Mariah Burton Nelson

Mariah Burton Nelson is an author, expert speaker, and former professional athlete. A national authority on sports, success, and leadership, she has written five ground-breaking books including The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football: Sexism and the American Culture of Sports, and Are We Winning Yet? How Women Are Changing Sports and Sports Are Changing Women. In addition, Nelson has contributed chapters and introductions to more than three-dozen other books.

Past president of the National Speakers Association in Washington, D.C., Mariah Burton Nelson has been a professional speaker since 1987, and is a board member of the National Capital Speakers Association. Her clients include Bell Atlantic, IBM, Nike, TRW, Unity Church, USA Today, Young Presidents Organization, the National Organization for Women, Women in Technology, the Girl Scouts, the National Women's Political Caucus, and hundreds of other businesses, associations, women's groups, and religious groups. In June 2003, Mariah received the Capital Outstanding Speaker Award from the National Speakers Association, Washington, D.C. Area.

Nelson is a writer for Oxygen Media on their women's sports website, WeSweat.com. She is a former columnist for the Washington Post, and wrote the first nationally syndicated women's sports column, for Knight-Ridder/Tribune. She has written for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Ms., Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Shape, Self, Women's Sports and Fitness, and USA Today, to name just a few. Mariah Burton Nelson's media experience is not limited to speaking and writing, as she has appeared on television and radio shows such as Today, Good Morning America, PrimeTime Live, Dateline, Larry King Live, Crossfire, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NPR's Diane Rehm Show, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

A former professional athlete, Nelson played basketball at Stanford University. She was the leading scorer during all four of her years at Stanford, averaging 19 points per game, and her record of 20 rebounds in a single game remained unbroken for 24 years. Mariah also played professionally in France and in the first women's pro league in the U.S.

Mariah Burton Nelson had no role models or mentors when she started writing about women in sports in 1980. Eighteen years later, she created the Frances Willard Society to provide support, mentoring, and role models for women's sports writers. The FWS was founded in honor of Frances Willard, a suffragist, who in 1895 was the first woman to write a nonfiction book about her sports experience.

Mariah received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Stanford University and earned her master's degree in public health from San Jose State University. Committed to practicing what she preaches, Mariah swims two miles most mornings, drives golf balls up to 240 yards, and applies the athletic essentials such as discipline, integrity, teamwork, leadership, and joy to her career as an author, a journalist, and speaker.