Date: March 3, 2003
Topic: Business Exchange
Author: William Reed
Article ID: article_ema030303a

BLACK CEO FORCED OUT: U.S. Olympic Committee Head Lasted Just 16 Months

Lloyd Ward, the first African American to head the U.S. Olympic Committee, has resigned as its CEO, capping three months of turmoil that began with a conflict-of-interest investigation and led to the resignations of six other top officials. "In the hope that we can shift the focus back to the athletes and the ideals of the Olympic movement, I have decided to resign," Ward said in his forced resignation statement.

Ward's resignation isn't exactly traceable to "a Black thang". The USOC was in turmoil for years prior to Ward's tenure. It's a powerful force in the Olympic movement, with its athletes winning the most medals and US sponsors and TV networks providing the most money for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). But turf battles among paid staffers and volunteers within the 123-member board of directors have made the USOC dysfunctional and under scrutiny for many years.

Ward had been under fire since being accused of trying to steer Olympic business to a company with ties to his brother Robert. Lloyd Ward is said to have directed his staff to help brother Robert's Detroit-based Energy Management Technologies (EMT) garner a deal to supply generators for the 2003 Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic. According to the allegations, in April 2002 Ward directed the USOC international relations official to see him about a proposal involving EMT. After that meeting, the USOC introduced Dominican Republic officials to EMT with the intention that EMT be considered to supply the games‚ organizing committee with 53 micro-turbines at $4.6 million to provide standby power. No deal was made, but after that ethics investigation Ward was reprimanded and stripped of his $184,000 2002 bonus. Since then, a top sponsor threatened to pull out of a $10 million endorsement deal and Congress stepped into the investigation. The blow that toppled Ward came when Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Ted Stevens of Alaska said they might have found evidence of fraud at USOC.

Blacks have had a long presence in the Olympics. African government and social leaders have served on the board of the International Olympic Committee over many years, but whites have been the ones staging the IOC since the Roman Empire. Lloyd Ward, who earned $550,000 annually running the $100 million-a-year USOC operation, became the first Black CEO in October 2001. He headed Salt Lake City's $2 billion scandal-plagued 2002 Olympic Winter Games. A 56-year-old former CEO of the $4.5 billion Maytag Corp., Ward was a Big Ten college basketball player in the 1960s. He worked himself up the corporate ladder at Ford, Proctor & Gamble, Merrill Lynch and PepsiCo, making history when he became just the second Black to head a major corporation. He had a 15-month stint at the appliance manufacturer.

It should be said that Ward gave Congress and the USOC enough rope to hang him. After the executive committee reprimanded him in January, there were allegations he asked officials of the Salt Lake City Olympics to give preferential treatment to the man who built his house in Colorado Springs. He was also criticized for maintaining his membership at all-male Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters; and, he and his wife billed the USOC for over $115,000 for 2002 travel expenses.

Unlike other deposed CEOs, who leave with million-dollar severance packages, Ward agreed to depart with health insurance for up to 12 months and a laptop computer. While racism has not been cited in Ward's departure, the USOC has always been a place of political intrigue and turmoil, as paid staffers and volunteer directors jockey for positions of power. His resignation decision came four days after the USOC's 19-member executive committee discussed his job status in a conference call. USOC's revolving door has seen six presidents and CEOs leave since 2000. "It is no coincidence that the USOC has had 11 CEOs and 10 volunteer presidents since 1978," Ward said. "Clearly, competing interests within the USOC have placed its CEOs in an untenable, if not impossible role."

© 2002 William Reed - www.BlackPressInternational.com