Julie O'Neill Dussliere
BA 1994, Russian, School of Lanuages and Cultures
Chief of Paralympic Sport, Paralympics, Colorado Springs, CO
Julie (O’Neill) Dussliere currently serves as the Chief of Paralympics for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC). In this position, Dussliere oversees the high-performance planning and support processes and sport development projects for the 27 summer and winter Paralympic sports. She also directs the day-to-day operations for the six Paralympic sports managed by the USOPC – alpine skiing, cycling, Nordic skiing, snowboarding, swimming and track and field. She began her USOPC career in 2003, when she joined U.S. Paralympics as an associate director and head coach of the U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Team.
Through the 2008 Paralympic Games, Dussliere directed all high-performance planning and coaching support for U.S. Paralympics Swimming including implementing the Paralympic Swimming Resident Program at the Colorado Springs Olympic & Paralympic Training Center. In this position, Dussliere also developed the national certification processes for Paralympic swimming officials, classifiers and coaches.
Dussliere was involved with coaching Paralympic swimming on an international level for over a decade. She served as an assistant coach for the 1998 International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA) World Championships and 2000 U.S. Paralympic Swimming Team before taking over head coach duties for the 2002 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Swimming World Championships, becoming the first female head coach appointment for any U.S. team at a major international championship. In 2006, she was awarded the U.S. Olympic Committee Paralympic Coach of the Year. Two years later, she led the 2008 U.S. Paralympic Swimming Team to unparalleled success at the Beijing Paralympic Games as the team finished first in the medal standings for the first time with 44 total medals.
Dussliere has served as the Team USA chef de mission for the Paralympic Winter Games Sochi 2014, Parapan American Games Toronto 2015, Paralympic Games Rio 2016, and Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. The 2018 Games marked Team USA’s best performance at a Winter Games since 2002 with the U.S. topping the overall (36) and gold medal count (13) in South Korea.
After serving as vice president, Dussliere was appointed the president of the Americas Paralympic Committee in 2018 to become the first woman and first U.S. representative to lead the organization. The APC is recognized as the sole regional representative of the Americas region within the worldwide Paralympic Movement.
Prior to her work with the USOPC, Dussliere spent the previous eight years as a swim coach and administrator for various USA Swimming clubs including Rocket Aquatics (Syracuse, New York), Kansas City Blazers, Liverpool Jets (Liverpool, New York) and West Coast Aquatics (San Jose, California).
She is a graduate of Purdue University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian where she was an Academic All-Big Ten Conference honoree in swimming, and Ohio State University with a Master of Arts degree in Slavic and East European Studies.