There may not be a better example of the benefits of Title IX than Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade.
 
Because of Title IX, which had passed by Congress in 1972, just a handful of years before McGlade enrolled in college, she and three of her sisters were offered a scholarship to play women's basketball for a number of schools, something that just a few years prior would not have happened.

  McGlade chose the University of North Carolina, which launched a career in college athletics that began as a student-athlete and has culminated as one of only 32 Division I conference commissioners. This weekend, UNC will honor McGlade as one of 50 Champions, Legends and Leaders of Carolina Women's Athletics.
 
The criteria for these honors, per the UNC press release include Tar Heel student-athletes, coaches, staff members and donors who have made an impact – and have championed women at Carolina and beyond – as part of a team, unit, and/or in the community. For the purposes of the selection process, a 'Champion' of women's athletics was considered for more than impressive performances in competition.
  McGlade literally left her mark as a student-athlete for the Tar Heels, as her No. 14 jersey hangs in the rafters at Carmichael Arena, where she set the UNC career rebounding record for both men's and women's basketball, which still stands today.

 
Following graduation from North Carolina, Title IX again directly impacted McGlade's career, providing her with an opportunity at 23 years old to be the head women's coach at Georgia Tech, making her one of the youngest head coaches in Division I history. From coaching, she transitioned into administration at Georgia Tech, where she served as the Tournament Director for the 1993 NCAA Women's Final Four. She implemented a marketing strategy resulting in the first-ever advance sellout of the NCAA Women's Final Four. She also was a key member of the Georgia Tech staff that worked to implement the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta.
 
The growing importance of women's sports, and specifically women's basketball, led McGlade to her next career step – the newly created position of Senior Associate Commissioner for Women's Basketball at the Atlantic Coast Conference.
 

Her work at the ACC expanded, but included the first of many sellouts of the league's women's basketball tournament, and founding the South Atlantic Women's Basketball Officiating Program, one of the first multi-conference officiating consortiums that are now so prevalent in men's and women's college basketball. While at the ACC, McGlade was appointed to the NCAA Women's Basketball Committee, and the served as the group's chair, leading the committee that has oversight responsibilities and selects the field for the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament.

In 2008, she was recruited and hired by the Atlantic 10 as Commissioner, where she was one of only two female commissioners in Division I. Now, there are 10, meaning a third of all DI commissioner jobs are held by women, another example of Title IX opening doors for women in college athletics.
 

Her A-10 tenure has included the addition of Davidson, George Mason, Loyola Chicago and VCU to the league. The conference has enjoyed long-term agreements with major media partners ESPN, CBS Sports and NBC Sports that McGlade negotiated, and she led the effort to move the league's marquee events, the men's basketball and women's basketball championships, to state of-the-art professional sports venues in Brooklyn, N.Y., Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Del. and Richmond, Va. And for the past four years, she has served on the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee, marking her as one of a very few number of people to have served on both the NCAA Division I Women's and Men's basketball committees.

  From student-athlete to coach to administrator, the passage of Title IX opened doors for McGlade throughout her career. This includes a number of honors, including being recognized as the WBCA National Administrator of the Year. She was inducted into the Georgia Tech Athletic Association Hall of Fame and the South Jersey Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.  And Georgia Tech honored McGlade as one of the 50 First Women of the Institute. She was named to the ACC Women's Basketball 50th Anniversary Team and YWCA of Greensboro, N.C., presented McGlade with the Kay Yow Outstanding Female in Sports award. She was named an ACC Legend by UNC as a player in 2010 and by Georgia Tech as a coach in 2012, the first person with the distinction of being an ACC Legend as both a player and coach. In 2014, she was honored by NACWAA as an Administrator of the Year and named one of Sports Business Journal’s “Game Changers.”
 
Her career and been interlaced with Title IX, and in return, she has been a relentless champion of student-athletes, especially female student-athletes and has helped further the careers of countless women who work in college athletics.