#214 Olympic and World Cup Champion Mary Harvey: Protecting the Rights of Children in Sport

Apr 4, 2021

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Mary Harvey is currently the CEO for the Centre of Sports and Human Rights and has dedicated herself to making sport better for athletes of every age. She enjoyed an illustrious playing career in soccer, winning the 1991 World Cup and 1996 Olympic Gold with the US Women's National team, and since then has spent years in the corporate ranks and sport governance. She is A former senior executive at FIFA (2003-2008), where she became involved in the reform process at FIFA by launching the #WomeninFIFA campaign with Australian Moya Dodd. The campaign was successful in achieving gender inclusion as a core tenet of the reforms passed in 2016.

Mary has served as a sport envoy for the US State Department's Sports Diplomacy Division on several occasions, including missions to Iraq, Jordan, Canada and Mexico. On these missions, the key objective was engaging key stakeholders via sport outreach to promote acceptance and integration of diverse groups. Mary also serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Green Sports Alliance, an organization dedicated to leveraging the cultural and market influence of sports to inspire sports leagues, teams, venues, their partners and millions of fans to embrace renewable energy, healthy food, recycling, water efficiency, species preservation, safer chemicals and other environmentally preferable practices.

In our conversation today we discuss many of the issues in sports, such as the role of women in sport governance and the importance of investing in women's grassroots and professional sports, athlete activism and using their platform for good, the effect of COVID on children and sport, and whether this pause will revert back to the fundamental inequalities that existed pre pandemic, or whether we will be able to use this time to make important changes. There is a ton of great stuff here from a woman who has been a pioneer and trailblazer as an athlete and an executive, so buckle in.

Website: https://www.sporthumanrights.org/en

Podcast: https://www.sporthumanrights.org/en/resources/special-podcast-children-sport-and-covid19

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