OL Reign Legend: Kate Starbird – Former Professional Basketball Player and Professor at the University of Washington
The Legends Campaign, a partnership between OL Reign and Starbucks, honors women for their extraordinary contributions to our community in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Prior to the September 9 match against the Chicago Red Stars, OL Reign recognized Kate Starbird, former professional basketball player and professor at the University of Washington for her outstanding work.
Starbird grew up in the Tacoma, Washington area, where she was a prolific basketball player through high school. Her dedication and skill took her to Stanford, where she played for the women’s basketball team. She made it to the Final Four three times and captured a program record 2,215 career points, which would stand for 11 years. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in computer science, she started her professional basketball career.
She was selected by the Seattle Reign basketball team, the original namesake for OL Reign, with the fourth overall pick in the 1997 ABL Draft. Her professional basketball career took her all over the world, spending time in Seattle, Sacramento, Utah and Indiana and abroad in Spain, Austria and France. Upon retiring from professional basketball, Starbird continued her education, combining her passion for studying humans and computer science. She earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2009 and received her Ph.D. in technology, media, and society at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2012.
Now, Starbird is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and Director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation Laboratory at the University of Washington. She co-founded of the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, which was formed in 2019 around a shared mission of resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society, and strengthening democratic discourse.
“My story is a story with two acts, really. I played high school basketball in Tacoma and then went to Stanford before there was professional women’s basketball. I had a great experience at Stanford and really great teammates. We went to three final fours. By the time I graduated college, there was professional women’s basketball, and I chose to go to the ABL, which was a competitive league to the WNBA at the time. I made the decision in part because I got to come back to Seattle. I played for the first Seattle Reign there for a season and a half. It was just wonderful, and I loved the experience. Great franchise and teammates and experiences. I just loved the fans.”
The ABL eventually folded, which prompted Starbird’s move to the WNBA and abroad where she continued her basketball career for almost ten years, even playing with the Seattle Storm for a while. At the end of her basketball career, Starbird was faced with the challenge of figuring out what would come next for her.
“I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do outside of the basketball world and just so happened to be invited to a luncheon at the University of Washington. I sat down and we immediately started to talk about what I was going to do. I told them that I thought I wanted to go back to school to study anthropology, after being a computer science major in undergrad.”
“One of the hard things as an athlete was figuring out what I was going to do next and figuring out who I was going to be after my professional basketball career. I played almost into my thirties, so I was at the 30th birthday and hadn’t yet had a “real job” or job outside of sports. For me, one of my proudest accomplishments was figuring that out. I found out who I was and something outside of sports that I was passionate about.”
That was the beginning of Starbird’s path into studying the interactions between computers and humans. At the time, it was very much an emerging field, but Starbird was motivated by the plethora of cultures she has experienced abroad, as well as the amazing support and mentorship she was provided. After earning her PhD in Technology, Media and Society, Starbird had the chance to come back to Seattle once again, this time to work at the University of Washington.
“The support from the university at large has been great. Also just get to work with fantastic students and we are doing hard work! It’s not always fun, but it is always exciting. We’re trying to protect democracy and stop the spread of disinformation. “
In 2019, with four colleagues at the UW, Starbird helped to cofound the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and currently is the director of the center, which is comprised of five core faculty members and another twelve affiliate faculty members. On a regular basis, they work with 15-20 PhD students, as well as post-doctoral researchers and undergraduates.
“I am extremely proud of the work that my team is doing at the University of Washington at the Center for an Informed Public, where we are working to stop disinformation and fight to protect democracy. It is hard work and I think that we have put a lot of ourselves into that work. There’s nothing else I would rather be doing right now. I feel like we have a chance to try to make a positive change against something we think is really negative in society.”
Through her career, both on the court and off the court, one of the things that has pushed Starbird to overcome the hardships she has faced is the support of her family and friends.
“One of things that has made me so successful is support from my family – especially my wife, but also my parents and siblings. One of the things that has been in common across both acts of my career is amazing teammates and colleagues, a little hard work and a lot of luck.”
She continued, “Everyone will have their own path through hardship. For me, it was just working hard and doing what I wanted to do and trying not to worry about anything else, but a lot of it is having support. Having great mentorship is a game changer. Finding that person that can help you navigate around that and support you when people are not giving you a chance is really important.”
“I went to Lakes High School in Lakewood, but from the ages of 14-18, I actually played basketball in the gyms on Ft. Lewis (now JBLM). Back then, there weren’t a lot of women on the courts. I was often the only female athlete in the games. And some of the guys weren’t exactly kind. I remember one soldier who told me I was in the way and should go home. But others were supportive. They picked me onto their teams and worked with me as I improved. I learned to ignore the folks who were unkind and let the voices of encouragement echo in my head. That skill still serves me well, especially in my work studying harmful activities online.”
For Starbird, being honored as an OL Reign Legend is exciting, especially as a big sports fan.
“Oh, it’s such an honor. It’s such an amazing club, full of great athletes who represent our city so well, both on and off the field, in addition to a world class front office. It’s just an honor to be recognized and share a moment with the fans.”