Inclusion Manager

08/06/2009

Richard Butler, USRowing's Inclusion Manager Diversity in rowing is the key to a new initiative for USRowing who have recently set up the role of inclusion manager. Richard Butler, newly hired for the position, has the huge task of bringing rowing to anyone who is not currently rowing. Butler is starting with a clean slate and relishing the challenge.

The position stemmed from discussions following the USRowing Task Force on Access, Affordability & Diversity that first met in 2006. USRowing’s press officer Brett Johnson says the inclusion manager role was developed to move forward from the Task Force findings. The role is to create “diversity in rowing” in the United States.

Butler will develop an integrated diversity strategy and develop and provide resources, materials and consulting for USRowing members and the wider sports community. Apart from USA Swimming there are no other sporting organisations with an inclusion manager. Butler will thus be helping USRowing to take the lead in bringing sport to all parts of society.

World Rowing talked to Richard Butler from the new USRowing base in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

World Rowing: Coming from a non-rowing background, how did you become involved in rowing?
Richard Butler: My background is in various types of sports. As a fitness trainer I worked with various athletes. A masters rower that I was working with approached me and asked if I’d be a mental coach for her masters crew. It got me interested, so I went to the website of her rowing club, Three Rivers Rowing (Pittsburgh) and saw that they had a job going for an executive director. I applied. I was the only non-rower to apply (and I got the job). They were more interested in employing someone with leadership skills. Three Rivers Rowing is large. It has two boathouses with 1,700-plus rowers.
Prior to that I was aware of rowing but like other African Americans I didn’t have rowing on my radar. I was surprised that at Three Rivers Rowing there were 25 masters black rowers. The club already had a diversity manager.
So I wasn’t exposed to rowing until then. Now I’m a masters rower. I have done martial arts and other sports and I can say rowing is the hardest sport.

WR: How did the USRowing inclusion manager role come about?
RB: There are 188,000 participants in rowing in the US. This is a small amount compared to other sports. USRowing created a diversity task force three years ago. The conferences were fantastic but the question was how to make it go further. The task force was volunteer so it is difficult to make it grow. Glenn Merry (USRowing’s executive director) recognised the huge opportunity.

WR: You are setting up the role virtually from scratch. What will be your first focus?
RB: USA Today (newspaper) did a scathing article on national sporting bodies of Olympic sports and found they’d done nothing for inclusion. Swimming was the first to have an inclusion manager. USRowing is taking the lead on this one. So my initial role is coming up with strategic plans on what inclusion should look like and how to make it happen. I imagine my first 10 months will be brain work, creating initiatives.
USRowing isn’t big as a sport, so I’m looking at how we make rowing relevant to all of the US.

WR: Are there certain groups in the community that you want to focus on?
RB: The racial groups that are currently not involved in rowing. I’ll look at rural as well as urban groups, also inclusion in terms of gays and lesbians and adaptive rowers.
I’m careful to begin my conversations stressing that this isn’t about getting blacks rowing. It’s about getting everyone who is not rowing involved. Initially though my focus is youth.

WR: What is your view on why certain ethnicities gravitate towards certain sports?
RB: I teach a college class on diversity in organisations and what I see is that everything we do in life is based on informal social networks. So if my informal social network is playing basketball, then that’s what I know and then likely what I’ll do.
A local school of mainly black students went on a tour of the local university and had a great time. At the end of the tour the students were asked if they’d go to this university. They weren’t interested because they said ‘this school is for Asians.’ Social networks will get different groups involved.

WR: Do you think rowing in the United States is elitist?
RB: Not on purpose. It wasn’t planned, but the nature of the sport means it’s not accessible and it’s not affordable.

WR: There also seems to be barriers in terms of different cultures’ view of water.
RB: Yes, this is an issue. Latin Americans have the highest drowning rate (in the US). In Pittsburgh the number one thing your parents tell you is ‘don’t go near the water, because you’ll die’. There’s a big fear of drowning.
We have to break the fear of water. It’s going to be one of the greatest challenges. I also have the challenge to convince USRowing members and the rowing public in general that this role is relevant.
I embrace challenges. I have the opportunity to make a difference in a whole sport. Glenn Merry said it the best: “Besides that it’s the right thing to do, it’ll help USRowing to become relevant as a sport in the United States.”Here is the beginning of my post.