David O'Connor

David O’Connor, a decorated Olympian, is no stranger to US Equestrian. O'Connor represented the USA for 20 years as an athlete, earning individual gold and team bronze medals in eventing at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics and a team silver medal at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Additionally, David served as the USEF President from 2004 to 2012 and currently serves on the FEI Board of Directors. In 2021, he was presented with the USOPC’s General Douglas MacArthur Exemplary Service Award in recognition of his continued service and commitment to equestrian sports within the Olympic and Paralympic movements.

O'Connor was hired as US Equestrian Chief of Sport in October 2022, where his responsibilities are primarily strategically focused. He is responsible for working with the Executive Team regarding overall international and national sport support of the USEF Strategic Plan and its initiatives: sport integrity, education, and equine and human safety and welfare. Additionally, he provides oversight of the international and national sport operations, ensures the Sport Department’s short-term and long-term strategic plans align with USEF’s priorities, and he focuses on strengthening relationships with stakeholder groups such as the USOPC, FEI, and USEF's Recognized Affiliates.

Kristy Arbogast, PhD

Kristy Arbogast, PhD, is the scientific director for the Center for Injury Research and Prevention and the R. Anderson Pew Distinguished Chair of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg, Sweden, for her leadership in the field of child safety.

She is an internationally recognized expert on pediatric injury biomechanics, injury causation, and the effectiveness of safety products for children, with a concentration in the safety of children and youth in motor vehicle crashes as well as pediatric concussions. She was a co-investigator on the Partners for Child Passenger Safety project, a 10-year national landmark study on child passenger safety funded by State Farm Insurance.

Dr. Arbogast served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Sports Concussion in Youth and co-leads Children’s Hospital’s clinical research effort in concussions with a focus on the use of head impact sensors to understand the biomechanics, utilizing bioengineering technology for objective measures of concussion diagnosis and leveraging the electronic health record to define the natural history of concussions in children. She also co-leads an initiative for the National Football League and NFL Players Association to design and implement head impact sensors to understand the loading conditions in professional football with the goal of enhancing head protection through improvements in protective equipment.

Dr. Arbogast serves as the co-director of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies at CHOP, Penn, and The Ohio State University. CChIPS is an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center focused on the advancement of safety for children, youth, and young adults.

Christina Master, MD

Christina L. Master, MD, FAAP, CAQSM, FACSM, FAMSSM, is primary care sports medicine specialist, as well as an academic general pediatrician, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). At CHOP, she works with the Orthopedic Center, the Sports Medicine and Performance Center and the Division of General Pediatrics (Primary Care). She is Professor of Pediatrics and Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine where she is a member of the Academy of Master Clinicians with over 31 years of pediatric experience. 

Dr. Master is board-certified in pediatrics, sports medicine, and brain injury medicine, the only pediatric sports medicine specialist with subspecialty board certification in brain injury medicine (BIM) in the region. She practices sports medicine at CHOP's King of Prussia Campus, and also continues to see primary care patients as a general pediatrician at the Karabots Pediatric Care Center in West Philadelphia, a practice she's had since she first started at CHOP over 31 years ago.

Dr. Master cares for over eight hundred children with concussion annually in her clinical sports medicine practice. She is the founding co-director of the Minds Matter Concussion Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which provides clinical care, community outreach and education, as well as conducts cutting-edge translational clinical research in youth concussion which was recognized with Frontier Program designation in 2020.

Her particular research emphasis has been on visual deficits after concussion, as well as identifying objective physiological biomarkers of concussion, in order to target active interventions to improve outcomes for children with concussion, with recent focus on addressing sex difference and disparities in access to concussion care as well as mental health outcomes after concussion. She has past or current research funding from the Centers for Disease Control, Department of Defense, National Collegiate Athletic Association, and multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health, (National Institute of Neurologic Diseases and Stroke, National Eye Institute, National Institute for Nursing Research). 

She is an internationally recognized leader in the field of concussion diagnosis and management, especially in children, and currently serves on the international Board of Directors for the Concussion In Sport Group, as well as 3 national boards (American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, Council On Sports Medicine and Fitness – American Academy of Pediatrics, and Pediatric Research In Sports Medicine, where she is currently serving as 2nd Vice President).

She recently completed service on the Board of Trustees for the American College of Sports Medicine. She is also currently serving on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Forum on Traumatic Brain Injury to advance the agenda furthering the roadmap to accelerating progress in TBI research and care and has also partnered with the Toyota Way Forward Foundation to improve concussion care for children across the country.

Dr. Master completed her undergraduate studies at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and graduated summa cum laude from The State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine, Buffalo, NY. She completed her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she also served an additional year as chief resident. Dr. Master spent the first 17 years of her career with the Pediatrics Residency Program at CHOP, 11 of which were as the Associate and Vice Program Director, before completing a sabbatical year of fellowship training in primary care sports medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and returning to help co-found the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship at CHOP in addition to the Minds Matter Concussion Program.

She is also the mother to three grown children, who participated in activities ranging from track and field and rowing, to soccer, baseball, and ice hockey while growing up. She has run the Munich, Philadelphia, Budapest, and New York City Marathons and has completed triathlons at both the sprint and Olympic distances. She enjoys cooking and travel and spending time outdoors with friends and family.

Her overarching goal in her work is to maximize the benefits of sports participation for children in youth through prevention, diagnosis, and management of sport medicine conditions so they can enjoy participating in sports for a lifetime.

Mark Hart

Katlynn Wilbers