Brown community to honor Eli Wolff ’00 during Reunion Weekend

Wolff played for the U.S. Men’s Cerebral Palsy National Team from 1995 to 2004, representing the U.S. at the 1996 and 2004 Paralympic Games competing in several Pan American Games and World Championships. He also played for the Brown men’s soccer team.

It was off the field, however, where Wolff made his most significant impact, says Stuart Sharp, senior director of technical and grassroots in the U.S. Soccer’s Extended National Team Department. “Through his tireless global advocacy work, [he] aimed to provide everyone, no matter their background or ability, a place in sport that made them feel empowered and find joy.”

In 2000 Wolff rallied national disability sport organizations to support professional golfer Casey Martin in his successful case against the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) before the U.S. Supreme Court. Martin, a professional golfer with a circulatory disorder, won the right to use a golf cart on the (PGA) Tour. Wolff’s work expanded to global advocacy from 2004 to 2006 when he led a successful global effort to include provisions addressing sport and recreation within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Wolff also helped to establish the ESPY Award for Best Athlete with a Disability (Men’s Sports and Women’s Sports categories).

Expanding the impact of his work

From 2001 to 2010, Wolff was the manager of research and advocacy at the Center for Sport in Society at Northeastern University and also co-founded Disability in Sport International, Athletes for Human Rights, and the Olympism Project. He worked closely with multiple organizations focused on inclusion and the unifying power of sport, including the Power of Sport Lab, and the Inclusive Sports Initiative at the Institute for Human Centered Design. Most recently Wolff worked as a sport management instructor at the University of Connecticut. 

Wolff was the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the inaugural 2001 Nike Casey Martin Award honoring people with disabilities who have made a difference in sports. In 2009, he received the Heroes Among Us recognition from the Boston Celtics.

Though his life after Brown was busy and full, Wolff nonetheless remained engaged and committed to the Brown community throughout his life. In 2007, he helped steward the Royce Sport and Society Fellowship, a program that gave students the opportunity to conduct scholarly research on athletics, serving as a mentor and connector for Royce fellows. Wolff also ran the Sport and Development Initiative at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, which examined the intersection of sports, development, and human rights in global, domestic, and local contexts. In 2022 he and Mooney together advocated for the creation of a disability and neurodiversity affinity group community for alumni. 

Wolff loved Brown and believed it was a perfect place to implement ideas around sport and society and between sport and disability access, says Kerrissa Heffernan, former associate director of the Swearer Center and director of the Royce Fellowship. He formally and informally mentored dozens of Brown students, frequently connecting them to important figures in the professional sports community with a simple, friendly phone call.

“He was wonderful; students loved him, and he was able to leverage so many amazing opportunities for them,” Heffernan says. ”He was so kind and generous with his time. He was a gift.”