Former CEO, Women’s Sports Foundation
For over 30 years, Deborah Slaner Larkin has focused her efforts to promote civil rights, women’s leadership and gender equity throughout her hometown of Pelham as well as on the state and national levels.
Ms. Larkin was instrumental in creating Title IX information at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Considered an expert on Title IX, she has been an active board member with the MARGARET Fund (May All Resolve, Girls Achieve Real Equity Today), a non-profit effort that develops and supports programs that promote education about and compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. She was also actively involved in the NWLC ‘s landmark Supreme Court victories: Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, which holds schools accountable for student to-student sexual harassment; Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, which prohibits retaliation by schools against those who protest discrimination and a major pay equity victory when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law.
During her impressive tenure on the White House Project Board, she co-authored The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership; while serving on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, she co-authored the landmark report, Physical Activity & Sport in the Lives of Girls: Physical & Mental Health Dimensions from an Interdisciplinary Approach. While executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, she directed multiple research reports focusing on the physical, psychological, sociological and academic benefits of sports for girls.
Currently, Ms. Larkin is Executive Director of USTA Serves, the U.S. Tennis Association’s philanthropic and charitable initiative to support, monitor, and promote programs that enhance the lives of disadvantaged children through the integration of tennis and education.
As a resident of Pelham, Ms. Larkin was presented with the Thomas B. Fenlon Award in 2011 for distinguished volunteer service to education. This is a prestigious award only given during high school graduation by the Pelham Public Schools Board of Education.