Allyson Felix on moral courage

The Olympian pushed back at one of the largest brands in sports history—and won. What can she teach us about stepping up?

In a buzzy one-minute spot, Nike aired a Super Bowl commercial last Sunday with a striking message about the double standards faced by female athletes.

Grammy-award winning artist Doechii narrates, “You can’t be demanding. You can’t put yourself first. You can’t be relentless…” while prominent female athletes showcase their excellence in silvery monochrome. Caitlin Clark sinks a 3-pointer. Jordan Chiles flips through the air.

Notably absent is the athlete who compelled Nike to air the commercial in the first place.

Let the record show: Allyson Felix is the most decorated track and field athlete of all time, holding 20 World Championship titles and 11 Olympic medals. And at the height of her career, she dared to become pregnant. Then, when her rights as a pregnant person came into question, she dared to go toe-to-toe with one of the most recognizable brands in sports.

Breaking new ground is kind of Allyson’s thing. She also founded the first sneaker brand designed for women’s feet (Saysh), and first management firm for female athletes (Always Alpha). She has consistently used her platform and her lived experience to speak up and do good. She testified to Congress on the Black maternal health crisis, partnered with the CDC, created the Olympic Village’s first ever nursery, and received a grant from the Melinda Gates Foundation to advance birth justice.

At a time when moral courage in the public sphere is scarce, Allyson is a beacon. Yet she is so unassuming and exceedingly reasonable you can almost forget she is revolutionary. And perhaps that is her power. Listening to Allyson makes you believe that maybe, just maybe, you can stand up for yourself too.

Did you always know you wanted to be a parent?

I did know I always wanted to be a parent, but I didn't really see how that would happen with my chosen career. I had an incredible working mom, who has been the most amazing role model, but in my sport I didn't have a bunch of clear examples. For me, it was always kind of like, okay, well, maybe eventually, once I accomplish enough, then I will get to that.

Did you have role models in other sports at your level?

I did. But what I saw was kind of the opposite. I had incredible role models in sport who were doing phenomenal things, but when it came to motherhood, what I saw more than anything was them struggling. I saw how hard it was for them; I saw how they were not supported. That only amplified this feeling that I had of, okay, you've got to do everything here first before you can explore motherhood.

That makes sense to me. But then, of course, that’s not what you ended up doing! So explain to me: how did you end up becoming an advocate for moms and deciding to also go for it yourself?

I came to a place where I felt like, Okay, I've accomplished some big goals that I have, and now I feel like I don't have what matters most to me, which is becoming a mom. That was after six gold medals. What led me to advocacy work was really just how I came to motherhood.

At 32 weeks, I went into a routine appointment, and that's when I found out that something was wrong. I was diagnosed with a severe case of preeclampsia. I had heard of preeclampsia before, but I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know anybody in my real life who had it. Very quickly, things even got worse, and I was eventually rushed in for an emergency C section. I spent time in the hospital recovering from that, and my daughter spent a month in the NICU. It was a very heavy time. It was so opposite of what I had imagined for myself. I had wanted a natural birth. I picked out the room and the birthing center, all the things, and then I found myself not being able to do that.

We are so grateful that a month later, my whole family walked out of the hospital together, but that time just changed me. It opened my eyes to the crisis that we are facing in Black maternal health. I left feeling so blessed to have my life and for my daughter to have hers…I want to do whatever I can to help people and to be part of solutions.

It feels important that we talk about Nike. My understanding is that you became pregnant, right as your contract with Nike was winding down and you went public about their efforts to pay you less because you became a mom—essentially taking on one of the most powerful brands in sports in the process. Can you talk me through that?

So basically, the story that I shared about my daughter happened simultaneously with this renegotiation of my contract.

Even before I disclosed my pregnancy, I had this fear about motherhood from my colleagues and my teammates because I saw them struggle, hide their pregnancies, and have their contracts be paused. At that time, Nike wanted to reduce my pay by 70% even before they knew I was pregnant. So I started to do what so many women in my sport had done before me: I hid my pregnancy. I started training at four o'clock in the morning, when it was dark.

For track and field, our contracts are performance based. So if you go to the Olympics, or you go to the World Championships, you get a bonus. But if you have a baby during that time, or if you just have given birth, if you're pregnant, there's nothing to protect you. So essentially what was happening in the sport is that women would become pregnant, and their salary would be reduced and reduced to nothing, and then they would be pushed out.

I asked for time to be able to recover from pregnancy, and I was told that I could have that. And I was like, amazing. We're good. Let's go. And then when I got the contract back, there was no mention of maternity, pregnancy, nothing to tie the time to that. What we learned is that they were willing to give me the time, but they were not willing to set the precedent for all of their female athletes.

For me, that was really the turning point. While this is happening my daughter is in the NICU, and I'm watching her literally fight for her life, and there was just a pull that I would not let her generation deal with this. That's when I decided to go public. I wrote a New York Times op-ed along with teammates and colleagues of mine, talking about the internal struggles that we had been having for years, and I parted ways with the company over that. About two and a half weeks later they changed their policy, and today they offer 18 months of maternal protection for all their female athletes. So in the end, eventually, it was a win.

So you got the win for everybody else, but you also part ways, and that's not where the story ends. You decide that you're going to take your own path, both in starting a shoe company and in representing other female athletes. Talk me through that calculus.

It really came out of necessity. I did not think very strategically about blowing the whole thing up. I just felt deeply called. But I still wanted to run in another Olympics, and needed a footwear sponsor. We went to all of the major companies, and there was no interest. I had been labeled a problem—I was too heavily Nike branded, I was too old, all of these things.

I was having a conversation with my brother, and he manages my career, and he's one of my best friends. And so I was speaking to him just as my big brother, and I was telling him how crushed I was that I'm going to all these companies, and I'm begging them to see my worth and my value at this place in my career. He was very much in Big Brother mode and he was like, Okay, how do we solve this problem? Well, let's just do it ourselves.

The more that I sat with it, I understood what he was getting at: that we have the opportunity to be the change makers. As we took a dive into the sneaker industry, we learned that shoes are being made for men and women are wearing them. So a sneaker is made off of a mold of a foot, and it's the mold of a man's foot. To make women's running shoes and women's sneakers is more than the shoes: it is getting to say, we think women deserve better in every single category, and we're going to show up for them, and we're going to do this in a different way. So I was kind of forced into it, but I love what we're building and what we get to do

You did something else remarkable at the Olympics this year, and built the first ever nursery in the Olympic Village. I couldn’t believe that hadn’t happened before. What got that off the ground?

I mean, I had the same thought as you: how has this not been done before? The inspiration was really just coming back to competition after having my daughter, and it was really hard. It was hard in some ways that I felt like it shouldn't be—traveling with an infant, going overseas, being in stadiums, finding places to breastfeed, finding places to wash bottles.

I just thought to myself: if there were people around the table who considered motherhood, it wouldn't be this way. And so I was appointed to the International Olympic Committee's athlete commission, and when I arrived, they asked me, what would be something that you want to accomplish? And I said, well, child care at the Olympics.

Everyone went to work, and we were able to put it together. And it was really incredible to see. I have a lot of plans for growing it [at the 2028 Olympics] in LA, but I think more than anything, I was really happy with the shift in culture that we're starting to see. It’s things like this that have to change for women to feel like they can still have some of their best moments in their career after motherhood.

You’ve always had this wonderful way of shining light on injustices while also shining light on a path forward. How do you do that?

I appreciate you saying that. I am very hopeful. It does, at times, feel overwhelming and dark, for example when my teammate Tori Bowie died in her early 30s. You're doing this work and then something happens, and it feels like everything comes crashing down around you, like, does any of this even matter? Are we making progress?

But I always think about that statistic somewhere that says around 80% of maternal complications and deaths are preventable. As much as that is heartbreaking, I see that as hope, because it means that we can change this. Something recently that I heard Representative Lauren Underwood say when she talked about this crisis, is if we continue to let Black women die in childbirth, it really, at this point, is a choice.

She's right. We can do the right things, whether it's implicit bias training, awareness raising, policy changes…but ultimately we have control over better outcomes to come. I try to take hold of that and keep pushing forward with it.

What my team is reading, building, and thinking against:

• If you haven’t already now is a great time to read Allyson’s tremendous op-ed in the New York Times that secured maternity protections for female athletes to come.

• Speaking of moral courage, thank you to those who are voicing support for global public health infrastructure amid an otherwise milquetoast climate. My colleague Dr. Atul Gawande wrote powerfully about why U.S.A.I.D. is critical here, and my colleague Dr. Katherine Semrau pointed me to this analysis of the impact its dismantling could have on reproductive age women. By conservative estimates, U.S.A.I.D. programs have prevented 1.3 million deaths among young women over the last decade.
  
  These programs are not handouts–they are instrumental to America’s soft power in the world and directly secure Americans against infectious outbreaks. They also exemplify our long-held ideals of decency and generosity.
  
  Among the heartbreaking messages I’ve received, one of my physician friends in the field told me the funding freeze “is very likely terminal for us, but with what we have left, we will still try to serve the world.”

• Last year, Claudia Goldin was the first sole woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics. And just last month, she published an elegant paper suggesting that the world’s future fertility rates will depend on whether or not men are willing to step it up at home. The finding is not surprising, but the way she revealed it was so clever.
  
  Goldin hypothesized that countries that underwent rapid economic development probably faced slower shifts in societal beliefs, values, and traditions. This disparity meant that generational and gender conflicts would be more likely, contributing to sharp decreases in fertility rates. Using a time series analysis she observed that by contrast, countries that experienced slower development did not encounter such pronounced conflicts, resulting in more stable fertility rates over time.
  
  When I recently asked her what drove her to explore this question, and so many others over her career that have revealed gender inequities to the world, she demurred. “The answer to what drove me to pursue the questions and subjects I have pursued is just curiosity about fairly large issues and a naïveté that I could succeed, somewhat.”

  Every generation has had to grapple with the injustices of their time. Claudia Goldin, like Allyson Felix and my courageous friend in the field, reminds us that it’s up to us what we want to do about it.