"It was really Alex Morgan's baby," Bird says. "She calls, explains the whole thing and where I landed was, 'I complain about lack of coverage [of women's sports] so why not put my money where my mouth is?' "

Togethxr is a platform that champions women, women's sports and women's perspectives through original content production, merchandise and brand partnerships. Among its projects so far is "Surf Girls Hawai'i," a documentary series for Prime Video produced with Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine.

It's an ideal project for Bird, who remains as passionate as ever about women's sports — and learned firsthand the systemic challenges that women athletes face attracting media coverage, marketing resources and advertising revenues. She notes, though, that acknowledging and embracing its identity as a league composed predominantly of Black women as well as a large percentage of LGBTQ+ players has only helped the WBNA grow its fan base in recent years.

Indeed, Bird can casually cite statistics to support her cause and underscore the difference an effort like Togethxr makes. Like the fact that, since the platform's founding, the share of all sports coverage devoted to women's sports has increased from 4% to 16%. Or the studies that show fandom in male sports is often generational — people inherit their favorite sports and teams from their parents — while for women's sports, which tend to be newer, it's driven by the stories that enable fans to feel a connection with the athletes.

This understanding of the power of storytelling was one of the reasons Bird, who admits she is "a little more on the private side," agreed to open up her life to a documentary crew.

"Women's sports, in general, don't get the platform to tell their own stories very often," says actor Jay Ellis, who was an executive producer on "In the Clutch" under his Black Bar Mitzvah banner with Aaron Bergman. "Sue, I think, has really stepped up to this responsibility of understanding that her story means so much not only to basketball, but to young women and to [the] LGBTQ [community] and to reproductive rights and civil rights."

Ellis continues, "She's really stepped into this vocal advocate [role] knowing that she's got to be out there talking about it because in her doing it, it creates space for other women to be able to tell their stories."

Even the story of getting "In the Clutch" financed and sold for distribution mirrored what women's athletes have long had to endure from the media.

"A lot of people said no" when they were pitching the film, says Ellis. "We were often told that nobody cared about women's sports or nobody cared about women's basketball and nobody cared about the WNBA. And it was crazy, because at the same time, you have Sue on the cover of major magazines."

Deepening her commitment to storytelling, in 2022 Bird launched a production company, A Touch More, with fiancée and retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe under the Togethxr umbrella. The company shares a name with the live video series the pair did on Instagram during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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