USATF Announces Former Board Member as New CEO, by Toni Reavis, note by Larry Eder

Max Siegel was named the new CEO of USA Track & Field on Monday afternoon, April 22, 2012. It is early Tuesday morning in rainy old London, and I am packing for my return to Madison, Wisconsin tomorrow.

My phone has been ringing and the twitter world has been communicating. Sanya Richards Ross wished Max good luck. We did too.

Max Siegel, USATF’s new CEO, photo courtesy of USA Track & Field

I have met Max Siegel a half dozen times, for a few minutes. He seems sincere, has a good sense of humor and obviously understands marketing and sports marketing. Also, and this comes from my years of ad calls and marketing presentations, Max Siegel looks the part: fit, well dressed, positive and succesful, Max Siegel will walk into marketing groups and ad agencies and will be well received. Siegel gets it: he knows the talk, and can do the walk.

I have posted the observations of Toni Reavis, who is one of the most articulate writers on our sport, and his first observations on the process of naming a new CEO.

The truth is, we need a CEO who stays a while, can close and works at keeping his various constituencies in order. We also need a CEO who looks at all USA Track & Field does and focus on three things, not the many that will confront him on May 1, when he takes the position.

USATF ANNOUNCES FORMER BOARD MEMBER AS NEW CEO

by Toni Reavis

In a move that comes as no surprise, USA Track & Field announced today that its board of directors has selected 47 year-old Max Siegel,
a marketing executive and former USATF board member from Indianapolis,
to serve as its new CEO. USATF has been operating without a full-time
CEO since the board dismissed Doug Logan in September 2010 after a rocky two years at the helm. Chief Operating Officer Mike McNees
had been serving as interim CEO. Mr. Siegel becomes the fourth
chief executive officer in the organization’s history following Ollan Cassell (1980-1996), Craig Masback (1997-2008), and Doug Logan
(2008-2010). He will assume his duties on May 1st under a two-year
contract. Since USATF announced last month that it intended to hire a
new CEO before the June track & field trials in Eugene, Oregon,
many long-time observers of the sport surmised that the selection would
come from within the USATF family. And since Mr. Siegel had been a USATF
board member whose firm was hired last October to oversee the USATF
marketing effort going into the summer Olympics, he was widely expected
to be named to the CEO position. Read more of this post

Author

Larry Eder
Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys. Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."
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