Mellody Hobson, the prominent business executive and wife of George Lucas, has resigned from the board of L.A.’s embattled 2028 Olympic Games organizing committee, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Hobson and the committee, known as LA28, didn’t respond to THR. The Lucas Museum, where she is co-founder, opens to the public on Sept. 22, following a series of opening events. LA28 has been navigating a well-publicized cycle of financial, logistical and political challenges. These include a backlash over ticket prices, security costs and transportation issues, as well as sports-entertainment mogul Casey Wasserman’s continued board chairmanship following revelations of his relationship with convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — even as he’s been forced to relinquish his stake in his namesake management company, which has since rebranded.
Hobson has privately cited her focus on ensuring that the museum is a success. However, word of her decision circulated as she has been targeted by an aggressive local left-wing activist group, the Fair Games Coalition, over her involvement with LA28. (The Lucas Museum, a billion-dollar endeavor financed by Lucas’ Star Wars fortune, is in a disadvantaged area of South L.A. and has, during the run-up to its opening, heralded its community-mindedness, such as a program offering free access to its neighbors.)
The Fair Games Coalition has publicly pushed to meet with Hobson to address its agenda connected to the 2028 mega event, including a push for union jobs, protections for undocumented immigrants and funding for low-income housing. It rallied on Sept. 13 outside a museum event and has announced it will do so again during the new cultural center’s splashy inaugural celebration, co-chaired by Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro and Pharrell Williams. The group is billing its protest the “Rebel’s Gala.”
Earlier this year, the Fair Games Coalition protested LACMA’s black-tie opening of its David Geffen Galleries building. (Wasserman and Hobson are both members of that board.)
Hobson, a high-profile Black businesswoman who inspired Vanessa Williams’ role as Courtney Paige in The Good Wife, is the co-CEO of asset management firm Ariel Investments. She’s the former chair of both Starbucks and DreamWorks Animation. In addition to her involvement with the museum and until now the Olympics committee, Hobson has been active on a group of influential boards, including JP Morgan Chase, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
The LA28 board includes a mix of sports and entertainment figures, among them Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jeanie Buss and Jessica Alba. After Donald Trump retook the presidency, Wasserman reshaped the board to influence the new administration by appointing a group of figures with direct ties, including Trump’s first chief of staff Reince Priebus and the Republican former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The move sparked local criticism. “My job is to make sure that these are America’s Olympics that are being hosted in Los Angeles,” Wasserman, a longtime Democratic Party donor, later explained to THR. “These aren’t L.A.’s Games, these are America’s Games.”
