We are very grateful to all the individuals who have contributed to the vision and work of SSI. The usual term of office with SSI is three years though many have stayed longer and made invaluable contributions to our organisational development and across SSI conferences, and education and training courses.
Past Members of SSI Board of Trustees
Yomi’s career began in Cameroon’s finance sector with UNICS Plc (2007–2013), where he played key roles in marketing, corporate communications, and transaction banking, supporting grassroots development through financial inclusion. In 2013, he transitioned to the humanitarian sector, joining SOS Children’s Villages International in Dakar, Senegal, as Regional Donor Services Coordinator. Over a decade, he advanced to Regional Advisor and later Regional Team Leader for International Donor Services, leading donor acquisition, retention strategies, and advocacy initiatives across 21 countries in West, Central, and North Africa. His engagement in global advocacy campaigns like Care for ME ! reflects his commitment to children’s rights and social justice.
In 2024, Yomi took on a key strategic role in the Democratic Republic of Congo, supporting the operational presence of a UN agency in the country. There, he leads efforts to engage bilateral and multilateral partners, government bodies, and private sector actors to strengthen institutional visibility and influence. His work focuses on advancing policy advocacy and mobilizing resources for sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence prevention, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, demographic intelligence, and youth empowerment. He also plays a central role in identifying and cultivating partnerships with both traditional and non-traditional donors to drive sustainable funding and programmatic impact.
Stephanie McCaughey has a diverse background in Criminology and Victimology. She is a Doctoral Candidate, a graduate of The University of Melbourne, a Harvard Scholarship recipient, and a Victorian Government Fellowship member.
An accredited mediator, Stephanie brings a victim-centred perspective as CEO of a not-for-profit organisation supporting victim-survivors in disclosing institutional abuse. She was centrally involved in developing the 3-step model, which provides therapeutic support, independent investigations, safeguarding, and resolution of disclosures. Stephanie is also the Director of an organisation that provides psycho-social support services to victim-survivors of abuse. She is committed to care coordination frameworks and policies underpinned by a person-centred, trauma-informed approach.
Stephanie is committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable persons. Her expertise includes as a current Sessional Member in Justice and Community Safety, and previous work in criminal justice and corrections, where, amongst other roles, she was an inaugural Principal Practitioner in sexual and violent offending. She is a member of safeguarding groups across the Asia Pacific Region.
Stephanie’s governance expertise includes serving as a current Board Director of a public health service and as a Member of the Australian Government Classification Review.
Throughout her three decades long professional career in sports, Lori Okimura has achieved personal and professional milestones including being the first woman ever to be named Sport Director of World ParaVolley international sport federation of sitting and beach paravolley, the first American woman to serve as an international technical official on the Jury of the Paralympic Games sitting volleyball competition (Tokyo 2020 Paralympics), the first Asian American Pacific Islander to lead the national governing body of volleyball in the U.S. as the former Board Chair of USA Volleyball (2014-2019), and the few woman to serve as a technical delegate for beach volleyball on the FIVB World Tour (2004-2019) and only American, male or female, to serve on the Federation Internationale de Volleyball beach commission from 2016-2021.
Lori is known for championing a rigorous safeguarding agenda when affiliating with organisations and corporations. She contributed to developing the safeguarding program for World ParaVolley, the international sports federation of Paralympic volleyball disciplines, and Angel City Sports, an organisation focused on adaptive sport advocacy and human rights for youth and adults with physical disabilities, veterans and persons with visual impairment. Her work to pursue safeguarding of athletes and create opportunities to increase the participation of kids in sport continues with a project to establish the first Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Volleyball Club as it pursues a first-of-its-kind inclusive recreational community outreach in the sport disciplines of indoor, beach and adaptive volleyball helping future Olympians and Paralympians, volunteers and sport organisers prepare for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics.
Lori served on the Board of Directors of USA Volleyball following the 2012 London Olympics, holding the position of Board Chair from 2014 through the end of her second and final term in 2019. During her tenure as Board Chair, USA Volleyball underwent a complete restructuring of its executive management team, redefined a strategic plan & priorities, and pursued an aggressive course of action in the area of SafeSport, including achieving lifetime bans and/or disciplinary action against offenders.
Working mainly in the sports sector, John is a Change Consultant whose recent assignments involved major organisational change programmes for the Association of Colleges Sport (AoC) Sport, the creation of London Sport, for the GLA Major’s Office, the establishment of a County Sports Partnership – Get Berkshire Active (GBA) for Sport England and the creation of The Berkshire Cricket Foundation for the Berkshire Cricket Board.
He is a non-Executive Director of AoC Sport Ltd and Chair of Trustee of The Berkshire Cricket Foundation and local cricket club charity, Falkland CC Ltd.
Until recently, he was Chair of Trustees of Get Berkshire Active.
He is a business advisor, experienced coach and mentor and has held senior corporate roles as a CEO and HR Director where he led the design and delivery of change programmes in the UK, US and Europe.
As a business advisor he has led major change programmes in Sport, IT, engineering, legal, manufacturing and professional services businesses. He started his career in Industrial Relations and subsequently held various strategic and operational roles in HR and professional services.
John is an experienced project manager, consultant, and facilitator. He has an MBA and is an accredited practitioner in MBTI, SDI, Facet5 and Belbin psychometric assessment tools.
Past Members of SSI Committees, Groups, or Advisory Council
Julia Lowis
former SSI Athlete Voice for Safe Sport Group Member
Julie Ann Rivers-Cochran, MSW
former SSI Athlete Voice for Safe Sport Group Chair
Julie Ann Rivers-Cochran is a national leader within the field of the prevention and intervention of gender-based violence. She is Executive Director of The Athlete Survivors’ Assist, whose mission is to bring awareness, accountability, and transparency to sexual violence against athletes at all levels.
Prior to The Assist, Rivers-Cochran worked for the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma and Mental Health and as President and Founder for Blackbird Consulting for Nonprofits, a consultancy committed to helping nonprofit organisations carry out their mission while best serving their constituency.
Victoria Wiegleb
former SSI Athlete Voice for Safe Sport Group Member
Wilma King
former SSI Education and Training Committee Chair
Willma King is an experienced senior manager, learning strategist and safeguarding expert with strong skills in leadership and empowerment. She worked for NSPCC as Head of Training and Consultancy providing professional services in safeguarding and child protection and established the Learning and Development governance for Childline UK.
She is a published author on learning and curriculum materials for safeguarding, child protection and inter–agency working. Willma has a Masters in social work and has delivered social care and safeguarding services across the UK, Europe and internationally including the Bahamas, Germany and Cyprus. She worked for Relationships Australia managing a wide range of statutory and community programs over considerable regional and remote areas.
Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) Lead Welfare Officer; Vice-Chair FIS Medical Committee; medical liaison member Youth and Children’s Coordination Group.
Jenny was Lead Welfare Officer for the British National Ski Association from 2002 until 2010. During this time, she developed all safeguarding policies and procedures, and led their implementation. She was responsible for background checks on staff and volunteers, and sat on the case management committee. She continues to sit on the Safeguarding in British Snowsports steering group.
Jenny, along with other British FIS members, was responsible for proposing a safeguarding clause to the FIS Statutes and ICR at FIS Congress 2016, subsequently adopted.
Jenny represented FIS on the virtual task force for the IOC Toolkit for prevention of harassment and abuse in sport, and took part in the formal launch of the Toolkit in November 2017.
FIS Council tasked Jenny with writing policies for FIS, and with the help of a small working group she produced the FIS Snow Safe Policy, which was agreed and promoted by FIS Council in 2018. The policy library has extended to include guidance for safeguarding policies and procedures at major events, as well as guidance for all 132 affiliated national ski associations.
She is co-author (with Margo Mountjoy) of a new chapter on prevention of harassment and abuse in sport in the textbook Clinical Sports Medicine (2019). Jointly with Anne Tiivas, she presented one of the webinars in the IOC’s 2019 series promoting prevention of harassment and abuse in sport.
Jenny’s professional background is as a family medical practitioner.
Before Guro A. Johnsen established her first company, AG Johnsen AG, in 2007 in Switzerland, she served in different roles for the Norwegian Olympic Committee (NOC). She was the NOC’s marketing manager and project manager for the ‘Women Project’, a 5 year athlete and management programme, ahead of the Olympic Games in Nagano and Sydney. She also represented the NOC on a range of boards and committees.
Johnsen was later responsible for the negotiation of the agreement between Adecco SA and the International Olympic Committee, International Federations and National Olympic Committees for the Athletes Career Programme (ACP). She established and ran the programme in 25 countries as the Global Project Director based in Zürich. Adecco SA is a Fortune Global 500 company. For several years she was the manager for 4 Olympians (3 beach volleyball players- male and a walker – female) and one of the owners of a sponsor company.
She received a Masters degree from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, (focus on International Sport Politics and Organisation Culture in the NOC of Norway). She also received a Masters degree in Management from the Economics University, BI in Norway.
Johnsen serves as Treasurer, on the board of Women Sport International – the global voice of research-based advocacy for women in sport.
Gloria was the Spanish National Champion in Artistic Gymnastics at 15 years old and one of only nine women representing Spain in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
She is a survivor of emotional, psychological and sexual abuse in sport. A few years ago she was able to break the silence and her case attracted media attention due to her public profile – and that of her former coach.
The social pressure she has suffered since disclosing has not kept her from becoming a campaigner for safe and healthy sport and for the protection of athletes against all forms of violence, with special attention on children in sport.
She is the co-founder of a non-profit organisation called Oro, Plata y Bronce, (www.oroplataybronce.com) dedicated to the protection of athletes against all forms of violence and to the promotion of safe and healthy sport at all levels in Spain.
She has an extensive professional background at international level in team and project management and is fluent in Spanish, English and German.
Trisha is Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Sports Institute, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (HKSAR) delivery agent for elite sport systems. She previously worked as Senior Psychologist at the Australian Institute of Sport. Dr Leahy has extensive experience at the front line of service provision to athletes who have experienced violence in sport, as well as in research and professional training provision to members of the athletes’ entourage.
Trisha was a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical Commission’s expert consultative group on the prevention of abuse in sport 2007-2015. She was also a member of a UNICEF expert working group advising on research and policy to prevent violence against children in sport from 2007-2009. From 2015 to 2017, Trisha was a Board member of the International Women’s Forum Leadership Foundation, an international, USA-based organisation focusing on the development of women’s leadership around the world.
In Hong Kong, Dr Leahy has been extensively involved in community work, and has served as consultant/ advisor to key NGOs on gender and sexual violence. Trisha was a Board Member of the HKSAR Women’s Commission from 2011-2017, and the Equal Opportunities Commission from 2013-2019 where she was the Chair of the Legal and Complaints Committee from 2017-2019. She is currently a committee member of Hong Kong’s Vocational Training Council; and the Hong Kong University Grants Committee’s 2020 Research Assessment Exercise Panel. She is also the immediate Past President and Board member of the International Women’s Forum HK.
Her selected awards include:
- The IOC Prince Alexander de Merode Award for research excellence for her work on body image in elite female athletes, 1999
- The Australia Medal for services to Australian sport, at the Sydney Olympics, 2000
- The HKSAR Bronze Bauhinia Star (BBS) in for her services to the community and to sport in Hong Kong, 2014