scorer in the tournament, and Golden Ball honors, the best player in the international competition.
Bird, widely recognized as the most decorated women’s professional basketball player of all-time, has won three WNBA titles with the Seattle Storm and is a league-leading 11-time WNBA All-Star. Bird is the league’s all-time leader in assists and has been named to the All-WNBA First Team five times in her 18-year career, which began with her first-overall selection by the Storm in the 2002 WNBA Draft. Bird has captured four Olympic gold medals and four FIBA World Cup gold medals with USA Basketball and led the University of Connecticut to two NCAA titles during her time on campus.
Outside of their respective sports commitments, Rapinoe and Bird advocate fighting for equality, inclusion and diversity in culture and society. In 2018, they were the first same-sex couple to be featured on the cover of ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue in 2018, and in 2019, Rapinoe graced the cover of Marie Claire, InStyle, and became the first openly-gay woman in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Welts, who joined the Warriors in October 2011, has compiled a Hall of Fame career, and was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2018. Most recently, Welts oversaw the orchestration of Chase Center, the team’s new 18,064-seat, privately financed sports and entertainment arena in San Francisco. Prior to joining the Warriors, Welts oversaw business operations for the Phoenix Suns. From 1982-1999, Welts enjoyed a successful career at the NBA league office in New York, where he ascended through the ranks to eventually become the league’s third-in-command as the executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of NBA Properties. His notable accomplishments include the creation of NBA All-Star Weekend in 1984, marketing for the USA Basketball’s 1992 “Dream Team” and for his role in creating the WNBA. In May of 2011, in a front page story in the New York Times, Welts became the highest ranking executive in men’s professional team sports to publicly acknowledge he is gay.
Boll, a managing director within Accenture Operations, manages a global virtual team in four countries and has held several leadership roles in her 13 years at Accenture. As the global sponsor of Accenture’s Pride network, she is helping to raise the bar for more visible women leaders in the company’s LGBTQ community. In April 2019, Boll was part of a delegation of senior executives that met with senior Vatican officials to discuss LGBTQ discrimination. Last year, she was named a 2018 LGBTQ role model by OUTstanding. In 2016 and 2017, Boll was part of the consultation team supporting Accenture’s partnership with the United Nations to create and launch its Corporate Standards of Conduct on Tackling Discrimination against LGBTQ individuals, a set of global company standards. Additionally, she is a formal and informal strategic advisor to several LGBTQ organizations.
Kelly, the Warriors Chief Legal Officer of Business and Basketball, and founding member of the organization’s Diversity and Inclusion Council, has spearheaded multiple speaker series events for employees, guided the team’s involvement in Pride Parades in the Bay Area, and overseeing multiple heritage night cultural celebration plans. His role is responsible for all legal matters affecting the company, manages player development, salary cap management and luxury tax planning for the team, oversees the organization’s human resources and public and government affairs departments, and oversees many of the company’s key projects and initiatives on both the business and basketball sides of the operation, including legal matters related to the real property acquisition, entitlement and construction of Chase Center.
Harris, the founder of the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, is widely recognized as a groundbreaking entrepreneur and rising voice for women’s equality. Inspired by Maya Angelou’s ‘Phenomenal Woman’ poem, Harris started the female-powered organization to bring awareness to women's rights and other intersectional social issues. A graduate of Stanford and Harvard Law School, Harris currently works as the Head of Strategy and Leadership at Uber.