Five Time Olympian and Olympic Silver Medalist Charmaine Crooks represented Canada for close to 20 years in Athletics. As the first Canadian woman to run under two minutes over 800 meters, she won gold medals at the Pan American, Commonwealth, World Cup, and the World Student Games. In 1996, she was named Flag Bearer at the Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games.
She was elected as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Member (1996 and re-elected as IOC Member 2000-2004), and now serves on the IOC Athletes Commission (1996-present) and the IOC Press Commission (2001-present). She was a member of the IOC Culture/Education Commissions (1996-2004), IOC 2000 Reform Commission and the Athens 2004 Working Group. As a founding member of the independent IOC Ethics Commission, she contributed to developing the current IOC Code of Ethics.
Charmaine is President/Founder of NGU Consultants Inc. (since 1994), a global sports marketing and corporate strategic consulting company. She is a sought after professional speaker on topics ranging from goal setting, team building and the Olympic Movement.
In 2003, she was elected by her peers to serve on the Executive Board of the international alumni body of Olympians, the World Olympians Association (WOA), and is their representative to the IOC Athlete’s Commission. In 2007, she was re-elected as Vice President of the WOA and is currently Chair of Olympians Canada, the national alumni body of Olympians. Since 2003, she has been the founding Chair of the PASO (Pan American) Athletes Commission.
As a member of the Executive Board of the Canadian Olympic Committee (re-elected 2005-2009), Charmaine played an integral role in Toronto's 2008 Olympic Bid, and Vancouver’s 2010 Games Bid. She was co-Chair of the successful 2010 “Yes” campaign, which was the first successful Olympic plebiscite. She is currently one of twenty members of the Board of Directors for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games Organising Committee (Vanoc) and is on the Governance and Strategic Communications Committee.
An avid volunteer supporter of sports events staged in Canada, she was the Executive Vice Chair of the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships. This event won the 2003 “Canadian Sport Event of the Year Award”. She was also on the Board of the 2006 Men’s World Ice Hockey Championships and co-Chaired the Protocol and Awards Committee.
Her extensive charitable work includes issues related to children and women’s health. As a founding member of the international Board of Directors of “Right to Play”, a global athlete driven humanitarian organization, she Chairs the Governance Committee.
From 2001-2007, she was on the national Corporate Advisory Board of AIM/Trimark Mutual Funds, and it’s Governance Committee. AIM/Trimark is one of Canada’s largest mutual funds companies.
From 2002-2005, the Federal government appointed her to the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum of Nature. In 2007, she was appointed to the Board of Governors at the University of Northern BC (UNBC) by the BC Provincial Government.
Charmaine has also been a freelance Television personality since 1993, and has worked with CBC, TSN, CTV, Fox Sportsnet and European TV as an analyst, host or commentator on a number of sports and variety programs. She was the host of CBC's '"Cycle", the first Canadian TV show on recreational cycling, and also co-hosted the nation wide show, "In the Company of Women". She continues to host the annual internationally televised award winning "World Athletics" Gala from Monaco. As an executive producer, in 1995, she created the "Comic Relief" style TV special, "No Laughing Matter" which raised awareness for Breast Cancer and aired on the Comedy Network.
In 2006, she was one of six global sports leaders awarded with the “IOC Women in Sport Trophy” for promoting women in sport by the International Olympic Committee. In March 2004, the National Post selected her as one of the “Top 50 Women of Power” in Canada.
Charmaine has a BA in psychology from the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) where she attended on an Athletic Scholarship, and was inducted into UTEP’s Hall of Fame in 2006.
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