Monday, January 23, 2012

USATF Board welcomes three new members

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INDIANAPOLIS – USA Track & Field’s Board of Directors has welcomed athlete and activist Jackie Joyner-Kersee (Lincoln HS, East St. Louis 1980;UCLA 1980-1985), sports attorney Eve Wright and network television executive Mickey Carter to its ranks. Wright and Carter assume independent seats, while Joyner-Kersee takes the board’s High Performance seat. Board member Steve Miller has been elected to the position of board vice chair.

“With Jackie, Eve and Mickey, we are bringing aboard three individuals who have achieved the highest levels of professional accomplishment in sport and in corporate America,” Chairman and President Stephanie Hightower said. “They all fit the profile of what any organization would want in their board members: successful, accomplished, and with insight from many areas that will add texture and depth to our leadership.”

A member of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, Joyner-Kersee won three gold, one silver and two bronze medals in track and field, spanning four Olympic Games. She set multiple records during her career and still holds the world record in the heptathlon and the American record in the long jump. Recognized by Sports Illustrated as the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, she was a two-time winner of the Jesse Owens Award. Since retiring from the sport, she has been a community activist via the Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation and as a cofounder in 2008 of Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization of professional athletes who get involved in charitable causes and inspire millions of non-athletes to volunteer and support their communities. The UCLA graduate also works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Farm Foundation to promote the availability and consumption of healthy foods by Americans and is a nationally sought-after speaker.

Wright is Vice President and Associate General Counsel of the Miami HEAT, where she negotiates and drafts marketing and sponsorship agreements with companies ranging from Comcast to American Airlines, Verizon, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, United Healthcare, Sony and countless others. She also negotiates media rights as well as agreements for staging concerts in the AmericanAirlines Arena. She previously was senior director of business affairs at the LPGA, where among other duties she handled marketing opportunities, contracts and governance issues. A graduate of DePauw University and the University of Indiana School of Law, Wright has been recognized among the National Bar Association’s 40 Under 40 Best Advocates and has received the Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Young Leader Award.

A communications, corporate, entertainment and sports attorney, Carter is vice president of national accounts for the Fox News Channel in New York, where he manages relationships with cable and satellite companies, negotiates agreements and leads the account sales team. He previously was senior director of programming for Time Warner Cable, worked as in-house counsel for Zomba Recording Corporation and was chief operating officer for Indianapolis-based SCA Sports & Entertainment, where he handled personnel, budgets and strategic planning as well as serving as a talent agent for entertainers and an agent for professional athletes. In the 1990s he was a captain in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, serving as a criminal prosecutor at Ft. Leonard Wood. Carter is a graduate of Harvard University and Notre Dame Law School.

Joyner-Kersee, Wright and Carter were selected through USATF’s board nominating process, with a call for independent-seat nominations being sent to USATF members in the fall. USATF’s High Performance Division forwarded three candidates for their open seat. All nominations were sent to USATF’s Nomination and Governance Panel – chaired by Darlene Hickman and including B.J. Palma, Anne Timmons, Jeff Hartwig, Bob Larsen, Joanna Hayes and Edrick Floreal – who put forward Joyner-Kersee, Carter and Wright. USATF’s board of directors accepted the nominations and the three took part in their first board meeting on January 18.

For more on the USATF Board of Directors, visit http://www.usatf.org/About/Committees/Board-of-Directors.aspx

About USA Track & Field

USA Track & Field (USATF) is the National Governing Body for track & field, long-distance running and race walking in the United States. USATF encompasses the world's oldest organized sports, the World's #1 Track & Field Team, the most-watched events at the Olympics, the #1 high school and junior high school participatory sport, and more than 30 million adult runners in the United States: www.usatf.org.





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