I
t was a decade ago, at one of the first of the WNBA’s now annual Inspiring Women luncheons, that Carol Stiff heard former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright utter the words she now displays in her office at ESPN.
Carol Stiff
ESPN,
VICE PRESIDENT, WOMEN’S SPORTS PROGRAMMING
During a Q&A session, a WNBA player asked Albright what it would mean to women if the nation had a female president. Albright credited former President Bill Clinton for her own success, urging the audience to accept men as role models and accept their help in building a career.
“But remember,” Albright said, “that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help women.”
“Going through the back nine of my career, I really take that very seriously,” said Stiff, vice president of women’s programming at ESPN. “Women helping women: You don’t see that all the time in business, so I’m trying to live by that quote.”
A former small-college basketball player who intended to build her career as a coach, Stiff pivoted to join ESPN in 1990, taking an entry-level role helping in communications and programming. When the programmer in charge of college sports found out she played and coached basketball, he asked if she’d like to take the women’s game off his plate.
“He handed me a stack of files,” Stiff said. “We were the only network with women’s basketball. So I figured, ‘All I have to do is figure out who is going to be good and plot them into the TV schedule.’ It was a dream come true.”
Over the next decade, Stiff would play a key role in the growth of women’s basketball, brokering the first game between then-rising power UConn and traditional power Tennessee, a matchup that developed into a rivalry that lifted the profile of women’s basketball mightily. Rising into roles with broader responsibility, she would do the same for other women’s sports, helping to shape espnW.
“Over the years … we haven’t gone anywhere,” Stiff said. “We’re going to program every single [WNBA] playoff game this year, which has never been done. I continue to believe we’re going to add more and more women’s sports to our family of networks.”
— Bill King
