Bill Shumard

Bill Shumard

President & CEO, Special Olympics of Southern California
1972, Bachelor of Arts, Journalism, CSULB

Bill Shumard has enjoyed a long and successful career in sports management at the professional, collegiate and amateur levels.  Since 1995, he has served as president and CEO of Special Olympics Southern California (SOSC), now recognized as one of the movement’s premier Special Olympics programs. 

Under Shumard’s leadership, Southern California was awarded the bid for the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games—the largest sporting and humanitarian event in the world—and the number of athletes served by SOSC dramatically increased.  Prior to joining SOSC, Shumard worked for his alma mater; he became the second-longest tenured athletics director in Long Beach State history, raising more than $7 million for capital projects, including the Walter Pyramid, and overseeing a program that won numerous championships and experienced extraordinary gains in student-athlete graduation rates. 

Previously, he was athletics director at California State University, Fullerton; assistant athletics director at the University of Southern California (where he also helped establish the Sports Management Institute); and director of community services and special events for the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Shumard remains actively involved with CSULB, where he is the current chair of the Advisory Council for the Master of Sports Management program (a program he was instrumental in founding) and a past chair of the Governing Council for the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership. 

Shumard and his wife of 27 years, Kim, have three sons, Matt, Mike, and David—all CSULB alumni—and four grandchildren.  He enjoys traveling, reading, attending sporting events, and playing “mediocre” golf.

From Alumni Awards 2015 program