WNBA's Cathy Engelbert says a search firm is vetting candidates to replace her

I've met with the search firm and getting updates periodically as they start to reach out to potential candidates. I had candidates that I submitted that a lot of us did, and a lot of people have called. So the good news is there's people who really want to take on this role, which I think is great. As you know, it's like a multidimensional role. You have to have very thick skin, so I'd say that's one characteristic you have to have. And you have to have confidence that we can continue this growth trajectory and confidence in building relationships with players and agents and the board of governors, the owners and the stakeholders um so it is a multi-dimensional role i think when i took it over i didn't realize how broad the platform could become and how we became such a you know growth growth stock as one of our owners called it um which has been positive but it came with some negatives around the attention and the vitriol that's unacceptable that our players get so working on that as we continue to figure out how to support the safety of our players number one So those are kind of some of the things I think of, but, you know, there's a variety of stakeholders that will weigh in on the process. To continue to condemn those that are using behind a keyboard to spew vitriol and hate and racism and misogyny, you know, at our players, it continues to be unacceptable. And we obviously have worked on kind of the cyber side of that. We worked on the physical security side of that by putting more physical security around our players in arenas, outside of arenas, as they travel and things like that, which, again, none of that existed a few years ago. So we've made those investments, and I think the players see the difference in the player experience as well from that perspective. So as I said at All-Star, this represents one of the largest investments we've ever made in basketball operations. And I really believe the Replay Center will give our officials access to state-of-the-art technology and the best available camera angles, helping us bring greater consistency, efficiency, and accuracy to our officiating process. And, look, legacies are for history books to write. I'm not writing it. I think we're presiding, this team of mine, which many are here, are presiding over a period of such super growth that I think we made decisions that really put the W and the WNBA in women's basketball at the forefront under this strategy of player first, stakeholder success, and fan experience. And it's really about people and investment. And I'd say, you know, the one thing I did, I think we had 12 people. And it's not even about the number. We're close to 100 now. But it was the capabilities we built. So I'd say, that's what we did. You grow a business by hiring great people who have capabilities to take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths to drive a business, to drive growth. We had no chief marketing officer when I joined. We had no chief growth officer when I joined. Those two leaders in our organization today have 30 to 40 people working for them now. And there was zero back then. So it's really a great story of how you build a business that, quite frankly, when I came in, was struggling financially, struggling with digital. So we had no social. We had no digital. We had 25,000 outdated pages on WNBA.com. All of that stuff has been transformed, and we have such a strong team, including of engineers and data analytics and data scientists and things like that.