On a hastily planned train trip from her Geneva home to Lausanne, where she was to interview for a job with the International Equestrian Federation, Lisa Lazarus worried that her dearth of knowledge about the sport might work against her.

Desperate, she Googled: “What is dressage?”          

“When I took the job, I knew nothing about horses,” said Lazarus, who pursued the role at the invitation of a recruiter who told her only that a “medium-sized sports governing body” was looking for a general counsel. “It sounded awesome. Sports regulation is sports regulation. When I found out it was horses, I was like, ‘hoooh.’

“But as it turns out, sporting regulation is still sporting regulation.”

It was a significant pivot for a lawyer who cut her teeth in the NFL’s labor department. After 10 years at the league, she accepted an NFL buyout in 2009 when the headhunter called about the governing body job.

She was with the federation for six years, then did consulting work in the sport and represented riders for a sports law firm. Lazarus was approached in 2022 about her current role as CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which Congress created in 2020 to deal with a spate of deaths in racing.

Tasked with drafting and enforcing rules across the country in a sport regulated state by state, the HISA developed a database to track the health of 60,000 registered horses, uncover root causes of equine injuries and institute policies to prevent them.

“We’ve managed in a very short period of time to have a meaningful impact on horse racing and horse fatalities,” Lazarus said, pointing to fatality rates that have been cut in half since the governing body’s creation. “A lot of fantastic people in the industry are stepping up.” — Bill King