Our Next Speaker

Carrie W. LeCrom, Ph.D. - Executive Director VCU Center for Sport Leadership

Carrie LeCrom has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Sport Leadership (CSL) since 2015, holding various roles within the CSL since joining the staff in 2003. Her responsibilities at the CSL include setting the program’s strategic direction, handling academic matters, expanding the global reach of the program, managing its budget, and teaching courses including Sport Leadership, Research Methods, The Global Business of Sport, Sociology, and Sport for Development.

Under her guidance the program has launched a dual degree program (M.S.L./MBA), a doctoral track in Sport Leadership, and has seen significant growth in terms of competitiveness and reputation (currently ranked top 10 in the nation among graduate programs in sport business).

LeCrom is passionate about the use of sport for social change and focuses much of her research in this area. She has secured over $1.94 million in grant funding from sources such as the U.S. Department of State and the NCAA. Since 2007, she has created and coordinated two-way citizen exchanges in Sports Diplomacy between the U.S. and China, Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan. These programs have focused on various social issues specific to each country and community including health promotion, HIV/AIDS education, gender empowerment, reconciliation, and more.

Building on these programs, LeCrom won a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship that took her and her family to South Africa where they lived all of 2019. As a Fulbright Scholar, LeCrom piloted and launched an all-girls leadership and gender empowerment soccer program in the rural community of Jamestown, South Africa. Her local host institution, Stellenbosch University, provided support for the program’s continuance upon LeCrom’s departure. She additionally worked with several other sport for development organizations while in South Africa, including Grassroot Soccer, Training 4 Changes, The Roxy Davis Foundation, and Laureus.

 LeCrom is a well-published scholar in some of sport management’s top journals such as Sport Management Review, the Journal of Sport Management, Sport in Society, and Sport Marketing Quarterly. In 2020 she was selected as a North American Society of Sport Management Research Fellow and has served on the editorial boards of Sport Management Education Journal and the Journal of Amateur Sport. In 2014, LeCrom was awarded the Ruch Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching award given by VCU’s School of Education, and in 2016 she was the Award of Excellence recipient for combined excellence in teaching, research, and service. LeCrom holds degrees from Lynchburg College (B.A. in Business Administration and Sport Management), and VCU (M.S. in Sport Leadership; Ph.D. in Education). She is married to the Director of Youth Development for the Richmond Strikers Soccer Club and has two children.