Athlete Ally Action Awards to Honor Tufts Campus Chapter
July 30, 2024 – Today, Athlete Ally announced that the Tufts Athlete Ally Campus Chapter will be honored at the 2024 Athlete Ally Action Awards. Athlete Ally is a nonprofit organization focused on fostering inclusive athletic environments and mobilizing the athletic community to champion LGBTQI+ equality. The Action Awards will be held on Thursday, October 17th at 6pm EST in New York City. Team USA athlete Nikki Hiltz will also be honored, along with additional honorees to be named in coming months.
With diversity and inclusion as its foundational principles since its founding in 2021, Tufts Athlete Ally has become a thriving space for LGBTQ+ identifying and allied athletes to find community. Led by Chapter President and Founder Ryan Kane, the Tufts Chapter’s ongoing efforts each month have promoted queer visibility and encouraged engagement among individuals of diverse identities, fostering friendships across teams and backgrounds while also working collaboratively to build more inclusive athletic spaces.
By establishing a culturally diverse executive board and implementing the role of team representatives, Tufts Athlete Ally has reached every athlete on campus. Now, 146 athletes representing all 28 varsity teams and many club teams are included in the team representative model. The Chapter has organized multiple Pride games, focusing on sports that often face significant challenges and hostility toward LGBTQ+ athletes (for example, they hosted the first Men’s Lacrosse Pride Game and Men’s Basketball Pride Game in The New England Small College Athletic Conference. In addition, the Chapter has hosted intercollegiate mixers with the Harvard and Boston University Athlete Ally Chapters for the past two years.
“Tufts Athlete Ally’s accomplishments in the past three years are astounding, and a model for what campus-wide LGBTQI+ advocacy and allyship can look like,” said Hudson Taylor, Founder and Executive Director of Athlete Ally. “Athlete Ally’s goals of changing the culture of sport to be more LGBTQI+ inclusive are only possible when we work together across identities and sports. Tufts Athlete Ally is doing exactly that, and helping to build a lasting legacy at Tufts for years to come.”
“On behalf of the Tufts Athlete Ally Campus Chapter, we are truly honored to receive an Action Award in recognition of our relentless fight for inclusivity and safety,” said Ryan Kane, President and Founder of Tufts Athlete Ally and a member of Tufts’ Men’s Rowing Team. “It is incredibly rewarding to know that I have successfully brought together and mobilized a dedicated group of individuals who have collectively built Tufts Athlete Ally into the impactful organization it is today. Ultimately, this award stands as a testament to the hard work and dedication of my executive board and our advisors, Courtney Shute and Jon Bird.
We are excited for another year of breaking barriers to spark positive change and enhance the experience for current and future Tufts athletes. Our vision is to continue expanding our reach, building a lasting impact on the broader athletic community, and making Tufts Athletics synonymous with LGBTQ+ safety and inclusion. After all, every athlete deserves to celebrate who they are.”
To learn more or purchase tickets to the Awards, click here.
About Athlete Ally and the Action Awards
Athlete Ally believes sport will change the world when it welcomes and empowers all people. As a leading national nonprofit working at the intersection of sport and LGBTQI+ equality, Athlete Ally works to end the structural and systemic oppression that isolates, excludes and endangers LGBTQI+ people in sport. We educate individuals and institutions to understand obstacles to inclusion for LGBTQI+ people and how they can build an inclusive culture within their athletic communities. We work to ensure sport governing bodies, teams and leagues adopt policies that reflect the diversity of their constituents. We incubate athlete activism to advance LGBTQI+ equality in and through sport.
The 2024 Athlete Ally Action awards are made possible due to generous support from Gillette, the National Basketball Association (NBA), TransPerfect, the United States Tennis Association (USTA), Gatorade and Dow in addition to individual supporters and other corporate support.