Sky center Elizabeth Williams just finished a master’s degree in global health.
Between a professional basketball career and her leadership role in the players’ union, where does she find the time?
“I like always having something to do,” she told the Sun-Times.
She has led a multidisciplinary lifestyle since her days at Duke, where she finished in the top 10 in NCAA history in blocks while also discovering she wanted to be a doctor. She got to shadow doctors during an internship and thought to herself, “I would love to do this.”
Now she’s one step closer. She completed a degree through Arizona State’s online global health program, taking advantage of a partnership between the WNBA and the players’ union that covers tuition.
With fewer players going overseas in the offseason, she said, more of them are taking advantage of such programs. This past offseason, she interned with the Sky’s team doctor and focused on mental health.
It’s a subject she believes should be treated more like physical health.
“Just like we get checklists at physicals, you can do that with your mental health,” she said. “There’s a misconception that things have to be going wrong before you talk to someone, and that’s not necessarily the case.”
She was especially interested in different approaches to therapy, including dance-movement therapy, and how blending them with medicine can lead to better outcomes.
“With the way the world is more globalized and we have more technology, anxiety is heightened,” Williams said. “Figuring out different ways that different cultures and people have figured out how to attack mental health was really interesting.”
Overall, the experience deepened her worldview and commitment to empathy.
“I see people as more similar than they are different,” she said. “People have similar struggles, but we try to put a label on it and say, ‘Oh, if you’re from this place, or if you grew up this way.’ But in a lot of ways, we’re really similar.”
That shapes how she leads in the WNBA, too. On the court, she’s a defensive anchor, known for being in the right place at the right time. But she also helps defend the league’s values — and the struggle to preserve them as the league grows.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, she played a key role in the player-led campaign to unseat then-Sen. (and Dream co-owner) Kelly Loeffler, who criticized the league’s support of Black Lives Matter. Players backed the Rev. Raphael Warnock, helping him become Georgia’s first Black senator. Loeffler later sold the team.
Williams also joined the union’s executive committee ahead of the 2020 collective-bargaining agreement, a deal that raised the veteran minimum salary from $56,000 to $78,831.
Now she’s back at the bargaining table. Players haven’t fully spelled out what they’re asking for in the upcoming deal, but it’s clear they want a raise — and maybe even a shift in pay structure that gives them more access to the league’s growth.
Stepping into leadership has been an intentional process for Williams. People ask her to get involved, and once she does, they come to rely on her.
Sky guard Rachel Banham, the team’s union rep, leans on Williams often. When asked whether she understood a nuance in the league’s expansion plans, Banham shrugged: “Elizabeth probably knows — ’cause she’s smart.”
That she is.
And when her WNBA days are over? She’s still planning to become a doctor.
“I always get asked when I wanna go, because I’d be 40 [years old] in med school,” she said.
But if that’s starting late, so be it. For Williams, it will probably be the right place at the right time.
