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Stephen Curry, Golden State Valkyries President Jess Smith, Olympic medalist Brenda Villa, and the Bay Area Women’s Sports Initiative are the first winners of the Bay Area Sports Business Awards. The Leavey School of Business and the San Francisco Chronicle will present a fifth award live at the November 9 gala.

When Ericsson takes a smartphone maker to court over its patents, the cases can run in as many as 13 countries at once. Roy Maharaj ’93, Ericsson’s chief licensing officer, explains why the deals still get made in person, and how a first-generation finance graduate of the Leavey School of Business came to lead them.

Budget concerns, supply chain delays, tariffs, and deadlines occupy the mind of anyone leading a complex business operation, including Bronco Racing’s students. Now in its second year of competition, Santa Clara University’s Formula SAE Electric team combines engineering and business smarts to take a $60k-$70k race car from concept to the racetrack.

Economics ranked eighth among 73 majors for mid-career median income, yet its five most common jobs account for only about one-quarter of graduates. New research co-authored by Kevin Chiu, a lecturer in economics at Leavey, maps where the rest build their careers, from software development to public service.

When the WNBA awarded the Bay Area an expansion team in 2023, the franchise had no name, no colors, no roster and no fans. Two years later, the Golden State Valkyries had sold out every home game of their first season, set league attendance records, and built a season-ticket waiting list. The executive who led that build, team President Jess Smith, is the inaugural recipient of the Sports Innovator of the Year award at the Bay Area Sports Business Awards.

The first ever winner of the Bay Area Sports Business Awards is the Bay Area Women's Sports Initiative (BAWSI), recipient of the Sports Business Advocate Award. The award recognizes bold thinkers who have reshaped how the industry operates and cleared a path for those coming up behind them, and BAWSI has spent two decades building that path.

Ravi Bapna, an AI and digital transformation scholar who has spent 25 years studying how platforms shape human behavior, from early internet auctions to online dating to AI, recently joined the Leavey School of Business as dean, arriving from the University of Minnesota.

As generative AI continues to disrupt and reshape industries ranging from Hollywood to higher education, consumers are still grappling with one question: what still counts as authentic creativity?

The Bay Area Sports Business Awards have their inaugural judging panel: eight leaders spanning professional sports, coaching, sports journalism, Olympic competition, collegiate athletics and global brand management.

The Leavey School of Business is excited to welcome eight new tenure-track and teaching-track faculty this year across accounting, finance, information systems and analytics, management and entrepreneurship, and marketing. Learn more about our newest faculty members below.