Meet the force behind Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society

Dan Lebowitz has channeled that can-do spirit across a range of programs and initiatives he facilitates at Northeastern.

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Headshot of Dan Lebowitz.
Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Every morning, Dan Lebowitz gets up and works out. His routine is meticulous: an hour and a half of weight training using resistance bands, with planks throughout, and roughly 300 body-weight squats. 

If it sounds intense — well, there’s a reason. For the first 11 years of his life, Lebowitz, the executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, wore leg braces. 

A former competitive bodybuilder and high school basketball coach, those morning sessions provide both the physical feedback and a sense of ableness — a reminder of just how far he’s come. 

“Afterwards, I feel like I can face any challenge,” Lebowitz says. “It picks up my mental well-being, and I feel like it puts me in a positive space — and it allows me to maintain that positivity throughout the entirety of my workday.”

For 16 years, Lebowitz has channeled that can-do spirit across a range of programs and initiatives he facilitates at Northeastern, from Addressing Hate in High School Sports and Mentors in Violence Prevention, to partnerships with more than two dozen local, state and national organizations aimed at providing services to youth.  

Northeastern Global News spoke to Lebowitz about his tenure as head of the center. His comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What made you choose Northeastern as a long-home for your talents? 

In a world where a lot of school systems are broken, I think that coaches can, and oftentimes have, become the new gatekeepers and keyholders of education. And sometimes it’s the out-of-classroom experiences that are most important and most impactful to the development of people in terms of becoming the best versions of themselves. 

If you think about Northeastern — for me, it was a natural progression; because Northeastern excels at teaching learners how to think beyond the classroom. And it does this in a multitude practical ways in terms of pragmatic application, ideation, innovation and implementation. Northeastern is an amazing pathway experience with multiple, lifelong roads (with an equal multitude of on-ramps and exits) that allow us all, as a community of collective well-being, to get from point A to point Z in ways that are productive, positive and purposeful.

What is the Center for the Study of Sport in Society all about?

The center is more than a mission of purpose. It is collaborative community of colleagues, including Nicolette Aduama, Carl Barrows, our dean Jared Auclair, our supervisor Michael Gladstone, our great group of consultative trainers led by Lisa Markland, and it’s the visionary leadership of President Aoun and so many others, all of whose commitment and support is monumentally pivotal to what we do.

Our work is specific to effective social and community engagement, and in the policy, programmatic and curricular pursuit of that work we ask questions such as: What does violence prevention look like? What does unpacking unconscious bias look like? How do we address hate in a way that creates the safety requisite for productive conversation and moves people beyond the mindset of hate to the constructive embrace of conflict resolution.

Has your job changed over the years? If so, how?

I think that it has. Too many organizations try to be good at a vast number of things. For me, when I got here, I tried to figure out what lanes we wanted to be in. Where is social evolution headed, and how do we influence, with positivity, that social evolution from where we sit? That means helping people understand, not only the complexity of the world, but their place in that complexity; their safety in that complexity; and how they can be a change-maker for positive outcomes in that complexity. 

In other words: what does public service look like? Hopefully the center during my tenure has embodied that, has emulated that, and has moved other people to embrace it.

Are there any memories or memorable moments that stand out to you when you think back on your career?

It’s the people who I’ve been lucky enough to encounter and hopefully have changed their lives for the better. I started my career in a Boston public school; I ran a bunch of workforce development programs in those schools. I’ve worked in shelter programs, making sure people in need had answers to those needs. So I think it’s the people who still call me who were high school students of mine, hearing about their careers. 

As you know, I grew up in leg braces; I had teenage parents; I was born three and a half months early. And a team doctor at the New England Hartford Whalers got out of his car one day and injected himself into my life, and he changed my life. He got my leg braces off me; I felt a sense of validation; I turned that validation into successes that probably wouldn’t have ever come my way. That life lesson taught me that the ability to care about others, having compassion and kindness — those things matter because they lead to something bigger than yourself. 

So, had that person not injected themselves into my life, would I be sitting under a light bulb at the [YMCA] not having anywhere nearly the life I’ve had. I see it as my personal responsibility every day to impact as many people in that same positive way.

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