DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Center for SafeSport announced Benita Fitzgerald Mosley as its new CEO on Tuesday, placing the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in charge of rebooting an agency that has been plagued with problems over most of its nearly nine-year history.
Fitzgerald Mosley will start her job Feb. 1, saying in a statement provided to The Associated Press that it is “more than a job opportunity for me, it is a calling.
“We have an extraordinary opportunity to reimagine what excellence in athlete protection looks like,” she said. “And I am deeply confident that we can build something stronger, steadier, and more hopeful than ever before.”
The congressionally chartered center opened in 2017 in the wake of the mishandling of sex-abuse cases by the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and a number of other Olympic-related sports agencies.
“It’s made great strides in shifting sport culture toward athlete safety,” Fitzgerald Mosley said. “However, there is a continuing need to grow this impact, enhance efficiencies, and evolve the organization to fulfill its potential for athletes, survivors, and the entire sport community.”
The 64-year-old Fitzgerald Mosley has deep experience in the inner workings of Olympic administration.
She served as chief of sport performance at USA Track and Field from 2009-13 before moving to the U.S. Olympic Committee as its chief operating officer from 2013-16.
More recently, Fitzgerald Mosley was on the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics & Paralympics — a congressionally appointed panel that recommended some changes for the center after concluding in its report that “it became clearer with each new piece of evidence that SafeSport has lost the trust of many athletes.”
That was before revelations about the center’s hiring and firing of investigator Jason Krasley, a former police officer who was arrested for sex crimes he allegedly committed while in his cop job in Pennsylvania.
The center parted ways with CEO Ju’Riese Colon in April and embarked on a search that lasted more than six months and netted Fitzgerald Mosley to take SafeSport into its next chapter.
Fitzgerald Mosley is taking over an agency that has made a number of changes to investigative procedures in response to complaints about cases taking too long and not being considerate of the trauma felt by some of those who take complaints to the center.
“She is well-positioned to advance the Center’s mission as the organization completes its first nine years of operation and prepares for the next era,” Chicka Elloy, vice chair of the SafeSport board and head of its search committee, said in a statement announcing the hire.
Fitzgerald Mosley’s high point as an athlete came at the LA Olympics in 1984 when she became the first American woman to win the 100-meter hurdles. She was part of the 1980 team that did not travel to Moscow for those boycotted Games.
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