Hayley Bennett
Story:
Hayley grew up with two core passions that kept her busy - football and social justice. During her time studying Politics at SOAS, she combined her two passions in a role at Kick It Out, football’s anti-discrimination organisation. Her work there included supporting mentoring programmes to diversify football's workforce, and educating stakeholders in the game. She then moved out of football to learn and create best practice within other sectors in multiple roles as a DEI consultant and advisor. Over the past ten years, Hayley has been providing advice and consultancy to over 200 of the world’s largest employers and global brands including major organisations in sport.
Reason for nomination:
Hayley runs her own consultancy, working to support clients across business and sport through DEI strategy development, training facilitation, programme development and creative consultancy.
She is well recognised as a leader in her field and has been featured in The Times, The Telegraph, Metro.co.uk and The Washington Post.
Hayley has a passion and determination for promoting equity in sport. She runs Nutmegs, a football community for women and non-binary people of colour and was named one of the most influential Black people in football on the Football Blacklist. In 2021, Nike recognised her as a game-changer in sport and she was a Sports Industry Next Gen 30 under 30 Leader for 2021.
Hayley is a Director for Spirit of 2012, the London 2012 legacy charity and a trustee for Goals4Girls. She is a university lecturer on Race and Sport and is researching the experiences of women from Black and minority-ethic backgrounds in sports leadership positions, in order to provide further empirical evidence of the change needed in the industry.
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