• 11 • Commencement Speaker Rick Welts is the president and chief operating o cer of the four-time National Basketball Association champion Golden State Warriors and one of the most respected business executives in the NBA. In 2018, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Welts grew up in Seattle in the ’60s and was a fan of Seattle’s NBA team, the Seattle SuperSonics. He attended Sonics games with his father and the Sonics hired him to be their ball boy at the age of 16. After attending the University of Washington in the early ’70s, he became the assistant director and then director of public relations for the Sonics, a position he held when the tea played in the finals in 1978 and won the championship in 1979. Following 10 years with the Sonics, Welts worked for a Seattle sports ar eting fir before oving to the league o ce in ew or City, where he eventually became the league’s third-in-command as the executive vice president, chief ar eting o cer and president of NBA operations. He played a central role in the creation of the NBA All-Star Weekend in 1984 and the marketing program for USA as etball for the 1 ly pic rea ea long with al c er an, the first president of the o en’s ational Basketball Association, Welts was named “Marketer of the Year” by Brandweek in 1998 for his role in launching the WNBA. After a brief time as president of Fox Sports Enterprises, Welts left Fox in 2002 to become the president and chief e ecutive o cer of the hoeni uns bas etball organi ation, a position he held until 11, when he oined the Warriors as that team’s president and COO. In this role, Welts oversees all business-related operations for the arriors, including the develop ent of the hase enter, a privately financed sports and entertain ent center in an Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood that opens this September. Under elts’ leadership, the arriors brand has grown in stature following five consecutive inals appearances and three NBA championships in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The Warriors were named “Sports Team of the Year” across all sports in both 2014 and 2016 by the Sports Business Journal/Daily. 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. That same year he was presented with the United States Tennis Association ICON Award at the US Open in New York City, an award that recognizes and celebrates those who have had a positive impact on diversity and inclusion in the sports industry and society. In 2014, he was honored by GLAAD, the nation’s LGBTQ media advocacy organization, with the Davidson/Valentini Award, which is presented to an edia professional who has ade a significant di erence in pro oting e uality for the LGBTQ community. In 2016, he was honored by the Anti-Defamation League with its “Torch of Liberty Award.”