Brenda G. Pitts, Professor Emeritus, is well known nationally and globally in sport business marketing and sport business management. Dr. Pitts was a professor at the University of Louisville, Florida State University, and Georgia State University. As an award-winning professor, she is among the first Research Fellows of both the North American Society for Sport Management and the Sport Marketing Association, and is the honored recipient of numerous awards, including the 2020 COSMA Hall of Fame Master Professor Award, 2012 and 2016 Diversity Award, the prestigious Dr. Earle F. Zeigler Scholar Award, Distinguished Sport Management Educator, and the Dr. Garth Paton Distinguished Service Award. She has delivered over 250 presentations at conferences around the world, and is published widely, including 27 books (some in different languages) and over 200 papers in such scholarly journals as Sport Management Education Journal, Journal of Sport Management, Sport Marketing Quarterly, Journal of Vacation Marketing, International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, Women in Sport and Physical Activity, International Journal of Sport Management, Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, Sport Management International Journal, Sport Management Review, and Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. 

Dr. Pitts loves and plays all kinds of sports. She played in the first Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL), was one of the first scholarship basketball players at the University of Alabama, and is an inductee in the Huntsville Sports Hall of Fame, the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and a nominee for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Putting research into action, her dissertation study on the first women’s basketball for the WBL was used by the WBCA in their decision to adopt the basketball nationally. A documentary film about this can be found on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTklCekY72s(link is external)). Every day, Dr. Pitts enjoys traveling the world and spending time with her wife, Melita, and playing with their furry kid – Blu, the cat.