The founding president of the WNBA, Ackerman is the former head of USA Basketball, the organization that fields international teams for the Olympics and other events.

A Jersey girl, Ackerman was a powerhouse basketball player in high school and was among one of the first female scholarship athletes at the University of Virginia. A two-time all American, she played professional basketball in France for a year but had the sense to have a backup plan, earning a law degree from UCLA. She served as a staff attorney for the NBA and as an assistant to NBA Commissioner David Stern before creating a Women's Senior team within USA Basketball. Although she was met with resistance, she proved her point when the undefeated team won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. After her success at the Olympics, she was appointed the founding president of the WNBA, affording women the opportunity to play professional basketball in the US, one she never had. After nearly a decade with the WNBA and affiliations with nearly every basketball-related institution there is, from the board of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Basketball Federation, she performed a term as president of USA Basketball from 2005-2008, leading both the US men and women to gold medals at the Beijing games. Since her term ended, she's taken herself out of the game a bit, working as an adjunct sports management professor at Columbia. [Image via Getty, with Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson]