If you’re looking for a warm, wise, and dynamic speaker, Mariah Burton Nelson certainly fits the bill.  Inspirational, informative, and amusing, Mariah shows people how to compete and care like champions. She shows people how and why to forgive. She teaches step-by-step strategies for achieving personal and professional goals, whatever they may be.
   On November 2, she will draw on her expertise as an athlete and author, and through the use of stories, video, current research, audience participation, and lots of humor, she will  offer people at Radford University the motivation and the tools they need to heal, to lead, and to achieve great things.
   Mariah Burton Nelson is the author of The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football: Sexism and the American Culture of Sports, that was nominated for awards by the Center for the Study of Sport in Society and the North American Society for Sport Sociology.
   Her first book, Are We Winning Yet? How Women Are Changing Sports and Sports Are Changing Women received the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s Book Award. Her most recent book, The Unburdened Heart, draws on her poignant story of betrayal and reconciliation, along with new psychological research, ancient spiritual wisdom, poetry, and original interviews with others who have forgiven for offenses great and small. Nelson currently writes the first and only nationally syndicated women’s sports column, for Knight-Ridder/Tribune, that is distributed to 320 newspapers.
   She majored in psychology at Stanford (’78) and later received a masters in public health from San Jose State University. At Stanford, she averaged 19 points per game on the basketball team and was the captain and leading scorer and rebounder her last three years, She continued to play basketball for professional teams in France and the United States (Women’s Basketball League).

"Competition is about passion for perfection, and passion for other people who join in this impossible quest. What better way to get to know someone than to test your abilities together, to be daring and sweaty and exhausted
together". ~ Mariah Burton Nelson

   A former weekly columnist for the Washington Post and editor of Women’s Sports and Fitness magazine, Nelson has written for the New York Times, USA TODAY, Ms. Magazine, Glamour, Shape, Fitness, Cosmopolitan, and many other periodicals.
   In 1988 she won the Women’s Sports Foundation/Miller Lite Magazine Journalism Award. She was a finalist for the same award in 1990, 1991, and 1994. In 1994 she won the Fort Wayne Women’s Bureau’s Nancy Rehm Memorial Award “for honest reporting of girls and women in sports.” In 1995 she was presented with the National Organization for Women’s award for excellence in sports writing. In 1996 she received the National Association of Girls and Women in Sport’s Guiding Woman in Sport Award, and was inducted into the National Girls and Women in Sport Symposium Hall of Fame.
   Nelson lectures frequently on college campuses and at conferences and currently competes in masters swimming events.   Specializing in the 1500-meter freestyle, her time is in the top five nationally for her age group.  Nelson also coaches her mother, Sarah Burton Nelson, who recently set two Arizona state breaststroke records for women aged 70-74.
   Following the show Thursday night, Nelson will be available in the  lobby to sign autographs and books.  Also, Nelson will host a special session the next day for anyone wishing to speak with her on a more personal level.
  Prepare to be inspired when you attend Mariah Burton Nelson’s talk at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 2, in Radford University’s Preston Auditorium.