Anita L. DeFrantz
President, Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles
Anita DeFrantz is president and board member of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, an organization founded with the profits from the 1984 Olympic Games to serve youth through sports and to increase public understanding of the role of sports in society. She is also one of the most powerful women in sports, serving as a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee and a vice president of FISA, the International Rowing Federation. She is a former vice president of the IOC and chairs the Committee’s Women and Sport Commission.
DeFrantz began her rowing career at Connecticut College and capitalized on it quickly, earning a bronze medal at the 1976 Olympic Games and qualifying for the 1980 Games, although the United States boycotted those Games.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Law, DeFrantz served as a lawyer for the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia from 1977 to 1979 while training with the Vesper Boat Club. From 1981 to 1985, she was the Vice-President of the Organizing Committee of the Games of the XXIII Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1984. Following the Games, she joined AAFLA as a staff member and was named president in 1987.
Since then, she has been an advocate for the Olympic Movement and for women in sports. Honored by the NCAA with its Silver Anniversary Award, DeFrantz was the keynote speaker at the association’s convention in 2000. She has served as a member of the USOC’s Board of Directors and is President and board member of Kids In Sports. She is a board member of the Western Asset Trust, Inc., the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia and the Los Angeles Sports Council.
Photo
Download high resolution photo here
