Skip Gilbert, Veteran Olympic and Paralympic Sport CEO, Named to the USA Fencing Board of Directors

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Skip Gilbert, a former professional soccer goalkeeper, has spent two decades in the rooms where Olympic and Paralympic sport gets built. He led USA Triathlon through the fastest growth period in its history. He ran tennis’s US Open, the largest annual sporting event in the world. He served as chief executive of U.S. Youth Soccer, one of the largest youth sport organizations in the country. Now he brings that experience to fencing.

Gilbert has been named an independent director of the USA Fencing Board of Directors following a vote by the current Board on June 27, 2026, during Summer Nationals in Portland, Oregon. His term begins Sept. 1, 2026. He was selected alongside Erik Moses, whose appointment as an independent director takes effect the same day.

Independent directors occupy a distinct seat at the table. Unlike athletes, coaches, parents, club owners, referees or at-large directors, who are elected from within the fencing community, independent directors have no other affiliation with USA Fencing. That separation is the point. Under the governance standards that apply to every national governing body, independent directors provide outside expertise, financial oversight and a perspective unclouded by the internal politics that any membership organization can generate. They ask the questions nobody inside the sport thinks to ask.

"Throughout my career, I've always said that I work in the business of making dreams come true through sport," Gilbert says. "As one of the oldest sports within the Olympic Program and given USA Fencing's history of competitive success, the upside potential to help the sport grow throughout the country resonates deeply with me. Being able to contribute through Board service will allow me to give back to sport in a valuable and measurable way."

Gilbert currently serves as executive vice president of Capelli Sport, a $100 million sport apparel business, where he reports directly to the CEO and helps develop sales strategies to scale the company across sports and across markets worldwide.

His track record inside the Olympic and Paralympic movement is extensive. As CEO of USA Triathlon from 2005 to 2011, Gilbert grew membership 171%, nearly doubled annual revenue, and grew the organization's investment account from $1.5 million to $6.5 million. He sold the largest corporate partnership in the organization's history, a deal with Hy-Vee that created a $1 million prize purse, equal for men and women, the largest in the sport at the time. A global sport consulting group named the turnaround one of the best American sport success stories of the decade.

At U.S. Youth Soccer from 2020 to 2025, Gilbert led a staff of 56 and a $22 million budget, guided the organization through the pandemic, wrote its first strategic plan and delivered three consecutive million-dollar surplus years. Between those roles, he served as managing director of operations, marketing and development at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and as US Open tournament manager and managing director of professional tennis operations at the United States Tennis Association.

Gilbert's service to the broader Olympic movement runs deeper still. He was elected chairman of the National Governing Bodies Council, which represents the interests of all National Governing Bodies to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and he sat on the USOPC Governance Reform Committee and the USOPC Development Committee for SafeSport. He co-founded the Association of the Chief Executives of Sport and was elected its board chairman twice. He chaired four working groups for the Aspen Institute's Project Play initiative.

Before his career in sport administration, Gilbert was a goalkeeper. He trained with Sheffield United in England and USV Elinkwijk in Holland, played professionally with the NASL's Tampa Bay Rowdies, and earned first-team NCAA All-American honors twice at the University of Vermont, where he has since been elected to the Athletic Hall of Fame. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Vermont and an Olympic and Paralympic Sport Leadership Certification from the USOPC and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, says Gilbert's arrival comes at a pivotal moment for the organization.

"Skip Gilbert is one of the most respected figures in Olympic and Paralympic sport and has repeatedly done exactly what we're setting out to do here: grow the base, grow the revenue and build an organization that can carry the sport forward while listening to what makes a membership organization special. He also understands the role of the CEO enough to support — but also to challenge and hold accountable the CEO of the organization, which is a key role of the Board," Andrews says. "He knows this world inside and out, and he's going to make us better as an organization and as a Board group.”

Gilbert lives in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, Jenifer, and their two dogs, Baxter and Olly. They have three adult children, all of whom live nearby in the Northeast.