Anne Tiivas OBE is the Chair of Safe Sport International (SSI), the leading global charity focused on safeguarding athletes of all ages. SSI is known worldwide for its three key areas of focus: research, education, training and consultancy, and athlete voice. Anne is the former Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) where she worked for nearly 18 years until September 2019. In 2016, the CPSU received the UNICEF International Safeguarding Children in Sport award at the Beyond Sport Summit.

Anne was centrally involved in shaping and monitoring National Safeguarding Standards for Children in Sport in the UK from 2001. As a founding member of the International Safeguards for Children in Sport initiative in 2012 and current Chair of its Advisory Group, she continues to support the development of the project to promote adoption and implementation of the Safeguards in collaboration with UNICEF UK, Loughborough University, and a coalition of sports bodies across the globe. SSI is currently in the process of developing Inclusive Safeguards for Adults in Sport which will build on and link to this work.

Anne advises international and national sports bodies, international governmental agencies, and other groups, on child and adult protection and safeguarding in sport. She is a Director of the International Olympic Committee Safeguarding Officer Certificate Course. Anne is a member of the ‘I Coach Kids’ (ICK) Global Movement Committee and she has been a member of FIFA’s Expert group on Child Safeguarding. She is passionate about inclusion, child and human rights in sport, as the basis for everyone being able to participate in sport in a safe inclusive and enjoyable environment.

Anne has collaborated on several European projects on safeguarding in youth sport, most recently for the European Union and Council of Europe’s ‘Child Safeguarding in Sport’ project where SSI was the international expert organisation. She was appointed to the Council of Europe’s new Pool of International Experts on Safe Sport in 2022.

Anne has written extensively on the topic of safeguarding in and through sport and is co-author of a chapter in the 2017 Oxford Textbook of Children’s Sport and Exercise Medicine – Protecting child athletes from medical mismanagement and other forms of (non-accidental) violence in sport. She is a co-author of the 2016 “IOC Consensus Statement: Harassment and Abuse (non-accidental violence) in Sport.”