NBC Sports spoke with Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, the new U.S. Center for SafeSport CEO and 1984 Olympic 100m hurdles gold medalist, to discuss her role and why she was in Milan for the Olympics and the Paralympics.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
NBC Sports: Tell me a little bit about the U.S. Center for SafeSport, why it started and what its role is.
Fitzgerald Mosley: We are a federally chartered organization that really happened in the wake of some sexual misconduct issues within USA Gymnastics that were pretty widespread, caught the attention of the entire country, and, of course, of Congress. So, they passed a law in 2017 that founded the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
Since then, we have really three pillars: we adjudicate and respond to complaints that people file with our organization, which means that we process them, or we do the intake and we investigate those cases. We make a decision about whether to sanction that person. Then we have a centralized disciplinary database that houses, at this point, 2,500 names of people we’ve taken out of sport to make sport more safe. We cover the entire U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement in the United States. It’s our charter.
We also do education and research in the area of safeguarding or safe sport.
The third thing we do is hold organizations accountable. So all these national governing bodies, there’s 52 of them in the Olympic movement. We do some audit and compliance work with them to ensure that the policies that we set at SafeSport are being carried out and implemented at the local levels.
NBC Sports: You were recently named CEO of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, just starting a couple of months ago. Why did you take this job, what are your goals, and also what challenges does the center face?
Fitzgerald Mosley: This is not a job for me. This is a calling. I feel like it’s a calling to use my experience as an Olympic athlete and combine that with my business experience leading organizations throughout my career. I’ve been involved with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, my NGB (USA Track and Field) and more.
I feel like I bring some unique talents and strengths and experience to the role. My personal mission is to help people and organizations win gold medals in life and business. I feel like this is a perfect opportunity to fulfill my own life’s mission.
You can imagine that U.S. Congress just decides there’s going to be this brand-new organization, gives it these these responsibilities. No one in the world has ever done this before.
I was a hurdler, so the hurdles that (the Center for SafeSport) has faced over the last nine years (since its creation), we’re at a point in our maturity where it’s time to really look at all of these systems and processes that we’ve been doing and ensuring that they’re serving our mission to the best of its ability.
So my goal, particularly over the next 12 to 18 months, is that we’re doing a stakeholder engagement, both internally with our staff, but also throughout the Olympic movement, to get as much input as possible and then build a strategy and an operating plan that meets the needs of those individuals that we are responsible to: the athletes, of course, first and foremost, our staff, the parents, the national governing bodies and more.
So, how do we ensure that the now 150 people that work at SafeSport are supported in the best way they can, so they can then support the athletes in the best way that we can?
NBC Sports: You’ve been in Italy a lot this winter. Tell me about why you’re currently at the Paralympic Games.
Fitzgerald Mosley: We were at the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games, really, for two main reasons. The first is really to pilot a program, to do intake or to take any kind of reports of misconduct — emotional, physical, sexual misconduct — on the ground.
The Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games are a bit different than your normal everyday practice, even a national competition, or even a regular international competition. There’s so many different nuances that are different.
As we prepare for LA28, we really wanted to get a better sense of what’s it like. How can we best support Team USA on the ground? So we have people from our response and resolution team on the ground doing intake from athletes and other participants within the U.S. here.
The second thing is, we held two symposia, safeguarding symposiums, if you will. The first one was hosted during the Olympic Games. The second one was hosted during the Paralympic Games.
We’re all in this together. Even though, in many ways, the U.S. Center for SafeSport is now nine years ahead of many other organizations, there are others, like in Canada and here in Italy and Australia and the UK that are doing a lot in the area of safeguarding. But there are a lot of countries who are still just entering this space for the first time.
It’s our opportunity, because athletes travel internationally, go back and forth and compete. Coaches and medical staff and trainers go back and forth. So there are many people that we have jurisdiction over that are crossing state and country lines all the time. The best thing is for us to collaborate. So when we have a case where we know that individual may have gone from one country, come to us, or vice versa, that we’re sharing that information to ensure that athletes are safe, not only here in the United States, but everywhere.
It’s really, really an important thing to have this open dialog. We also feel a sense of responsibility, since we have been at this for nine years. We don’t have it right. We aren’t perfect, but we do have a treasure trove of experience now and information that we feel obligated to share with the world. We’re going to find efficient ways of doing that, either through our learning management system online or hosting maybe a workshop or two in our country, where people can come and learn from us.
But we do feel some sense of obligation, because the more athletes feel safe and supported, the better off they’ll be, the better their experience is, and, I think, the more sport can do what we all know it can do and change the world.
NBC Sports: In one of the symposiums, something specific that was mentioned was a guidebook that parents of young kids who are in sport can access online. That leads me to my next question, which is more about grassroots. We talk about the Olympians and the Paralympians, and obviously that’s very important, paramount for the Center for SafeSport. But what about along the lines of grassroots and things that people watching this can can take into account for themselves, to better educate themselves, and to better help their community of sport?
Fitzgerald Mosley: There are 52 national governing bodies, there are 13 million participants in those sports, specifically. Then there’s millions of others participating in clubs and parks and rec, in high school and college sports.
So it really is important through our education and training activities to both serve those in the Olympic movement and prepare them, but also to prepare the parents and the young people who are participating so their awareness is raised as to the type of behavior that makes sense, and how to best protect and preserve their safety.
So we have a guidebook for parents watching the Olympics with their kids to talk about that interaction between the coach and the athlete, or between and among athletes, or between and among countries even, and use that as a jumping off point to have important conversations about, well, gosh, you high-five your teammates after a point as well. What does that feel like? What does that look like? What does that teamwork mean for you?
It’s really a jumping-off point to understand discussions, maybe even if there’s a coach yelling at a player, what that looks like and how that child may have experienced that themselves.
It’s important for parents to open that dialog, so if and when something unfortunate might happen with that young person, they feel comfortable that there’s an open dialog with the person who loves them the most in the world, their parent or guardian.
NBC Sports: You mentioned the LA28 Games coming up. How important is a home Games for the Center for SafeSport? Obviously, we know in the broader Olympic and Paralympic world how important it is and how many resources are being devoted to it. But for a home Games for the Center of SafeSport, and in particular your role, what does that signify? What points of emphasis are there or measures you hope to have in place by the 2028 Games?
Fitzgerald Mosley: I won a gold medal in Los Angeles, so that city is near and dear to my heart. They’ll have track and field in the Coliseum once again for the third Olympic Games after ’32, ’84 and now in 2028. So it’s exciting for me personally for that reason, but we want to bring a gold-medal athlete safety plan to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
We started that process already because we have a PlaySafe LA program that we’ve partnered with LA28 on. All the young people in the parks and rec department within the City of Los Angeles and County of Los Angeles, and their coaches and other participants, have access to our SafeSport training. That’s the most grassroots you get, right, is participating in a local rec program.
Also, the pilot program we’re doing here in Milan, we hope to roll out in a more extensive basis, so that we have a presence in the Olympic village, or villages, in Los Angeles and Paralympic village and villages, that we’re integrated in a more substantial way into the operations as the Games unfold in Los Angeles.
NBC Sports: Is there anything else that the Center for SafeSport is prioritizing right now that we haven’t talked about, or anything else you’d like to highlight?
Fitzgerald Mosley: The mission of SafeSport is to advance the safety and well-being of athletes across the American sports culture.
Even though our remit by Congress is narrow from the Olympic movement, no one, at least the athletes I know — as an athlete myself, I could participate in rec programs. I participated in high school. I went to the University of Tennessee and competed at the college level, was on Team USA — nobody just stays within one area, right? There’s lots of crossover.
The more we can convince professional leagues and the colleges and universities and high schools and the parks and rec all across the country that this is a gold standard for athlete safety that we’re promoting through the U.S. Center for SafeSport, I think the better off everyone will be.
