SportsTravel Catches Up With U.S. Center for SafeSport CEO Benita Fitzgerald Mosley

MILAN — Benita Fitzgerald Mosley has stepped into a job that many in the sports-events industry think is one of the hardest: CEO of the U.S. Center for SafeSport. Established by U.S. Congressional order following several high-profile athlete abuse scandals in the Olympic and Paralympic movement, the center is the only independent organization aimed at ending sexual, physical and emotional abuse in U.S. Olympic and Paralympic sport. Among other responsibilities, the center sets safety policies, and receives, investigates and resolves complaints of abuse and misconduct. It also serves as an educational resource for sports organizations at all levels, from recreational sports organizations to professional leagues.

Mosely took over after Ju’Riese Colon departed the organization last year. But she’s no stranger to the Olympic movement. At the 1984 Olympic Games, she won she won the gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles, becoming the first Black woman to do so in that event. Since then, she’s carved a career in sports administration. She served as USA Track & Field’s chief of sports performance at London 2012, where Team USA collected 29 medals. She has held a senior executive role with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee as chief of organizational excellence and served as CEO of Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA. And she worked for LeagueApps, a youth sports technology, as head of community and impact.

SportsTravel caught up with Mosley just weeks into her new role while she is in Milan overseeing a symposium on safe sport and making new relationships for the organization. She discusses her interest in the position, the challenges ahead and messages she hopes all event organizers can take away from the center’s work, whether they are in the Olympic movement or not.

SportsTravel: You’ve just started your new role and you’re already here in Milan. Why was it important for you to be here on site during the Games?

Mosley: For me personally, there’s no better place in the Olympic movement than to be at the Games, to see all kinds of stakeholders and leaders all together in one place. So, for me, this is my first official week on the job, and I get to be amongst athletes, the IOC, the USOPC, national governing bodies, to be able to interact with them, in more of a human, social way.

But I’ve also been doing some media interviews, I have some meetings set up, and it’s just the best place to be the first week on the job. I had the very good fortune of starting in January, but the tradeoff didn’t happen between me and (interim CEO April Holmes), officially until February 1st. And so I’ve gotten to get my feet under me a little bit, I got a better understanding of what we do, learned something about my team, got some of these stakeholder engagements in place. But now, having been armed with a little information, I’m a bit dangerous. I’m able to have more informed conversations with the individuals that I run across here at the Games. I’m open to having meetings.

SportsTravel: Who else are you here with this week?

Mosley: I’m also here with my team. This is the most engagement we’ve had at an Olympic Games. We brought a small contingent to the Paris Olympics, but we’re piloting a program to see what it’s like to potentially do intake of potential complaints here at the Games — during the Games, as they happen. And you can’t replicate this environment anyplace else. Maybe a world championship, but still, most of the time, you’re staying in a hotel, it’s not necessarily a big village. What happens prior to your competition and then post competition when people are celebrating, reveling, the travel, out of your comfort zone. It’s different than just going to practice or a meet.

So we’re learning what it’s like to be in this environment and where athletes have their challenges with regard to safeguarding and safe sport. We’re going to take those learnings back with us and then apply them in a broader sense when we go LA28.

SportsTravel: That’s interesting. That’s an ambitious plan for having an intake program while the Games are taking place.

Mosley: Yes. I think we want to be where the athletes are and where they need us most. And we get to assess that just a little bit. We have some people in Cortina, people here in Milan. It’s not a large staff, just a handful of us that are here. But it’s people from our response and resolution team that do this on an ongoing basis. And so they have those sensitivities with regard to intake that you would need to have. We’re also doing a safeguarding symposium.

SportsTravel: Tell me more about that.

Mosley: We will have 75 to 100, maybe more. I think there’s a huge appetite for various NGBs, federations, as well as countries to come together and really talk about this topic that’s becoming more and more central to the athlete experience, not only in United States, but around the world. This is our opportunity to share what we’re doing, but also to spur conversation about what are those best practices? How are people implementing those kind of safeguards and guidelines in their own respective organizations? I think it is really important, because the more we can learn, the better off we’ll be in the United States.

SportsTravel: Who are your international counterparts? Are there other organizations equivalent to what we’ve built in the United States when it comes to safe sport?

Mosley: There are some countries, yes. Thankfully in North America, Canada also has stood up. I had a great meeting with His Royal Highness Prince Faisal from Jordan the other day who’s leading the IOC safeguarding working group. And he explained ways in which the IOC is taking a more of a leadership role with national Olympic committees and international federations, and providing greater training, adapting that training at a high-level certification model, but also in a more accessible, shorter-term education model, and what that might look like for countries who may not be able to stand up their own, but might need to rely on IOC support. So they’re still learning and building as they go. And we’ll learn from each other. This symposium is an opportunity for us to really get a better sense of what’s happening around the world. Because we’ve been kind of in our own cocoon, if you will, in the United States, and that’s OK. We’re the first and only in the United States. But I think we only get better when we hear what others are doing.

SportsTravel: This is one of the most difficult jobs in the Olympic movement. What drew you to it?

Mosley: The thought never occurred to me when I saw that Ju’Riese was leaving. I just thought, I wonder who’s going to take that job, right? And then a few months later, Korn Ferry was hired to do the search, and they reached out to me, and I said I’ll throw my hat in there and see what happens. But the more I got to know the board, the more I got to understand what the role really was and what the challenge is and the opportunities there were, the more interested I got. You may think you might be qualified, but the circumstances have to align too.

I understood that having an athlete background was really important. I was on the commission on the state of U.S. Olympics, a former national governing body executive, USOPC executive. I’m an athlete, but I’m a parent also. So, we’re safeguarding to make sure your athlete and your child is safe. There’s really no more and bigger priority for me as a parent. My daughter is still competing. She’s a senior at the University of Maryland on the track team. I’m the mother hen in some cases. I’m always thinking about where she is and whether she’s safe. So, I bring all of that to this job, the passion that I bring is across all those areas.

SportsTravel: By the very nature of the center, you can have a challenging relationship with the NGBs. What is your message to the governing bodies about how you want to work with them, or what that relationship might look like moving forward?

Mosley: I have had the pleasure of speaking with both Brendan Quirk (at USA Cycling) and Aron McGuire (at USA Bobsled/Skeleton), the chair and vice chair of the NGB Council in the past week or so. And they’re kind enough to give me some grace as I ramp up in this new role, But they have some very clear, I won’t say expectations, but ideas about where we can collaborate. And one of the biggest ones is around education and prevention. I think that’s true, too.

Speaking with (USOPC CEO) Sarah Hirshland, they are putting athlete safety and well-being at the center of the American sports culture, certainly within the Olympic movement, but across the board. I think this is a common goal and ethos among all of us. I like to think about where can we work best together? How do we highlight those opportunities and that collaboration, knowing that we have a very particular remit, as indicated and required by Congress. We may or may not always see eye to eye on how we execute against that. But we’re going to do our best to bring others along with us and to work collaboratively.

SportsTravel: Lastly, that remit you mentioned is focused on the Olympic and Paralympic movement. But as you know, the universe of event organizers and people organizing sporting events is much larger. What would you say to event organizers of all kinds, even if they’re not in the Olympic movement, about how much effort they should be putting toward the key issue that the center looks at, the safety and well-being of athletes competing?

Mosley: We also have a lot more investors, private and otherwise, that are investing not just in youth sports but sports in general. I would say, there’s a few reasons. It’s the right thing to do, obviously, to put athlete safety at the forefront. It should be (key) to an athlete’s experience, within sport, at the very lowest level of peewee football, and Little League, and youth soccer, all the way up to the Olympic and Paralympic movement and professional sports. Whether an athlete is safe, and secure and supported should be the baseline for everyone. All the benefits of sport that accrue to an individual that participates happens when that athlete feels safe. We want those positive benefits to accrue. And we have to do that by creating a safe environment.

I feel like, yes, our remit is the Olympic and Paralympic movement exclusively. However, from a prevention and education standpoint, you want that to go as wide as possible. We need to have equity, and need to have some consistent messaging, training and prevention across different entities. When people say, oh, it’s the Olympic movement, yes, but these kids aren’t just in the Olympic movement vertical. They don’t even know for the most part if an organization is in or out of the Olympic movement, just that one might require safe sport and the other one may not. And we think these athletes, and these parents, and these families, deserve to have the safest environment possible, even though we may not oversee or be responsible for all the organizations. I think we owe it to these parents, and the kids, to provide the best environment possible.