Donna A. Lopiano, Connecticut – 1999
Donna A. Lopiano is the Executive Director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. She received her bachelor’s degree from Southern Connecticut State University and her master and doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California. She has been a college coach of men’s and women’s volleyball, and women’s basketball and softball.
She served as the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women at the University of Texas at Austin (1975-1992); the head coach of volleyball, softball and basketball at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (1971-1975); and the women’s intercollegiate volleyball coach at the University of Southern California (1969-1970). From 1993 to the present, she has been a member of the Advisory Board of Women’s Fitness Magazine.
Donna is a member of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of Sportbridge, the Nassau County Sports Commission, the Editorial Advisory Board of Athletic Business, and the Nation Honors Committee of the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
She is also involved with many professional organizations which support women’s sport equity: the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators, the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, the Center for Athletes Rights and Education, the Women in Sport and Events, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the Institute for International Sport.
Championship and post-season tournaments in which Donna Lopiano has been involved as a player and/or coach include: five national USVBA championship volleyball tournaments, five national AAU basketball championships, three national field hockey championships, and ten national ASA softball championships.
Donna Lopiano has received many recognitions and commendations for her extensive work as an advocate of sport equity for women, including: Sporting Goods Business Woman of the Year (1998), Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame (1995), and the Guiding Women in Sport Award from the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport (1992). The Sporting News has named her one of only six women among the “most powerful people in sports,” College Sports Magazine ranks her among the “50 most influential people in college sports,” and the Sports Business Journal lists her among the “top 10 female sports executives” in the nation.