Katelyn WestSenior Vice President and Assistant General CounselNational Basketball Association

Age: 40 (turned 40 in June)

Born: New York

Education: Middlebury College, B.A., English; minors in math and Italian; University of Michigan Law School, J.D.

Family: Spouse, Aaron; children, Teddy (4 1/2), Charlie (2)

You apparently haven’t lived until you’ve lawyered a collective-bargaining agreement after midnight.

Katelyn West, the NBA’s assistant general counsel, has been part of two after-hours CBA deals she’ll never forget, both of which are a large reason why she’s a Forty Under 40 honoree.

West has ascended at the league office due to her versatility and work ethic. Her initiation was the pandemic. Two years after she’d joined the NBA, COVID-19 threw sports off course, and West became immersed in the Orlando bubble.

She dealt with rules related to player compensation once the season, and became part of the NBA and players association working group that included Commissioner Adam Silver, NBPA Executive Director Michele Roberts and players such as Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook.

“I had been there for only two years and got thrown into the midst of this incredibly complicated negotiation in the middle of a world crisis,” West said.

The 2023 CBA negotiation was her next lockdown, of sorts. She was involved in proposal development, supported the oversight function of the NBA Labor Relations Committee and took part in face-to-face bargaining talks. But on the evening of the March 31 deadline that year, no deal was done.

“It will forever, ever, ever, ever be a memory of mine,” West said. “As folks around here say, ‘Deadlines make deals.’ And so on the 31st, we were in a conference room with the union, kind of meeting, caucusing, meeting, caucusing all day. We were getting pretty close to midnight and still didn’t have everything figured out. We signed a one-hour extension at midnight to try and get it done by 1 o’clock. Didn’t happen. We signed another hour extension at 1 o’clock to get it done by 2. Didn’t happen. We signed another hour extension to get it done by 3, and by 3 we had the deal done.

“Jeffrey Kessler has negotiated a ton of CBAs, and I remember him saying to me, like, ‘Oh gosh, you’ll forever remember your first CBA.’”

Her next marathon CBA was three Marches later, with the WNBA. She was in those eight consecutive days of sessions that lasted until dawn — away from her two young sons, but grinding to help the deal wind up.

“I was staying in the city at meetings till 5 in the morning, going home and trying to wake up to see my kids for an hour or two before school,” she said. “So it was a wild ride.”