Shelley Villalobos (Executive Director, Council for Responsible Sport)

In a special Earth Day episode, Eli and Tony couldn't be more excited to have Council for Responsible Sport Executive Director Shelley Villalobos on the pod for an interview. The guys first find out a little about Shelley's athletic background--which includes Division I experience in a non-running sport--and how "she resisted running as long as she possibly could" until finishing her first marathon at the 2021 Bank of America Chicago Marathon (yet another ECT Pod guest who's a member of the "one marathon club!"). And Shelley tells us about how she became involved with event sustainability working in college athletics, and she then transitioned to the Council.

Shelley shares some history about the formation and the early days Council, what it does, and what it's like for an event to certify as sustainable with the Council. She talks us through what a day is like in the life of someone advocating for and supporting events who pursue sustainable sport and what kind of tools are available for an event or event organization considering certification or just attempting to become more sustainable (including CRS's new, free ReScore event sustainability assessment tool, courtesy of TCS). And she and Eli talk about what kind of resources and efforts an event hoping to certify should expect to have to marshal, and what the case for certifying is (and although it is the right thing to do, the case is more than "It's the right thing to do!").

Things go a little bit off the rails for a bit toward the end of the interview, when Eli and Shelley riff about our potential Mad Max: Fury Road-like future, other post-apocalyptic movies, and drinking our own bodily fluids. But Shelley then brings it back, sharing a reading from environmentalist Wendell Berry, because that's just how things go sometimes on the ECT Pod . . .

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