Hear Her Sports

In 2015, Artist and Rock Climber Leslie Kim started creating illustrations inspired by her travels to different rock climbing areas and soon combined that artwork wither love for climbing and the community of climbing. She launched her apparel company, Dynamite Starfish. She lives by the motto: "Try hard. Have fun. Care about the things you love." Hear Her Sports podcast is long-form intimate profiles of female athletes breaking boundaries, speaking up and living with power & confidence.

Kriste is a trail runner, adventure runner, meditation teacher, and also a speaker, writer, and media producer. She coaches women in trail running along the Front Range, leads healing hikes, and facilitates retreats which empower participants to develop skills that will serve them both in nature and in daily life. Kriste is also the founder of Black Women’s Alliance a social network centered around the wellness and healing of Black women in body and mind and has recently developed an online video series Moving Conversations where she connects with spiritual teachers, wise women, healers, and creatives about ways to engage self-care within communities hardest hit by the pandemic. Hear Her Sports podcast is long-form intimate profiles of female athletes breaking boundaries, speaking up and living with power & confidence.

Robyn Lesh is a design engineer with American Magic, a racing boat preparing for the America’s Cup. Robyn manages weight and center gravity of the boat as well as being in charge of 3D printing, 3D scanning and 3D virtual reality. Robyn grew up in Washington State and has been sailing since she was 6 days old. She graduated from MIT in 2016 where she spent four years as a varsity Skipper on the MIT sailing team and earned her degree as a mechanical engineer-ocean engineer.

In the midst of cancelled races and uncertainty, Vice Director of The Cyclists’ Alliance, Rhian Ravenscroft is looking to rethink how women’s cycling and racing is structured. We talk about the current situation at the UCI, The Cyclists’ Alliance, their recent Rapha Foundation grant, and inequity in cycling.

The Cyclists’ Alliance is the labor organization representing professional cyclists in UCI Women's World Tour events. Rhian is a corporate and commercial lawyer with 15 years experience. As the Vice-Director, she is in charge of working with stakeholders like the UCI, teams, and race organizers on a daily basis. Like everyone who works at The Cyclists’ Alliance she is a former racer. Rhian raced competitively from the age of 9 as a runner, triathlete, and cyclist.

Sarah Axelson, Title IX expert, Senior Director of Advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation joins the show in honor of the 48th anniversary of Title IX on June 23rd, 2020. She gives a fascinating history of the law, how it works, unfulfilled promises, and hope going forward. Sarah is a lifelong athlete, considers herself a byproduct of Title IX, played 4 years of NCAA Division III varsity softball. She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Mary Washington and recently received her Master of Public Administration degree through the Executive MPA program in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College.

Deanna Belleny Co-Founder of Diversify Dietetics earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Nutrition and Foods at the University of Houston and her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Texas School of Public Health. She is the Program Manager for Systems Transformation at Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. Diversify Dietetics increases the racial and ethnic diversity in the field of nutrition by empowering nutrition leaders of color. Join our conversation on nutrition, mentorship, systematic racism in health care, inequity exposed by the current health crises, and what she sees in the future beyond the pandemic.

Marinel de Jesus, founder of Peak Explorations, is a lawyer, writer, a public speaker, a world traveler, and a nomad who leads tours most often high-altitude mountain trekking all over the world. In 2016, she launched Peak Explorations and Brown Gal Trekker with the mission to create inclusion for local/indigenous women in the trekking tourism industry as guides and porters worldwide. She just completed, We Are Nomads: A True Story of an All Women Migration in Altai, her first documentary film, made in collaboration with local Kazakhs. We talk about her documentary, power dynamics in trekking, women leaderships as porters and guides, and traveling in the future.

Former track and field pro athlete and new novelist Faith Dismuke ran for Villanova an NCAA Division I school and for USA Track and Field. In 2015, Faith earned a Master’s degree from the University of Connecticut with a focus on media's influence on the representation and psychology of student-athletes of color. Her first novel Sprint Dreams is the story of eighteen-year-old college sophomore, Makeda Delane. It’s the story of track and field, determination to make it to Nationals, relationships, and being at college. Faith and I talk a lot about the book, characters, and her inspiration.

Team USA Triathlete Tamara Gorman won two World Triathlon Championships (as a junior and as an Under 23 competitor). In 2019 she medaled in three Triathlon World Cups. Tamara had her sights on making the Tokyo Olympic Team. Then, in mid-February 2020, she had surgery, throwing that into question. Now fully recovered, she’s taking advantage of the extra year before Tokyo to get stronger and better. For right now she offers a wise goal of just training to be the best each day. We also talk about finding water to swim in, training by feel and by data, and traveling by plane and car to get home.

Maggie Steffens, two-time Olympic Gold medalist, MVP at both 2012 and 2016 Games.  In London 2012, her first Olympic Games, Maggie tied the record for most goals in an Olympics with 21. Maggie has also won three World Championship Golds, three NCAA Championship titles while at Stanford, and, in 2017, was named Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches Player of the Year. Maggie is actively training and is Team Captain upcoming Tokyo Olympics. She talks about data in sport, shares her experience of Tokyo Olympics postponement, training without a pool, expanding exposure of role models, value of more stories of female athletes, sport IQ, beauty and difficulty of water polo.