Holly Shick – United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee

When the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) appointed Holly Shick as its first chief ethics and compliance officer in July 2020, the organization signaled a shift toward greater accountability and a commitment to higher ethical standards, especially following the scandal involving Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team.

Holly Shick | United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee | Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer

This new role would be no small undertaking for Shick, a former federal prosecutor and senior compliance officer at a global financial institution. With her deep-rooted passion for Team USA, Shick embraced the challenge of building a compliance program for an organization that had been rocked by a series of scandals and was under growing scrutiny to ensure the safety, integrity and transparency of its 51 National Governing Bodies (NGBs).

“I was very excited to join the USOPC to help navigate the cultural and institutional changes that took place when I started. There are not many compliance professionals who have had an opportunity to join an organization at such a significant point in its history, and I’m very proud to have played a role in the governance and compliance changes that helped make the USOPC and NGBs stronger,” Shick tells Vanguard during an interview in October.

Transforming compliance culture

When Shick joined the USOPC, she stepped into a landscape with no dedicated compliance function—a gap that had become especially stark in the wake of the Nassar scandal. Her mission was to establish an ethics and compliance department that would enforce compliance standards that applied to NGBs and support the USOPC’s commitment to proactive risk management. Initially, she was on her own, working closely with the associate general counsel for litigation and compliance. By early 2021, Shick had assembled a team that included an audit director and a compliance operations director, laying the foundation for a department capable of managing the organization’s evolving needs.

“We have since built an incredible team that works hard to provide resources to USOPC team members and NGBs, and we have come a long way since late 2020,” Shick says.

To manage this vast and multifaceted task, Shick built a strategy that balanced operational demands with long-term goals. Her team’s primary responsibility is overseeing compliance of the NGBs, including ensuring that each national governing body meets the compliance standards required by the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act (Ted Stevens Act), the federal law that governs the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, and the USOPC’s compliance requirements.

“Our role is to educate NGBs, share best practices, answer questions and look for areas where NGBs are struggling so we can determine how to help them best succeed,” Shick explains.

Her team is also responsible for ensuring the USOPC complies with its obligations under its own bylaws and the Ted Stevens Act, and for maintaining a robust internal compliance program consistent with the Department of Justice Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance.

Shick’s vision of compliance goes beyond enforcing rules; it is about fostering open communication and collaboration. She believes in building relationships across the organization and within the Olympic and Paralympic Movement to promote a culture of ethics and compliance. One of her guiding principles has been to maintain transparency and clear communication with her team, other USOPC departments, and stakeholders within the Movement.

Working as a team

Shick has discovered a new passion for people management while leading her team. Though she didn’t initially plan to be a manager when she started at Goldman Sachs, she has taken on leadership roles since then and has found them rewarding.

“Managing people can be difficult, but there are things you can do to be a better and more effective leader,” she says. “Transparency, professional development and fairness are the most important things to me in managing a team.”

Shick’s approach is to provide her team with guidance and opportunities to advance their careers, whether within the USOPC or beyond. Her goal is to help her team grow professionally and personally. In fact, two of her first hires when she started at the USOPC were former colleagues who worked with her at Goldman Sachs. She considers herself lucky to work with a team that shares her commitment to ethics and compliance with good governance principles.

As the USOPC prepares for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Milan-Cortina and the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Shick’s role will continue to evolve. Her focus on proactive compliance, risk identification, and promoting an ethical culture within the USOPC and the NGBs will be crucial in ensuring that Team USA upholds the values it represents on the world stage.

From courtroom to boardroom

Before her role with the USOPC, Shick’s career followed a unique trajectory that prepared her to tackle the complexities of compliance in the Olympic and Paralympic Movement. Having served as a federal prosecutor for eight years, Shick developed expertise in conducting investigations and building strong cases. Later, she joined the financial crime compliance team at Goldman Sachs, where she gained experience in constructing a robust compliance program from the ground up. Her combined experience of enforcing rules and creating structures to prevent compliance lapses perfectly positioned her for the USOPC challenges. For Shick, who earned a degree in French from Penn State University and a JD from the American University Washington College of Law, the role was a chance to bring her skills to the sports world, an area that had long held her interest.

Shick’s connection to the Olympic movement began early as her love for Team USA was cemented as a young girl watching Muhammad Ali light the Olympic Torch in Atlanta in 1996. By 2012, she was so captivated by the Olympics that she took a week off work to immerse herself in the London Olympic Games.

Last summer, Shick spent time in Paris and watched Team USA compete in several events, including beach volleyball and women’s soccer.  Watching athletes from around the world compete for their countries, especially those in the red, white and blue, shows Shick that all the work she does for the USOPC and NGBs makes a difference for Team USA.

“Seeing athletes have an opportunity to compete on the world’s biggest stage was an opportunity of a lifetime and knowing that we play a small role in supporting them through our work with NGBs is humbling.”

Shick’s work with the USOPC serves as a model of how transparency, ethics and proactive compliance can support sports organizations. Through her dedication and support of USOPC leadership, Shick is setting a high bar for ethical integrity in the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, ensuring athletes, fans, and stakeholders can trust that the principles of fair play and respect are upheld across the organization.