Storm co-owners on sports and LGBTQ+ inclusivity

SEATTLE — Sixteen years later, Lisa Brummel chuckles and admits it’s somewhat far-fetched how four fans saved the Seattle Storm from an uncertain future and built the four-time WNBA champions into one of the top franchises in the league.

“When we all came together, it wasn’t like we were friends,” Brummel said. “It wasn’t like we [all] had ever worked together before, but we had enough connective tissue amongst us, and we had a singular mission that we wanted to get accomplished. It kind of all fell into place.”

Brummel and Dawn Trudeau, who are former Microsoft executives, knew each other during their days at the tech giant. In the mid ‘90s, they partnered with former Seattle Deputy Mayor Anne Levinson in a bid to purchase the American Basketball League’s Seattle Reign before that league went defunct in 1998.

Trudeau and Ginny Gilder, an Olympic silver medalist in rowing and investment CEO, worked together on nonprofit boards. And Brummel and Gilder attended Yale at the same time, but their paths didn’t really cross in college.

When Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett bought the NBA’s Sonics and Storm in July 2006 for $350 million, Brummel, Trudeau, Gilder and Levinson partnered to purchase the Storm for $10 million on Jan. 8, 2008.

“It’s an odd thing,” Brummel said. “We didn’t think anything of it. We thought, ‘Yeah, let’s go try this.’ We didn’t do this massive analysis. We didn’t say ‘Oh my God, what if it fails?’

“ … We know we have great fans, and so we just did it.”

From the start, the Storm found a home in the LGBTQ+ community and vice versa.

“One of the things that I experienced as a fan — that is now an underlying tenet of who we are as an organization — was the Storm was always a safe place,” said Gilder, who came out in 1998.

“To this day, we as an organization want to be an inclusive place where it’s not only safe for people to feel like they can be themselves and participate in what’s essentially a community event, but to have a good time being that way.”

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