Nancy Hogshead-Makar is an Olympic champion, a civil rights lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Champion Women, a non-profit providing legal advocacy for girls and women in sports.
In her first career, Nancy capped eight years as a world class swimmer at the 1984 Olympics, where she won three gold medals and one silver medal. Through her high school and collegiate careers, she was undefeated in dual meets.
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. Sports Illustrated ranked her as Florida’s 13th greatest athlete of the 20th Century, and Florida’s 3rd greatest woman athlete. She has been inducted into eleven different sports halls of fames, including the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.
As part of a successful second career, she was recently appointed to a Congressional Commission on the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee by Senator Maria Cantwell. The Commission will examine the Olympic Movement and recommend changes to Congress. She has led a ten-year effort to protect athletes from sexual abuse in club and Olympic sports, that is, sport not associated with schools.
She is co-Chair of the Committee to Restore Integrity to the USOPC, or “Team Integrity” where she galvanized the sport, child protection, and civil rights communities in support of a new federal law, the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and SafeSport Authorization Act, signed into law inFebruary 2018, and the Empowering Olympians, Para-Olympians and Amateur Athletes Act of 2020.
Along with her husband Scott Makar, a judge on Florida’s First District Court of Appeal, they have a son and twin daughters. They are continuously restoring their 1920s Mediterranean home.
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