Michael Lenard has a deep and wide background in business, sport and law. He advises a number of sports businesses and organizations on strategy, finances and programs and leads Industrial Sport, a sports investment platform.

Mr. Lenard has served in a variety of senior leadership positions in Olympic and international sport for over twenty years. He was Vice President of the United States Olympic Committee for eight years and served on its Athletes’ Advisory Council for eight years (including the last four as Vice Chairman). These stints included serving on the Executive Committee in either a voting or an ex-officio capacity for almost fifteen years. He also served for eight years on the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. He created and oversaw the USOC’s Athlete Performance Group and Chair of its Marketing Committee. More recently, he served as the Chair of the USOC’s Key Strategies Task Force, as the Special Advisor for Business Affairs to the USOC President and as a member of the USOC’s Salt Lake City Games Integration Team.
He remains actively involved with senior USOC executives on a number of discrete projects and strategy. Contrary to periodic rumor and hope, he is not writing a salacious memoir. Although he certainly could.

Mr. Lenard is one of twenty worldwide members of the Swiss-based international body that oversees and operates the court that adjudicates Olympic and international sports disputes. His colleagues include former Cabinet level officials of France, Syria and Egypt and former and current judges at the International Court of Justice at The Hague and at the highest courts of India, Senegal and Switzerland. On a more local basis, he was and remains a founding member of the Los Angeles Sports Council, which bids for sports events to be held in Los Angeles and supports Los Angeles’ professional and collegiate sports teams.

In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Westside Breakers Soccer Club, a program involving more than 150 girls, and is a seasoned AYSO All-Star Soccer Coach. Coaching children is by far the most fulfilling and important role that he has yet played in sport.

He is a founder and a spiritual leader of the A.C. Sushi Masters, the quasi-mythical sport club for old, principled and irreverent Olympians. But that is another story altogether. And quite a good one at that.

Mr. Lenard was a 1984 Olympian. Among the other domestic and international competitive medals he has won, he was a seven-time National Champion in Team Handball. In 1985, he was Captain of the U.S. National Team at the World Championships and selected U.S. Team Handball Athlete of the Year and Olympian Magazine’s Team Handball SportsMan of the Year.

Mr. Lenard is a Managing Director and the Counsellor of the Paladin Group and William E. Simon & Sons (“WES”), which are private investment firms that seed and sponsor institutional investment funds and make investments in private equity, real estate and special situations. Most of his time is spent fulfilling senior business and investment roles. He is and has been a member of the Boards of Directors or Management Committees of numerous companies and projects. He also has been actively involved in the management and operations of an affiliate merchant bank in Hong Kong.
 
The Paladin Group and Paladin Realty Partners has committed over $450 million in equity to more than 200 assets totaling $2 billion of real estate throughout the United States and Latin America. Paladin Realty invests in a wide range of product types, from hotel to resort residential and office executing value-added business plans with proven local entrepreneurs. The WES private equity group has been the lead equity investor in deploying over $600 million in 20 corporate investments. The group focuses its investments primarily in basic industries such as manufacturing, as well as early childhood education and technical services.
 
Prior to joining the firm in 1993, Mr. Lenard was a Partner in the international law firm of Latham & Watkins, where he specialized in private investment funds, international and domestic joint ventures, entertainment transactions and other private and closely held transactions and structures.
 
Mr. Lenard attended the New York University and University of Southern California Law Schools, and was graduated from the latter with a Juris Doctor Degree and was a member of the Order of the Coif and Law Review. Mr. Lenard was graduated with distinction with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration in both Accounting and Finance from the University of Wisconsin, where he was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma and Beta Alpha Psi national scholastic honor societies and was named a semi-finalist for the Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Award.

Mr. Lenard is the father of two remarkable and wonderful children, Madeline and Nicholas.
 
 
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