GENEVA >> The world Kirsty Coventry walks into Monday as the International Olympic Committee’s first female and first African president is already very different to the one she was elected in three months ago.

Take Los Angeles, host of the next Summer Games that is the public face and financial foundation of most Olympic sports.

The city described last week as a “trash heap” by U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to welcome teams from more than 200 nations in July 2028.

Most of the 11,000 athletes and thousands more coaches and officials who will take part in the LA Olympics will have seen images of military being deployed against the wishes of city and state leaders.

A growing number of those athletes’ home countries face being on a Trump-directed travel ban list — including Coventry’s home Zimbabwe — though Olympic participants are promised exemptions to come to the U.S. Several players from Senegal’s women’s basketball team were denied visas for a training trip to the U.S., the country’s prime minister said.

A first face-to-face meeting with Trump is a priority for the new IOC president, perhaps at a sports event.

Welcome to Olympic diplomacy, the outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach could reasonably comment to his political protégé Coventry.

The six Olympic Games of Bach’s 12 years were rocked by Russian doping scandals and military aggression, Korean nuclear tensions, a global health crisis and corruption-fueled Brazilian chaos.

Still, Coventry inherits an IOC with a solid reputation and finances after a widely praised 2024 Paris Olympics, plus a slate of hosts for the next decade.

New leadership style >> For the two-time Olympic champion swimmer’s first full day as president Tuesday she has invited the 109-strong IOC membership to closed-doors meetings about its future under the banner “Pause and Reflect.”

“The way in which I like to lead is with collaboration,” said Coventry, who was sports minister in Zimbabwe for the past seven years, told reporters Thursday.

Many, if not most, members want more say in how the IOC makes decisions after nearly 12 years of Bach’s tight executive control. It was a theme in manifestos by the other election candidates, and the runner-up in March, IOC vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch, will lead one of the sessions.

“I like people to say: ‘Yes, I had a say and this was the direction that we went,’” Coventry said. “That way, you get really authentic buy-in.”

In an in-house IOC interview, Coventry also described how she wanted to be perceived: “She never changed. Always humble, always approachable.”

That could mean more member input, if not an open and contested vote, to decide the 2036 Olympics host.

The 2036 decision >> Coventry’s win was widely seen as positive for the ambitions of India, and its richest family, to host the Summer Games that will follow Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032.