Alexis Lyras

Alexis Lyras is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and is the president of the Olympism for Humanity Alliance and the academic program director of the Olympism for Humanity Academy at Georgetown University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development.

Lyras’s thirty-five-year scholar-practitioner career began as a celebrated basketball coach across grassroots, professional, and national teams, evolving into Olympic and sport diplomacy scholarship, peacebuilding, and humanistic leadership development. His scholarly record spans thirty-one peer-reviewed publications, fourteen competitive grants, and more than 250 graduate students and junior faculty mentored across continents. Lyras currently serves as an international sport policy expert and grant reviewer for leading global sport agencies. As president of the Olympism for Humanity Alliance, Lyras directs the annual O4H Praxis and Champions of Change sport and Olympic diplomacy programs at the International Olympic Academy in Ancient Olympia—immersive field experiences that prepare the next generation of sport and Olympic scholars, practitioners, and leaders. His profile combines an internationally embedded research program, an immediately operational policy framework, and a more than three-decade commitment to the conviction that the power of sport, at its best, is a force for human good.

Lyras holds a PhD in sport management—sport for development & peace from the University of Connecticut. He holds an associate professor position at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and held a six-year faculty appointment at the Tsukuba International Academy for Sport Studies—the academic arm of Sport for Tomorrow, the government of Japan’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Legacy program.