Our People

Stephanie joined Women in Sport in 2019 after 27 years working for wildlife and the environment.  She believes in the power of sport to transform lives and that women and girls should not miss out on the resilience, leadership and team skills sport can instil.  She wants to reduce the gender play gap and free up the lives of women and girls in all their diversity to experience the joy of sport.   Since joining the charity, Stephanie has built strong relations in the sports sector and beyond, re-defined the charity’s strategy and developed the staff to align to this, ensuring the team comes from diverse backgrounds and experiences.  Stephanie has been ensuring the charity builds powerful external relationships as it champions need for more women at the top of sport, safe and fair sport for women, and changes to ensure greater equality in access to sport.

Previously, Stephanie was 15 years at the helm of The Wildlife Trusts, a movement of nearly a million members with a huge presence on the ground on a mission to restore the UK’s ecosystems and reconnect people to nature.  A pioneer of landscape-scale ecological restoration, she helped lay the foundations for a White Paper in 2010 and subsequent Environment Act. Stephanie was on the board of the UK Green Building Council for ten years, latterly as vice chair. She also served on the Government’s Forestry Panel and Smarter Environmental Regulation Review.  She has a degree and Honorary Doctorate from Bristol University, an MSc in Conservation from UCL, and was awarded an OBE in 2010 for Services to Nature Conservation.

Lisa joined Women in Sport in August 2021 as Partnerships and Consultancy Manager, creating meaningful and lasting partnerships across the sport sector, and beyond, to further our mission.

Alongside our partnerships, she now leads the organisation’s advocacy work as well, as we continue to increase our impact, break down barriers and empower more women and girls to be active.

Lisa brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience from 15 years working in the sport sector. She started within Local Authority sport development before moving to Swim England and more recently spent 8 years working as a Project Manager and Consultant. Lisa plays and umpires netball as well as taking part in mass participation triathlon events and believes whole heartedly in the power that sport and physical activity has to improve lives.

Favourite sporting moment? Still (and probably always!) being a Games Maker at the Aquatics Centre at London 2012.

Tanya is a leading academic in the field of girls and women and their interface with sport and exercise at each life stage.  A driven and insightful researcher, innovator and agent of change, she has considerable management and strategic experience in business, academia and charity sectors.  Tanya has an unwavering passion for our cause.

Tanya has experience of leading large scale qualitative and quantitative research and commissioned projects working with National Governing Bodies, leisure sector partners and corporates. She has led the charity’s ground breaking and influential work on reframing sport for teenage girls.  Able to quickly cut through to the key issues at play she leads our work to amass evidence, design and delivery interviews, focus groups, online ethnographies and surveys. She has well honed skills in synthesising and interpreting findings from multiple data sources to develop rich insights, translating into solutions through innovation.

Tanya joined Women in Sport part time in 2017 continues to lecture in Sports Psychology at the Open University.

Harinie is our people magician and has had a long career devoted to social change, working and volunteering in multiple charities since her childhood in Sri Lanka.

As Chartered Financial Analyst, Harinie has a strong financial background and is responsible for all our financial, operational and human resources and is also one of our finest advocates.

Her passion is driven by our belief that when sport includes women and girls it helps to tackle gendered economic and health inequalities, but most importantly it will create a better society for all.

Harinie’s parents instilled in her strong values and yet never imagined, as a girl, that she might be part of the sports sector! Now a fitness advocate and absolutely convinced that Strong is Not a Size, Harinie is championing the culture that we want to see.

She believes everyone needs to be met where they’re at, treated with respect and understood so that we can ensure they feel they can belong, whether in society, sport or in the House of Sport where our office is based!

Sarah has a life-long love of sport inspired by her netball coach who didn’t write her off just because she is 5ft 1!  On moving to Manchester, Sarah joined a touch rugby club to make friends, and ended up playing for the England Women’s 35s Touch team, which won bronze in the 2019 Touch World Cup in Malaysia. She currently chairs Sale FC Touch Club.

An award-winning journalist, Sarah has more than 15 years of experience in media relations, working for national and international media brands, developing and delivering strategic communications and content for both commercial and not-for-profit organisations.

As an advocate of women’s sport and as a mother to a daughter, Sarah is passionate about striving for change, so that every woman and girl can experience the joy, skills, and benefits of sport that she has. She believes that the resilience and perseverance, teamwork and leadership skills that she’s learnt through sport have been vital to all aspects of her life.

Sarah is responsible for our mass communications channels, media relations and podcast with a view to shining a light on gender inequality in access to sport and to inspire change.

Kitty joined Women in Sport in January 2021. In her role Kitty works across our various fundraising activities to secure funding and steward positive supporter relationships.

Prior to this she worked in charitable fundraising within the International Development sector after completing a Master’s in Global Ethics and Human Values. A personal passion for fitness and the outdoors, alongside a drive to advocate for gender equality brought her to Women in Sport

Rachel has spent fourteen years in the charity sector and started out in a succession of frontline political jobs before joining the RSPCA’s public affairs and campaigns team. She was there for nine years, working her way up to Public Affairs Manager for Westminster. In that time, she worked on dozens of different campaigns, Bills and events.

After having a very negative relationship with sport in school, and especially as a teenager in secondary school, Rachel rediscovered it as an about-to-be-30-year-old and haven’t looked back since. She’s found that sport has genuinely changed her life for the better and wants to use her skills to allow it to change other girls’ and women’s lives too.

As well as an enthusiastic but mediocre runner she’s now a passionate weightlifter, as much for the mental health benefits as the physical. Rachel strongly believes that there’s a sport for everyone but too many girls and women are being prevented from finding it because of stubborn stereotypes and negative narratives. In her younger years, Rachel felt that she missed out on experiencing the joy of sport in her younger years because she felt there wasn’t a place for her in sport.

Rachel has joined the team at Women in Sport because she wants to make sure that future generations of young girls don’t face the same issues that she did. As Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Rachel’s role is to lead on developing our policy positions and on our relationship with political and policymaking stakeholders across the UK and at all levels of government.

Marie joined Women in Sport in July 2023. Her background in the charity sector has been around Sports Development, especially projects & partnerships management and income generation, which she will replicate in her role.

As an ex-elite sprinter, her love of high-performance environments got her to pursue a career in the corporate sector in the City. The 2008 global financial crisis drove her to follow her passion for sport and performance and retrain as a sports therapist and work in multi-disciplinary high-performance settings, then later lead her to explore Sport & Exercise Psychology. She is on her way to becoming a registered practitioner in the field.

Marie would describe herself as a people-orientated person. The legacy of her varied and valued careers means that she has extensive experience in negotiating and driving delivery at the highest level, as well as at grassroots community level. She has worked on various independent projects implementing sport for social cohesion or mental well-being for women and girls.

Marie is a World Athletics (ex IAAF) sprints coach. She also sits on the England Athletics Regional Council, the Manchester FA Inclusion Advisory Board and the Football Supporters Association Women’s Game Network.

Favourite sporting moment? Too many to choose from. Being part of the medical team at the 2017 Athletics World Championships in London and meeting track & field legends. Being selected to compete in higher age groups because of her performance and representing her country on the international sporting scene.

Stephen joined Women in Sport in July 2022 as interim Finance Officer, with the role being made permanent in December 2022.  Having qualified as a Chartered Accountant Stephen joined Systems Union, a British-based international developer of accounting software, as a Technical Author, enjoying secondments to work in the company’s offices in Frankfurt and then Miami.  During career breaks to help care for family members Stephen was Trustee of a charity in West London, helped an investment company’s owner-managers start up an organisation which now specialises in investing in software businesses, and worked in Finance for Sport for Development charity Sported.

Stephen’s earliest recollection of the joy of sport is of running as fast as he could in circles on a beach in North Devon at a young age.  He is particularly interested in why people, especially women and those living in areas of multiple deprivation, become less active as they age, the impact this has on their minds and bodies, and what simple things can and could be done to bring the childhood joy of sport back into everyone’s daily lives.

Sport has always been a huge motivator in Shereen’s life. She discovered her passion for athletics around 20 years ago when she swapped her ballet shoes for track spikes and has since competed at several senior championships, including the UK National Championships. Motivated to learn more about the science behind fuelling the body for exercise Shereen undertook a post graduate diploma in Sports Nutrition while juggling her training and work commitments.

Sport has afforded Shereen with great discipline and independence, a diverse social network and provided her with opportunities to travel. However, it has also opened her eyes to the challenges and barriers to participation that many girls and women face.

Shereen has enjoyed a varied career within the publishing, fitness and construction industries supporting teams in sales, administration and operations. She brings her knowledge and experience to Women In Sport, as Project Administration Officer on the Big Sister project, which is designed to create a supportive pathway to encourage and empower teenage girls to participate in sport.

Suzy joined Women in Sport in April 2022 working part-time as a Governance Officer and has since expanded her work at the Charity. She now works with us full time, as an Insight Officer alongside her Governance role. She is excited to continue supporting the Charity’s mission to empower women and girls through sport and exercise; to build on our influential research in this area to help identify barriers, shape solutions, and gain a deeper understanding of the lives of women and girls of all ages in relation to physical activity.

With a background in Biochemistry, Healthcare, and Research, she worked across various NHS roles before joining Women in Sport, most recently working with patients as a Clinical Trial Practitioner in cancer research.

Suzy has had the opportunity to enjoy many sports throughout her life, from synchronised swimming to korfball, and took up football after being inspired by the 2019 Women’s World Cup. A longstanding lover of sports and a passionate advocate for women’s rights, she wants to help build a world where every girl and woman can enjoy the same access to sport that she herself has had the privilege to experience.

Sarah joined Women in Sport in early 2023 as Communications and Campaigns Officer to shape our messaging around gender equality in sports.

Sarah grew up in a really sporty family, but she never claimed sport for herself until she started climbing during university. Now, climbing has allowed her to meet life-long friends and travel around the country seeking out new climbing spots and spend time in the great outdoors.

Growing up in the Peak District, access to quality green spaces as an outlet for exercise is integral to Sarah’s experience of sport and she hopes more women can feel the benefits of this in the years to come.

While the climbing community is generally lovely, it is still male-dominated and often lends itself more to male physiology, such as upper body strength. As a result, Sarah has seen how active spaces can be off-putting to women, unless concrete steps are made to encourage women and educate men as our allies.

Sakara joined Women in Sport in July 2023 as a Fundraising Officer. As a dynamic fundraiser, she is here to help build and elevate our fundraising efforts and supporter engagement during this exciting phase of growth for the charity.

Originally from New Zealand, she brings with her a deep passion for both sports and women’s rights. She plays both football and netball and believes in the power of sports to bring people together!

Her journey in the non-profit sector has provided her with valuable experience volunteering with various organisations. She has also worked in government and legal roles and will bring a multidimensional perspective to her work.

Now, as part of her role in Women in Sport, her goal is to contribute with the organisation to help work towards a future where gender equality is at the forefront of the sporting world. By bolstering revenue and capacity she believes we can create a lasting impact and ensure that women and girls have equal opportunity to pursue their sporting dreams!