Claressa Shields, along with tennis player Victoria Duval, football phenom Sam Gordon and budding basketball star Jaden Newman, is part of the "Voices of the Future" panel at the espnW: Women + Sports Summit. Here are five things you need to know about the 20-year-old boxer.
1. Shields is the first American woman to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, beating Russia's Nadezda Torlopova in the middleweight final at the 2012 Games in London. Women's boxing was making its Olympic debut. For the record, Shields hasn't lost since.
2. Shields was 16 years old when she won the U.S. Olympic boxing trials and 17 when she struck gold in London. She almost took a break from boxing before the Olympics because she was incorrectly told she was too young to compete at the Games.
3. In 2013, Shields became the first member of her family to graduate from high school, getting her diploma from Flint (Michigan) Northwestern High School.
4. Since winning gold in London, Shields has been crowned a USA Boxing national champion (2014-15), world champion (2014) and Pan Am Games champion (2015). "My goal overall, beside getting rich and everything, is to just go down as the best female fighter alive," she said.
5. An award-winning documentary about Shields called "T-Rex" made its world premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival in March. "T-Rex" has been Shields' nickname since her early days of training in Flint.
