Heroes in Business - Mary Davis, CEO Special Olympics International

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Dream big. Mary Davis, CEO Special Olympics International is interviewed by David Cogan, celebrity host Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.  

up in the sky look it's captivating it's energizing it's alliances heroes alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs investors ceos inventors leaders celebrities and startups where our heroes in business align now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. That's right. I had somebody leave feedback saying, how am I flying in? Well, you know what? When you interview the people that I interview and we share these stories, you're on a natural high and that enables you to fly on into anywhere you want to go. And I just want to, again, thank our loyal listeners, our new listeners, too. But thank you for the feedback we continue to have when I hit on the CEO of Unilever. So make sure that you go to alliances.com.

That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. You know why. It's the only place where entrepreneurs align. Well, I'm very honored for our next guest today. She is the CEO of, are you ready for this? Special Olympics International. She can be reached at specialolympics.org. Welcome to the show, Mary Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dave, for having me. It's a real honor and pleasure. Now, this is great. Now, I think that, you know, everybody's pretty much Special Olympics, it's a household name. I mean, it is a household name. I think pretty much everybody I know

knows Special Olympics. But I think what we don't know really is the scope and the size of Special Olympics. So can you help us understand that? Yes, indeed, David. And it is a household name, particularly in the United States. But once you go outside the United States, we have still a lot of work to do in raising awareness about the work that we do. We're in over about 200 countries around the world and we cater for over 6 million athletes. Those are people with intellectual disability and we have a huge number of unified partners that play alongside our athletes as well. I can talk more about that later. Of course, we have the big events like the World Games every four, well, every two years, alternating between Winter Games and Summer Games.

But what a lot of people don't know is that we organize over 120,000 events annually. And these are in communities all over the world. We are a grassroots organization. We're year round. We're not for the best or the greatest. Yes, we are for the best and the greatest, but we're really for our ethos is for the best that you can be. So all of our athletes have the opportunity to be participants, to win in their own category, and to be the very best that they can be. And our program empowers and creates an environment whereby those athletes can be the best that they can be. Absolutely. And again, what you do is just so valuable to the communities. But Mary, how in the world with all of these events that are going on and multiple ones, and not just within the same location, but internationally all over, some at the same time and so on, how do you manage

all of it? Well, we're very fortunate to have over a million volunteers who work across all of our programs. And these are people who have another full time job, but who give of their services, who give of themselves to make change happen in the world, quite frankly, because that's what they're doing. And I started out as a volunteer myself. I was a teacher by profession, started out as a volunteer. And then after 10 years being a volunteer, became a staff member. And once you get involved as a volunteer, it's very difficult to turn your back on a program like Special Olympics because it fundamentally changes something inside yourself that sometimes it can be difficult to describe. But when you see the joy and the abilities and the resilience of Special Olympics athletes, and you understand the barriers that they have to overcome

to be the best that they can be and how hard they work at that, you realize just how special it is to be in their midst and to see them as leaders. We say they are leaders in our revolution and our revolution is a very peaceful revolution, but it's a revolution of inclusion. And we will not stop until every community has an inclusion mindset

and ensures that people with intellectual disability are accepted and respected as part of everyday life. That's all they look for. That's all we all seek for, that we have a sense of belonging and acceptance. Now, when you started off as a volunteer, I'm sure you never thought in a million years you would become the CEO of Special Olympics International. So talk to us about kind of how that path or that road ended up happening and what it's like now coming from, I mean, I don't want to say bottom of the, you know, because it's not. Every position is so valuable and stuff. But coming in strictly as a volunteer or two, leadership role, and again, with the hundreds of events and all over the world, 200 plus countries. I mean, how do you manage it all?

You know, not from the fact of coming from that. How did you make that path? Yeah, well, first of all, all of our volunteers, we respect them so highly because of the work they do. They're absolutely phenomenal. And there is no way we could achieve what we do achieve every day in Special Olympics without their help. And next to the athletes and their families and their families, many, many cases are volunteers as well. That's what empowers us and enable us to do our job. So, yeah, coming from volunteer to CEO in my wildest dreams, I would never have thought that when I started out as a volunteer with Special Olympics. I mean, back then, and that was in the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, just out of college, I saw the possibilities of Special Olympics and changing

lives for people. And I was very much influenced by the founder of Special Olympics, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who came to my country in Ireland. And she just said, you've got to do this. You've got to get involved. You've got to provide opportunities for people with intellectual disability, provide training, etc. And so we did. And I just said, yeah, let's do whatever needs to be done. And that's how I got started. Now we see that Special Olympics has pivoted because back then in the late 70s, early 80s, it was an organization for people. So delivering a service to people. Now it's a movement of leaders. Our athletes are leaders and they're delivering now a great service to the rest of the population in just demonstrating how organizations and governments and companies and communities can be more inclusive. So, you know, a lot of a lot of change has happened in that time. So I went on from to

answer your question, I went on from being a volunteer to being the first chief executive of Special Olympics in Ireland. And at that stage, we wanted to create awareness. We wanted to build a strong, robust organization. We want to be known nationwide. So we said, well, how can we do that? How can we achieve all this? And we said, OK, let's bid for a World Games. Let's set our sights really, really high. And so we did. And we were successful in winning the bid to host those games. We did that in 2003.

And I became the chief executive of that organization. That was just an amazing opportunity we had 165 countries come we had 10,000 athletes and coaches to a very small island and you know thousands of family members and members of the international press and media. And really that experience transformed Ireland as a country in terms of its attitude towards inclusion. And communities had the opportunity to host Special Olympics athletes from all these 165 countries in their own local community. They stayed in people's houses. So people really got to experience the joy that I had experienced as a volunteer all those years ago, that they got to experience that firsthand.

And it fundamentally changed the way we think since then in Ireland. After that, I became the managing director and president of Special Olympics Europe Eurasia. And now I have not just one country, but 58 countries to try also and provide opportunities and change mindsets. And from there, I got a call one day by our chairman, Tim Shriver, to invite me to come to Washington as the CEO. So there you go. So isn't it great? I think inspiration for for for any young person, because when I started in Special Olympics, I was just straight, as I said, straight out of college in my early 20s. And, you know, to know that you can become

the CEO of an organization. I think that's really inspiring for many young people today. Absolutely. And you're very inspiring. And that's what we're having here today, because you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. So make sure you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. We have with us live, in person, now online, Mary Davis, CEO of Special Olympics International, and she could be reached at specialolympics.org. Mary, I volunteered for Special Olympics when I was in my fraternity in college. And it was the first time that I was exposed to what Special Olympics is. And I have to tell you, I was so touched. I was tearing up at the event. There were so many things that just

touched me. But I want to know from you with the longevity of the career that you've had with Special Olympics, again, starting off as a volunteer, now CEO of Special Olympics International, if there was one or two moments that touched you the most having been involved, what were those? Well, there were lots and lots of moments, obviously, David, that touched me. But first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for volunteering for Special Olympics and your story. I hear that story every day from so many volunteers around the world. So I'm thrilled that you had the opportunity to experience firsthand. And you realize that what I'm saying is truly authentic, that it actually does happen.

Something fundamentally changes inside you when you have that experience. But yeah, well, just working on the ground was probably the most fulfilling part of my time. Although in every role that I served it was incredibly fulfilling but when you're when you're there on the ground in the swimming pool on the um on the playing field you know in the gymnasium wherever it is and you see the fundamental change that occurs once you provide the skills and the opportunities for our Special Olympics athletes,

then you realize that that's a very precious moment for you and to be involved in such an amazing organization. Another great just highlight for me was one of the athletes an athlete called rita lawler she was a gymnast that i coached and we went to the 1989 world games and rita qualified and she was a super little gymnast and she won the all-around competition and I really did cry my heart out that day and with pride with pride and with joy to see her and how hard she had struggled and worked and what she had to overcome to do what she did and to go back to Ireland with the all-around medal was just incredible. And for me, as her coach, I was so, so proud of her achievements. And, you know, she will say that in her life, she had experienced a lot of negative things and, you know, perhaps some bullying along the way and people, you know,

know, perhaps some bullying along the way and people, you know, making fun and mocking. But through her accomplishments and achievements in the Special Olympics movement, people just looked at her in a completely different light. And they saw her as somebody that was capable of so much and that has achieved so much, somebody that was capable of so much and that has achieved so much, which she had in her life, because she went on to work in full-time employment in a company or in a hotel, whereas she'd worked in sheltered employment before that. And she went from sheltered living to working in an apartment. And she went on to write her own book called Moving On. And all of that, she would say, was because of what she had learned through participating and her involvement with the Special Olympics program.

We hear a lot about this,, brands wanting to be purpose-driven and, you know, this whole purpose-driven drive and having companies and brands, you know, wanting to be that. So what kind of advice maybe can you give to C-suite executives really about what's required for brands, right, to be purpose-driven? Well, the greatest advice I would give them is choose to include. Simple, but not so easy to do. Because oftentimes when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we're talking about, you know, we're talking about gender, we're talking about race, and we're talking about ethnicity, or we might be talking about people with physical challenges, but seldom do we include people with intellectual

disabilities. And if workplaces and CEOs could only realize the difference that it would make to have an employee with intellectual disability on your team. It just makes sense. Workplaces that are fully inclusive and that are diverse, we all know they're more profitable, they're more productive, higher morale exists amongst their employees. And I've seen this over and over again with many of the companies we work with, whether it's United, whether it's Toyota, whether it's Bank of America, Gallagher Insurance, who all have embraced this idea of true authentic is what I would say workplace inclusion. You know, it's not sports washing. It's not using it to, you know, to improve reputation or something. It's a real true wanting to be more inclusive. And Special Olympics are the leaders. We definitely own that space in terms of teaching, in terms of our

athletes being the teachers of inclusion. They know better than most because they've been marginalized. They've been excluded. They've been bullied. They know what it's like to feel that sense of belonging. And they can teach that. And we've spent a lot of time with many companies engaging with them and our athletes being the real teachers. So Choose to Include is the sort of shorter version of what I would urge companies to do. I love it, love it.

Mary, what kind of secrets can you share really with children and young adults about being able to live a fulfilling life like you've been able to? Well, I think being very open to things that come your way and being open to change and making change happen. with volunteers and with everybody that works with us. We strive to change all the time, to change policy, to change policies in governments, policies in companies, to change the way people look at others and to look at everybody in the way that we all have talents, we all have abilities, and we are all different. We are not all the same.

We are all different. And just embrace that difference and understand the power of difference. And once you do that and you include, then you begin to change attitudes. People have a more open mindset. And in changing attitudes, then you can change behavior. And ultimately, that's what we want to do to create more inclusive communities. Excellent. Well, Mary, you definitely give purpose and light to those around you being and creating and fulfilling and helping so many people.

That's a hero on a global stage to Mary Davis, CEO of Special Olympics International. Make sure that you reach out to her. Dave Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show.