NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 15, 2025--
Chief, the largest community of senior women executives, today announced the appointment of Alison Moore as CEO effective February 3, 2025. As part of this leadership succession plan, Carolyn Childers, Co-Founder and current CEO, and Lindsay Kaplan, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer, will transition to Chairman of the Board and Kaplan as Board Director, respectively.
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In 2019, Childers and Kaplan launched Chief to bring exceptional executives together in a powerful network of influence and insight. Today, Chief is a national community with tens of thousands of members and representation from over 10,000 companies including 77% of the Fortune 100. Chief has five clubhouse locations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. This year, Chief introduced a new membership with packages that include 1-on-1 Executive Coaching, Executive Advisory and an Executive Education offering in partnership with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Chief is a beacon for empowering women leaders and I’m humbled by the opportunity to serve as its next CEO,” Moore said. “When I joined Chief as a founding member, I saw the immense power and potential of Chief — all that’s possible when women leaders could learn, connect, and grow together. Chief gives women the unique opportunity to catalyze change across their personal work journey with the most supportive and passionate community behind them. With the trust of Carolyn, Lindsay, and the Board, I’m eager to drive innovation across the business, while building on the core principles that make Chief unlike any other community for executive women leaders.”
“It has been the greatest honor for Lindsay and me to see how Chief has impacted tens of thousands of women,” Childers said. “After months of reflection and planning, we’re excited for this new chapter with Alison at the helm. Her ability to drive innovation where it's needed, while staying true to a company’s purpose, made her the ideal leader to carry Chief forward.”
Moore is a highly accomplished business leader and digital pioneer, with more than 20 years of experience in executive roles across respected technology, social impact, media, and entertainment brands. For the past five years, she served as CEO of Comic Relief US, a global nonprofit that harnesses the power of entertainment to progress its vision of a just world, free from poverty. Moore consistently pushed Comic Relief US to be bold and creative in galvanizing consumers, brands, organizations, and communities to have fun while driving change. Building on the success of its iconic Red Nose Day campaign, Moore successfully increased the reach and influence of Comic Relief US by launching innovative campaigns, pursuing new partnerships, and expanding to emerging platforms — ultimately resulting in more than $436 million raised and 35 million children impacted.
Prior to Comic Relief US, Moore held executive leadership roles at HBO, DailyCandy, NBCUniversal, SoundCloud, and Condé Nast. Across these organizations, Alison was successful in driving digital innovation, growth, and transformational change. She is on the Board of Directors for Downtown Music Holdings and TRACE Music Group, and will remain on the Board of Comic Relief US.
“On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Carolyn and Lindsay for their vision and leadership. Together, they built Chief into a dynamic and impactful business and community,” said Ken Chenault, chairman and managing director, General Catalyst, and board member, Chief. "We're thrilled that Alison, an accomplished, mission-driven leader, will build on the strong foundation that Carolyn and Lindsay established for the business, the mission of which is more critical now than ever before."
About Chief
Chief is the private network executive women rely on to maximize their leadership impact through access to a vetted community of business leaders and valuable insights. Founded in 2019, Chief is the largest community of senior executive women, representing more than 10,000 companies and 77% of the Fortune 100. Chief has been recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies and one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Learn more at chief.com.
Chief’s new CEO Alison Moore (Photo: Johannes Oberman)
Chief's new CEO Alison Moore (center) with co-founder Lindsay Kaplan (left) and former CEO and co-founder Carolyn Childers (right) (Photo: Johannes Oberman)
LOS LLANITOS, México (AP) — On a dirt field on Mexico’s Pacific coast, five cousins between the ages of 8 and 13 strip down and kick off their shoes. Nearby, adults help them fasten the pre-Hispanic-style “fajado,” securing loincloths and leather belts that wrap around their hips.
The Osuna children grab the rubber ball, all 3.2 kilograms of it — around 7 pounds or seven times heavier than a soccer ball — and begin playing. Only the hips may touch it, forcing players to leap through the air or dive low when it skims the ground.
As Mexico prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the nation is looking back 3,400 years to one of the oldest team sports: the ancient ballgame known as ulama, a ritual practice nearly erased during the Spanish conquest that survived only in the remote pockets of northwestern Mexico before its late 20th-century rebirth. Today, authorities and its modern players are leveraging the momentum of international soccer to shine a spotlight on the ancient sport once again.
While players acknowledge that tourism fueled the sport’s revival, many worry that projecting an “exotic” image undermines a tradition central to their identity.
“We must rid the game of the notion that it is a living fossil,” said Emilie Carreón, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, and director of a project aimed at studying and practicing the sport.
That's exactly what the Osuna family is trying to do. After ulama player Aurelio Osuna died, his widow, María Herrera, 53, continued his legacy, teaching the ballgame to their grandchildren in their small village in Sinaloa, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northwest of Mexico City.
“This seed will bear fruit someday,” she said.
According to the Popol Vuh, the sacred Mayan book, the world was created from a ballgame, where light and darkness clashed to balance life and death and set the universe in motion.
Long before the Maya, the Olmecs — the earliest known Mesoamerican civilization — practiced the sport; the recreation of this clash of opposing forces was common in various pre-Hispanic cultures. The evidence is in millennial rubber balls unearthed in Mexico and in nearly 2,000 ball courts found from Nicaragua to Arizona.
The game, depicted in codices, stone carvings and sculptures, had many variations and meanings, from fertility or war ceremonies, to political acts and even sacrifices.
While some players were beheaded — possibly the losers — Guatemalan archaeologist and anthropologist Carlos Navarrete explained this occurred only during specific periods and in certain regions. The physically demanding game was primarily a big social event, drawing crowds for fun and betting.
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés was impressed by the spectacle presented by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma but the Spanish ultimately banned ulama and ordered the destruction of its courts, likely viewing the tradition as a form of resistance to Christianity. For the Catholic Church “the ball was the living devil,” Carreón said.
The game — played by hitting the ball with the hip, the forearm or a mallet — survived only on the Mexican northern Pacific coast, where the colonial process led by Jesuit priests was less aggressive and ulama was accepted in Catholic festivities, said Manuel Aguilar Moreno, a professor of art history at California State University.
On the opening day of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, spectators watched as burly men contorted their bodies in unexpected ways to keep the rubber ball moving for as long as possible. The exhibition sparked studies about the ballgame and how to preserve it in the following decades.
Luis Aurelio Osuna, 30, Herrera’s eldest son, began playing hip ulama after school, just as his father did decades ago in Los Llanitos, a ranch next to the port city of Mazatlán. Now his three children also play.
Osuna and his mother teach the children how to hit the ball and guide them through the complicated rules, which include a scoring system with points that are won and lost.
They do it out of passion, but also out of pragmatism in a state where organized crime is pervasive.
“We need to find a way to keep them entertained with good things,” said Osuna.
Hip ulama teams have up to six players and the Osuna family sometimes participates in tournaments or exhibitions.
Decades ago, matches were big events tied to religious feasts, sometimes stretching on for an entire week. But those days are gone, as interest waned and rubber balls became hard to get.
In the 1980s, filmmaker Roberto Rochín documented the work of perhaps the last rubber ball-maker in the mountains of Sinaloa. The artisan made them similar to the Olmecs, who discovered that mixing hot rubber sap with a plant created a strong, elastic and durable material. This civilization made some of the oldest balls of the world.
During the 1990s, staff from a resort in the Mexican Caribbean traveled across the country in search of Sinaloan families who could represent the ballgame as a tourist attraction in the Riviera Maya, where no one played it anymore.
“It’s pure spectacle: they paint their faces and put on feathered costumes,” Herrera said. Yet, she acknowledges the value. “That’s where the revival began.”
The ballgame began to spread and to be known outside Mexico. Osuna, with the family team his father had formed, ended up playing hip ulama in a Roman amphitheater in Italy. It attracted so much attention that they were hired for a deodorant commercial, he said.
As the World Cup approaches, authorities and corporations are launching exhibitions in Mexico City and Guadalajara, and featuring ulama players in ad campaigns highlighting Mexican heritage — a move that has sparked mixed feelings.
“We’re not circus monkeys,” says Ángel Ortega, a 21-year-old ulama player from Mexico City who recently participated in a TV commercial alongside football players.
Ilse Sil, a player and member of the UNAM project led by Carreón, believes that institutional support will help to preserve ulama but officials need to promote the game in communities and schools to recruit more young players, as it remains a marginal sport with approximately 1,000 players mainly in México and Guatemala.
In Los Llanitos, Herrera’s grandchildren love playing. They don't care where — in the dirt field, in a court or even in the house corridor — but always with the precious inheritance: a handmade decades-old rubber ball from the mountains of Sinaloa. They say it cushions the blows better.
Eight-year-old Kiki is the most enthusiastic. He says he is determined to keep practicing until he fulfills the dream of leading a team of his own.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Juan Osuna plays ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
The Osuna family poses for a photo before a match of ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, that they organized in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Iker Salgueido plays ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Iker Salgueiro stands still as an adult fastens a pre-Hispanic-style “fajado,” or leather belt, in preparation for ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Youth play ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
