The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Women's Basketball
- Title:
- Coordinator of Community Engagement
UT Women’s Athletics Hall of Honor inductee Fran Harris joined the Texas Women’s Basketball support staff as the Coordinator of Community Engagement in August of 2014.
Harris returned to the Forty Acres as an accomplished businesswoman, writer and broadcast personality with more than 20 years of experience in the sales, sports media and sports marketing industries.
The Dallas native was a student-athlete for hall-of-fame coach Jody Conradt from 1982-86 during the most successful era women’s basketball at The University of Texas. Harris was named Southwest Conference Player of the Year in 1984-85 and was team MVP of the historic 1985-86 squad, which became the first women’s college basketball team to go undefeated (34-0) and win the NCAA title.
Harris’ 1,798 career points at Texas currently ranks seventh in program history.
After graduating with a communications degree from UT, Harris played professional basketball in over 30 countries while based with teams in Italy and Switzerland. In between seasons of her professional playing career, Harris served as a graduate assistant on Conradt’s coaching staff during the 1988-99 season and attained a master of arts in journalism from The University of Texas in 1991.
Harris played two seasons in the WNBA. The first with the Houston Comets on the inaugural WNBA championship team in 1997, and the second with the Utah Starzz in 1998.
Harris’ many accomplishments in the business industry include over 15 years of experience as a corporate trainer and speaker, former account executive at Procter & Gamble (1991-95), 10 years of live broadcast experience with the ESPN family of networks (1994-2001; 2011-present), host of HGTV’s Home Rules (2010), ‘advice guru’ for ABC’s Good Morning America (2010-11), and adjunct professor of advertising at The University of Texas at Austin (2011-13).
In 2007, Harris was inducted to the UT Athletics Women’s Hall of Honor.
