This story is part of the IndyStar project "Only woman in the room:" How Indy became top city in nation for women sports execs
INDIANAPOLIS -- Li Li Leung paints a raw, brutally honest picture of the organization she took over in 2019. There's no reason to sugarcoat the dire reputation USA Gymnastics was facing, not to mention the financial woes. It seemed almost as if there was no way things could get any worse for an organization reeling in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementUSA Gymnastics was facing decertification by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committees. Leung said, essentially, all the corporate partners had left. The organization had filed bankruptcy three months before she came on board as it faced hundreds of lawsuits filed by survivors.
"We had lost complete trust of our athletes, our coaches, our community and the wider general public," says Leung. "So, it was pretty grim times."
Enter Leung, a former elite gymnast at Michigan with an impressive resume who had been watching what was going on in Indianapolis as she worked as a vice president for the NBA.
"And I kept on hoping and willing it would get better, and it didn't. It actually kept on getting worse," Leung said. "And one day, I thought to myself, 'You know what, maybe I can help out. I used to be a gymnast. I have a sport business background.'"
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLeung made a phone call to USA Gymnastics headquarters to offer to volunteer with crisis recovery. The response she got was not what she had expected at all.
We're actually looking for a CEO. Would you speak with our executive search firm?
At first, Leung was hesitant. She didn't want to leave her high-ranking post with the NBA where she was managing international partnerships, licensing and marketing for the league. Still, she agreed to speak with the search firm, which led to several more calls and repeated requests for Leung to consider coming in to save an organization that was sinking.
The idea was a bit overwhelming, yet it struck a nerve with Leung, who had such wonderful memories of competing in gymnastics as a young woman.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd so in March 2019, Leung found herself sitting at the helm of USA Gymnastics. And she quickly saw the mountain she had to overcome.
Her first week on the job, Leung discovered USA Gymnastics had only six weeks of cash flow left. Then the CFO, the only other executive leader at the time, resigned.
"I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. We were in ultimate crisis mode, trying to plug in all the holes," Leung said. "Obviously, spending a lot of time on the legal side of things, because we had just filed for bankruptcy. It was turning over stones to try and mitigate risk, and then also getting the right people on board."
As Leung puts it, "I needed to find my village really quickly."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementShe set out to hire a leadership team, looking for people who were team oriented because "we had to roll up our sleeves and just be really flexible to do what we need to do." She looked for resilience and a person with no ego. The organization needed transforming and that's what had to be put first.
When all the interviews were done, Leung had found her leadership team -- an all-female one.
"I had a journalist ask me, 'Did you hire an all-female leadership team for optics?'" Leung said. "No, I couldn't afford to hire for optics at that time. I had to hire the best people for the role. And they all happened to be female."
In the past six years, Leung has "led the organization through a cultural transformation that has opened a new chapter for the sport in the U.S. cultural mainstream and re-established it as a leader in the Olympic and international gymnastics movements," USA Gymnastics said in a statement.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"She exposed what needed to be exposed that had caused the upheaval," said Julie Roe Lach, executive vice president of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, and a friend of Leung's. "She literally resurrected USA Gymnastics."
'Stay true to yourself, and hold on to what you believe is right'
Leung was born into the world of academia, an entire family of college professors with no gymnastics in their background. But Leung and her identical twin sister and older brother were a bit rambunctious.
"My parents would come home, and we would be hanging off of the kitchen counters and flipping off of the sofas," said Leung, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Ridgewood, N.J., about 25 miles northwest of New York City. "So, I think they thought, 'We should put the girls in gymnastics.'"
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLeung and her sister competed from the age of 7 all the way through college, and they competed very seriously. After Leung's freshman year of high school, the family moved so the girls could train twice a day, 35 hours a week.
"We went to school late, got out early, graduated with the minimum amount of credits the state of New Jersey would allow," Leung said. "So we were elite, elite level. It was basically a full-time job."
Leung went to Michigan on a scholarship where the team was Big Ten champions all four years she was there. She majored in psychology with the original plan of becoming a sports psychologist.
Li Li Leung, president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, sits in her office Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Indianapolis.Instead, she went into the finance industry after graduation, working in New York City and not liking it at all. Her sights were still set on a career in sports.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLeung went back to school to earn an MBA and an MS in sport business and management from University of Massachusetts, which launched a nearly 30-year career that has included a string of high profile sports jobs.
Before taking a job with the NBA in 2015, Leung spent nine years at Helios Partners, an international sports marketing consultancy. She lived in China and the United Kingdom working on, among many other projects, bringing the first NBA games to China. She also helped bring the first MLB games to China and was part of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Leung moved back to the United States in 2015 to work for the NBA in New York City for the next four years. While there, she saw what was happening at USA Gymnastics and felt a pull to be part of its transformation.
Among the key improvements at USA Gymnastics under Leung's leadership:
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA new board of directors was established, a new mission statement and set of organizational values that prioritizes athlete safety was instituted, and nearly 70% of the staff are new hires.
Leung led the establishment of USAG’s Athlete Bill of Rights, a movement that was among the first of its kind in sport. The organization now provides comprehensive health and wellness resources for its members and has some of the most robust mandatory and optional training for parents, coaches and adult athletes in sports, USA Gymnastics says.
All of USA Gymnastics’ more than 3,000 clubs now designate a Safety Champion.
Leung steered the organization out of bankruptcy which, in 2022, unveiled an expanded funding structure for national team athletes that brought greater equity across disciplines and genders and introduced a groundbreaking program to help provide mental health visits to national team athletes and their coaches.
The board of directors and several committees added members representing abuse survivors and athletes.
In addition to an organizational rebrand and new website, USA Gymnastics has entered six new commercial partnerships, headlined by a partnership with Nike that extends through the LA28 Olympic Games.
Getting all that done was not easy. It was hard, soul-searching, intense work, said Leung who, as she did her job, abided by the same advice she gives to young people navigating their careers.
"Stay true to yourself, and hold on to what you believe is right. That can be really, really difficult because you'll have a lot of people challenging you throughout your career. And it's really easy to bend to what other people want," Leung said. "But if you truly believe that your decision or what you're doing is right, then my advice would be to stay the course."
Leung announced this year that she will end her tenure with USA Gymnastics this month. She says she doesn't have any future career plans to announce, but she does leave behind a legacy of leadership at the organization.
"When I stepped into the role, USA Gymnastics was in a really different place than it is now," she said. "And where it is now, I feel really good about."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFollow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Li Li Leung: 'She literally resurrected USA Gymnastics'
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