26th Anniversary Kate Stoneman Day

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Miriam M. Netter ’72 Stoneman Award Recipient and Keynote Speaker:

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, J.D.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar is an Olympic champion, a civil rights lawyer, and CEO of Champion Women, a non-profit providing legal advocacy for girls and women in sports. Focus areas include equal play, such as traditional Title IX compliance in athletic departments, sexual harassment, abuse and assault, as well as employment, pregnancy and LGBT discrimination within sport. 

Hogshead-Makar led an eight-year effort to protect athletes from sexual abuse in club and Olympic sports, that is, sport not associated with schools. Most recently, she galvanized the sport, child protection, and civil rights communities in support of a new federal law, the SafeSport Act, signed into law in February, 2018. Near-term work includes amending the Ted Stevens Olympic Sports Act, the statute governing the power-structure in the U.S. Olympic movement. Ideally, athletes would not be dependent on the benevolence of the USOC Board and executives; that athlete authority would be part of the architecture of the Olympic movement, including finances, the ability to speak out about abuse without retaliation, and stronger gender equity protections. 

As an internationally recognized legal expert on sports issues, Hogshead-Makar has testified in Congress numerous times on the topic of gender equity in athletics, and written numerous scholarly and lay articles, She serves as an expert witness in Title IX cases and writes amicus briefs representing athletic organizations in precedent-setting litigation, and is a frequent guest on national news programs on the topic, including CNN, ESPN, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC and 60 Minutes. Her book, co-authored with Andrew Zimbalist, Equal Play, Title IX and Social Change, has received acclaim since its release by Temple University Press. She was the lead author of Pregnant and Parenting Student-Athletes; Resources and Model Policies, published by the NCAA.  

Hogshead-Makar is a frequent keynote speaker, and regularly contributes to shaping policy for girls and women. She has served on the NCAA Task Force on Gender Equity, and on the boards of Equality League, the Association of Title IX Administrators, the Aspen Institute’s Sport and Society, the One Love Foundation, and the World Olympians Association. From 2003 - 2012 she was the Co-Chair of American Bar Association Committee on the Rights of Women. She was elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport. Sports Illustrated Magazine listed her as one of the most influential people in the history of Title IX.

Hogshead-Makar has received significant awards recognizing her commitment to girls and women in athletics, from the International Olympic Committee, the National Organization for Women, the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators, the Alliance of Women Coaches, SHAPE America, and the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award. She has been inducted into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame, the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame, the National Consortium for Academics and Sports Hall of Fame, the National Association for Sports and Physical Education Hall of Fame, and she has been awarded an honorary doctorate. 

Hogshead-Makar capped eight years as a world class swimmer at the 1984 Olympics, where she won three gold medals and one silver medal. Through high school and college dual meets she was undefeated. Major awards include the Nathan Mallison Award, given to Florida’s outstanding athlete, and the prestigious Kiphuth Award, given to America’s best all-around swimmer nationally. Hogshead-Makar has been inducted into eleven halls of fame, including the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.

She and her husband Scott Makar, a judge on Florida’s First District Court of Appeal, have a son and twin daughters. They are continuously restoring their 1920s Mediterranean home.