She Took Her Baby to Rio to Coach the City's Olympic Bid

Dia Bondi was home with her first baby, wondering how she would ever work again with a tiny person in her life, when a note arrived online. Someone had heard she was good at what she did and had an international project she might be right for.

She called back. The project was helping Rio de Janeiro's bidding committee make its case in person to the International Olympic Committee, the group that picks Olympic host cities, for why Rio should host the 2016 Summer Games.

Bondi, a communications coach who helps leaders speak under pressure, said yes. About two weeks later, she was in Rio. Her husband flew down with their son and her mother-in-law, and they moved into a small apartment hotel the campaign had rented for her.

It became the hardest assignment of her career, not because of the speeches but because of the people around them. Like a presidential campaign, the bid had to produce polished materials and a strategy for the pitch, including roughly 14 to 16 thick briefing books on subjects like marketing, venue development, accessibility, the environment, and what the Games would leave behind.

Bondi had to coach inside that tangle. Australian specialists who had worked on the Sydney Games teamed with an American production crew, while in Rio the bidding committee, wealthy business backers writing checks, city officials, and security agencies all pulled in different directions. Decoding the culture and getting powerful strangers to listen to her left her in tears.

Making it work took a relay at home, too. Her husband flew back after a couple of weeks, leaving the baby with his grandmother. Then an aunt on her husband's side arrived to help, and then Bondi's own mother and aunt took turns, cycling through the apartment hotel while she worked.

She was based in Rio for about two months across three engagements, and came home to a son who was almost two. Speaking to other women in her field, Bondi said, "sometimes the sexiest stories we have that come out of our careers also come with equal dose of heartbreak." Rio, she added, was "the most rewarding and the most difficult" work she had done.

After Rio, she kept coaching Olympic bids, including Turkey's unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Games, which lost to Japan.