ANONYMOUS SOURCING: David Chadwick's RealResponse provides a platform for athletes and staff to report what is really going on.

• Date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Solender, Michael J.

Being associated with a university athletic scandal prompted David Chadwick to build a business around accountability and shifting an uneven power dynamic in collegiate sports.

In 2012, the former Charlotte Latin basketball star was on the Rice University basketball team in Houston. An Iranian-born player and a coach originally from Egypt allegedly received derogatory comments by coaches and administrators that led to racial discrimination. Rice officials denied any wrongdoing. The matter sparked negative stories in Sports Illustrated and other publications

"I thought either [the alleged discrimination] wasn't going on and the school should have had more protection, or it was going on and they should have uncovered it and addressed it sooner," says Chadwick, who later transferred to Valparaiso University in Indiana, where he earned a bachelor's degree and an MBA. "I wanted to come up with something that would solve a direct challenge that I and many of my peers experienced: The absence of a confidential, real-time accessible way to bring issues forward to administrators and coaches."

Three years later, Chadwick reworked his Valparaiso business-school entrepreneurial class project for an anonymous online reporting platform and launched a business to create a fairer, simpler reporting...