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‘I’m not going to try to militarize the organization or the Olympics. That’s the wrong way to go’
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Reynold Hoover is four weeks into his new gig, chief executive officer at LA28.
Hoover, 63, comes to the job after an incredible career, mostly in the military, that saw him earn the rank of lieutenant general. That’s three stars.
Skeptics: do we really need a former three-star general militarizing the Olympic Games? In, of all places, Los Angeles?
“I’m not going to try to militarize the organization or the Olympics,” Hoover said Wednesday in his first interview since taking over at LA28. “That’s the wrong way to go.
New LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover // LA28
“But what I will say is that there are great lessons that I’ve picked up [over my career] that the military does well – and that is getting things done, planning to get things done, the logistics, the security, the transportation, the operational pieces. That’s what we do well.”
The Paris Games get underway in just a matter of days. When they end August 11, the spotlight turns to LA. The clock is ticking. Those Games start July 14, 2028. Four years.
Casey Wasserman is still No. 1 at LA28. But Hoover, who reports to Wasserman, is now, if you will 1A – the guy in charge of delivery.
Any edition of the Games is, on the hand, that. Logistics, operations, delivery. This 2028 edition of the Games has, so far, been defined primarily though to be fair not entirely, by a transactional if not soulless drive for dollars – the organizing committee’s fiduciary duty to the city of Los Angeles and its own bottom-line goals.
Too, any Games in the United States bears a distinct burden. It is expected to be American. Just – not in an overbearing way.
The 2028 Games also carry the expectation that they – in Los Angeles, where the 1932 and 1984 Olympics proved change makers, in the city by the sea where people go to reinvent themselves – can once again wring Hollywood-style magic. More than anything, the Games need to be relevant, especially with teens and 20-somethings. It’s far from clear Paris 2024 can turn this trick. Can LA in 2028 make them so?
With all that, there is this, too:
An Olympics is different than anything else because, at its core, an Olympics is about hopes and dreams. Our shared humanity.
About the notion that we are all in this together – that each of us has something to contribute – and that by contributing we make our fragile world better, piece by piece.
It’s a big ask to execute – to manage – such a thing. A very big ask.
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Before the Games in Los Angeles 40 years ago, the organizing committee turned to a comparatively little known travel agent, Peter Ueberroth. The general reaction was: who? (Peter then turned to the entertainment attorney Harry Usher.) It worked out pretty OK.
In Los Angeles, for that matter now around the world in measure because of the Olympics, everyone but everyone in certain circles knows Casey Wasserman. Now Casey has turned to Reynold Hoover. The general reaction, as Hoover begins to move to introduce himself around Southern California and at the Paris Games: who?
The question: can it once again turn out pretty OK?
Start with the obvious.
West Point graduate. Lawyer. Bronze Star, Operation Desert Storm, 1990-91. Bomb disposal support, 2002 Games, Salt Lake. Deployed to Afghanistan. FEMA Chief of Staff, 2002-3. Director, National Security Coordination, 2003-5. Special Assistant to President Bush for Homeland Security, 2005-7. Deputy director, office of public affairs, CIA, 2011-16. Upon retirement from the military in 2018, awarded Defense Distinguished Service Medal, highest non-combat award and highest joint service decoration in the Department of Defense.
But that’s only part of what Hoover has done.
And that part only tells – well, part.
This recitation – being a general, the other accomplishments, all of it – can tend to flatten who he is into a two-dimensional caricature: Reynold Hoover, three-star.
By definition, a caricature is a distorted representation, an oversimplification.
It necessarily ignores the obvious: why pick someone like this for one of the most demanding roles imaginable? It is often said an Olympics is the most complex enterprise undertaken in peacetime. But even that doesn’t get at all of it because that enterprise, overseeing the work of an Olympic organizing committee, means building and instituting a certain culture. That culture has to work.
“Most of them,” Hoover said when asked what people would say about him, “would say he’s a people person.
“He’s about relationships and networks and he can get [stuff] done.”
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How does he get [stuff] done?
Hoover has an appropriate sense of – how often does this get written about a former general – humility.
And a sense of humor.
During his White House years, Reynold Hoover played the Easter Bunny – that is, he put on an Easter Bunny suit – on the South Lawn of the White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll. For about an hour, he said, adding with a smile that this key information has now been declassified.
He has perspective. He remembers the 1980 Miracle on Ice, vividly. Not just because the Americans beat the Soviets. That, of course. But because as a plebe at West Point the U.S. victory meant “privileges.” The biggest? To “sit back in our chair and actually eat like a normal person.”
A recent podcast on leadership—military leadership, yes, but transferrable to civilian life—offers considerable insight into the sort of culture Hoover can expect to instill as LA28 ramps up from its current staff of hundreds to thousands.
He has anchors: faith and family. His wife, Kathryn, competes in open water swim contests.
“You gotta be able to laugh at yourself and realize that, you know, it’s all the people around you that help make you the success that you are,” he said in the podcast, “and just because you’re a CEO, or an entrepreneur, or a flag officer, you know, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden, you know, you got to be better-looking with age or your jokes got funnier, because they don’t.
“And you have to realize that, and I think the humility piece and being humble about the position and the power and the authority and the responsibility that you carry comes with a lot of extra baggage that you have to manage and manage effectively.
“And that might be through your faith – whatever that might be. If you go to church or whatever it is that how, whatever faith that you have, or you carry with you. It has to do with wellness and taking care of yourself and taking care of your family. Because I tell general officers, at the end of the day when they play ruffles and flourishes for you for the very last time, you go. Home and you got to go home to your family and you got to take care of them along the way.”
The people you work with, too.
Let’s be clear. The preposition here matters. It’s not the people who work under you. It’s the people you work with.
Fifteen years ago, in 2009, Hoover had just been made a one-star. He had just arrived Nov. 1 at Fort Hood, Texas, his unit preparing to go to Afghanistan. On Nov. 5, the phone rang. There was a mass shooting on base that would leave 13 dead. That evening, Hoover brought his unit of roughly 300 together, led by a chaplain, to pray for a wounded soldier and more:
“I gotta tell you,” he said in that podcast, “when you have people that are praying for you, and praying for your safety, and praying that you will bring them back from Afghanistan, and bring them through this particular ordeal, that’s pretty humbling, and has made a lasting impact on my life.”
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In that same podcast, he spoke of these traits as essential for leadership: sincerity, character, trust and honesty:
“Because with character goes your reputation. And you know, if you treat people with respect, you’re going to get respect back. If you give people your loyalty, you’re going to get loyalty back. If you give people sincerity and genuine caring about them, then you’re going to get that back.”
Same podcast. Advice for leadership?
“What I’ve done,” he said, “is I’ve not been afraid to pick up a broom from, you know, my days from a second lieutenant all the way up to being a general officer. To pick up a broom, to be part of the team, to be yourself.
“When you’re yourself, people see that. Yes, you’re a general officer or, yes, you’re a leader but, you know what? You’re just a common person like they are and when times are tough, you’re the person that they’ll look to because, you know, they respect you. And you respect that.
“And I think that’s how you motivate folks – is not through fear, not through intimidation. I was never a yeller or screamer. But, really, through kindness and knowing that they have a piece to contribute to the overall effort
“But when a decision needed to be made, or an action needed to be taken, they knew that you would make that decision, and you would lead them through it.”
In Wednesday’s interview, Hoover said he – predictably – has spent most of his first four weeks at LA28 “learning, watching and listening to the staff.”
These are the honeymoon weeks. Surely, there will be bumps ahead. What, nobody can predict. Already, though, his eye is on the prize: the 18- to 34-year-olds.
“… What we offer the world is an incredibly new way to think about the Games, how to experience the Games, and we’re going to take the Games, I think, to the next level, much like at ’84, much like in ’32,” he said.
What might that be?
“I think I’m too early to tell you that. But here’s what I’ll say. I think we’ve got the right people and we’re talking to the right creative minds.
“… We’ve got a great team of people that are the most creative thinkers, the digital thinkers, the people that can think kind of futuristically about what can be, and I think the combination of technology and the digital age that continues to change every day are all great opportunities,” Reynold Hoover said, “for us to change how people experience the Games.”