{"id":467337,"date":"2026-09-18T00:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467337\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T00:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:32:15","slug":"mellody-hobson-departs-l-a-olympics-board-before-lucas-museum-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467337\/","title":{"rendered":"Mellody Hobson Departs L.A. Olympics Board Before Lucas Museum Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMellody Hobson<\/a>, the prominent business executive and wife of George Lucas, has resigned from the board of L.A.\u2019s embattled 2028 Olympic Games organizing committee, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.<\/p>\n

\n\tHobson and the committee, known as LA28<\/a>, didn\u2019t 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<\/a>, security costs<\/a> and transportation issues<\/a>, as well as sports-entertainment mogul Casey Wasserman\u2019s continued board chairmanship following revelations of his relationship<\/a> with convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell \u2014 even as he\u2019s been forced to relinquish his stake<\/a> in his namesake management company, which has since rebranded.<\/p>\n

\n\tHobson 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\u2019 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 <\/a>offering free access to its neighbors.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019s 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 \u201cRebel\u2019s Gala.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryday Angelenos deserve leaders that will step up, not step down, to meet the collective crises we are facing,\u201d said Victor Sanchez, executive director of advocacy non-profit Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, one of the leading members of the coalition<\/a>, in a statement. \u201cWe continue to call on Mellody Hobson, the Lucas Museum Board, and all of the leaders responsible for the 2028 Games to embrace our vision of a legacy that uplifts our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this year, the Fair Games Coalition protested LACMA\u2019s black-tie opening of its David Geffen Galleries building. (Wasserman and Hobson are both members of that board.)<\/p>\n

\n\tHobson, a high-profile Black businesswoman who inspired Vanessa Williams\u2019 role<\/a> as Courtney Paige in The Good Wife, is the co-CEO of asset management firm Ariel Investments. She\u2019s the former chair of both Starbucks and DreamWorks Animation. In addition to her involvement with the museum and until now the Olympics<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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<\/a> the board to influence the new administration by appointing a group of figures with direct ties, including Trump\u2019s first chief of staff Reince Priebus and the Republican former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The move sparked<\/a> local criticism. \u201cMy job is to make sure that these are America\u2019s Olympics that are being hosted in Los Angeles,\u201d Wasserman, a longtime Democratic Party donor, later explained<\/a> to THR. \u201cThese aren\u2019t L.A.\u2019s Games, these are America\u2019s Games.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSept. 17, 3:50 pm Updated with a statement from a representative of the Fair Games Coalition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mellody Hobson, the prominent business executive and wife of George Lucas, has resigned from the board of L.A.\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,27729,47,50,49,63549,158322,10012],"class_list":["post-467337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-la28","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art","tag-mellody-hobson","tag-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}