Pat Williams
Pat Williams is the senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic. As one of America’s top motivational, inspirational, and humorous speakers, he has addressed employees from many of the Fortune 500 companies and the Million Dollar Round Table. After serving for seven years in the United States Army, Pat spent seven years in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, two as a minor league catcher and five in the front office. He also spent three years in the Minnesota Twins organization. Since 1968, he has been affiliated with teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, including the 1983 World Champion 76ers, and now the Orlando Magic, which he co-founded in 1987 and helped lead to the NBA finals in 1995. Twenty-three of his teams have gone to the NBA playoffs and five have made the NBA finals. In 1996, Pat was named as one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history by a national publication. Twelve of his former players have become NBA head coaches, while 17 have become assistant coaches. Pat and his wife, Ruth, are the parents of 19 children, including 14 adopted from four nations, ranging in age from 21 to 34. For one year, 16 of his children were all teenagers at the same time. Pat and his family have been featured in Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, The Wall Street Journal, Focus on the Family, New Man Magazine, plus all of the major television networks, The Maury Povich Show and Dr. Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power. Pat helps teach an adult Sunday school class at First Baptist Church of Orlando and hosts a weekly radio show. In the last 11 years, he has completed 40 marathons, including the Boston Marathon 11 times, and also climbed Mt. Rainier. He is a weightlifter, Civil War buff, and serious baseball fan. Pat was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, earned his bachelor’s degree at Wake Forest University, and his master’s degree at Indiana University. He has a doctorate in Humane Letters from Flagler University. He is a member of the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame after catching for the Deacon baseball team, including for the 1962 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship team. He is also a member of the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame.
