The Founders of Safe Sport International
Long before the term safe sport entered global vocabulary, a small group of feminist researchers began uncovering hidden harms in sport decades before any sporting body recognised abuse as a systemic issue. From the late 1970s through the 1990s, pioneers such as Celia Brackenridge, Kari Fasting, and Sandra Kirby documented patterns of sexual harassment, discrimination, coercive coaching practices, power imbalances affecting women and girls.
While academic research on abuse in sport was expanding, Anne Tiivas was already dealing with real-world cases in UK child protection through nearly two decades of experience in local authority social work. Her practice-based experience exposed gaps between emerging research evidence and the operational readiness of sporting organisations to protect children and young people.
Safe Sport International is named in 2014 after a core international group agrees on the need for an independent global organisation. Its Declaration and International Safe Sport Principles are launched.
At inception, Safe Sport International operated as a volunteer-led NGO with a founding governance structure that included Brackenridge, Kirby, Fasting, Tiivas plus Malia Arrington, Trish Leahy, and others. This group formed the first advisory board of SSI. All founders contributed personal funds to establish the organisation and SSI’s formal registration as a UK Charity, with trustees Tiivas, Malia Arrington, and Patricia Chalk, was approved shortly before the inaugural Safe Sport Conference in Madrid in 2018.
Prof. Celia Brackenridge - Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1950–2018)
Pioneer of safeguarding in sport
Celia Brackenridge OBE was an international sportsperson, academic, and one of the world’s pioneering researchers in sexual harassment and abuse in sport. Her early research in the 1980s and 1990s laid the conceptual and empirical foundations for safeguarding in sport globally.
She chaired the IOC Consensus process on Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sport and was instrumental in the creation of the UK Child Protection in Sport Unit. She co-authored the first UN-supported review of violence against children in sport and organised the world’s first international conference on athlete welfare.
Awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to child protection and equality in sport, Brackenridge continued working until shortly before her death from leukaemia in May 2018.
Her life’s work transformed global sport governance and laid the foundation for Safe Sport International.
Prof. Kari Fasting - Knight 1st class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav
Safeguarding researcher | Global collaborator
Kari Fasting is a leading international researcher whose early prevalence studies helped establish that sexual harassment and abuse in sport were widespread and systemic. Working alongside Brackenridge and Kirby, her research in Norway provided some of the earliest cross‑national evidence of abuse in elite sport.
Fasting played a central role in WomenSport International, UNICEF‑supported global reviews, and the development of Safe Sport International, including co‑leading SSI’s inaugural Global Conference in 2018. Her work strengthened the global evidence base that made safeguarding in sport impossible to ignore.
Prof. Sandra Kirby - Order of Canada
Olympian, Research leader | Survivor‑centred advocate
Sandra Kirby is a foundational figure in exposing abuse in sport through survivor‑centred research. Her work, including The Dome of Silence about prevalence of abuse amongst national team members, brought athletes’ voices into public view, revealing the gap between sport’s values and athletes’ lived experiences.
Throughout her career, survivors repeatedly sought her out in the absence of trusted systems. Kirby was a core contributor to WomenSport International, UNICEF‑supported reviews, IOC initiatives, and the conceptual development of Safe Sport International. She consistently championed independence, evidence, and athlete voice as essential to meaningful safeguarding.
Anne Tiivas - Officer of the Order of the British Empire
Safeguarding practitioner | Systems‑builder
Anne Tiivas OBE brought frontline child‑protection expertise into safeguarding in sport. With nearly two decades in local authority social work, she encountered sport‑related abuse long before safeguards existed. Tiivas was a founding officer and later director of the UK Child Protection in Sport Unit, the world’s first dedicated national safeguarding organisation, and played a key role in developing the International Safeguards for Children in Sport.
As a founding director and chair of Safe Sport International, she ensured that SSI’s vision was grounded in practice, survivor protection, and organisational independence.