Sport Positive Summit

The largest gathering of global sports stakeholders to advance sustainability, biodiversity, environmental justice and tackle the climate crisis

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2022

Andrew Lamb

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Andrew Lamb is a sports marketing professional who has held a number of partnership development roles in sport over the last 17 years. These roles have included stints with Sale Sharks (rugby), and Manchester United and Everton (football), before stepping into the world of offshore sailing with The Ocean Race.

In Andrew’s current position with The Ocean Race, purpose is at the heart of the partnership programme he leads and is the central focus when securing new partnerships. This is primarily driven by the Race’s objectives around ocean health (and the role of a healthy ocean towards a sustainable planet), and gender equity, with all teams of The Ocean Race comprising of a mix of genders. Partners are backing these areas of focus and finding ways to leverage it to support their own business objectives in the spaces of equality & diversity, sustainability and nature protection.

Fiona Morgan

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Fiona joined the global purpose-driven sports entertainment league SailGP in 2020 with a mission to help make sustainability and inclusivity essential to the fabric of sport. Fiona is the mastermind of the SailGP Impact League – a world-first in sport which sees athletes race to win two podiums: one for sporting performance and one for the planet. The league champions authentic, committed, and impactful initiatives and rewards positive sustainability and social actions.

Fiona has an exceptional track record of shaping social impact strategy, promoting gender equality and campaigns for some of the world’s most high-profile sports brands and talent. She was the driving force behind Sky’s corporate and social purpose team, The Bigger Picture, and led the Sky Ocean Rescue consumer campaign, which reached an awareness of over 50 million people across Europe and resulted in behavioral change among its customers towards plastics. Fiona is proud to be an Ambassador for Meaningful Business, a member of the Social Impact Committee, member for the British Paralympic Association, an advisory board member at 17 Sport, and Non-Executive Board Member of the Manchester Originals – a team in the new Hundred tournament shaking up and growing the game of cricket.

Fiona is also a judge for the Laureus Sport for Good index and a founding member of Sports Pro Media NEW ERA programme, which recognises, supports and advocates for gender equality and representation within the international sports industry.
Under Fiona’s guidance, SailGP has won both the BBC Green Sport Ambition and Impact Award, as well as the Sports Industry Environmental Sustainability Award.

Fiona was also shortlisted for Edie Sustainability Leader of the Year in 2023, for which she was highly commended.

Sander van Stiphout

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Sander van Stiphout is Director Innovation and Advisory and director of the consultancy branch of the Johan Cruijff ArenA.
What drives Sander is to contribute to a well-managed, safe stadium with great fan engagement that makes profit and simultaneously create true value to society. To achieve concrete goals for the stadium and its main stakeholders Ajax, KNVB and the City of Amsterdam he drives innovation among ecosystem partners such as KPN, KPMG, Microsoft, Signify, Heineken, Coca Cola, ABN Amro, research institutes such as TNO, universities, SME’s, start-ups and Governmental institutions using the stadium as a fieldlab.
Sander has worked on stadium projects worldwide and was involved in projects related to all recent major tournaments, such as the Russia and Brazil World Cups. Sander was special stadium operations consultant to the Qatar Supreme Committee in relation to the FIFA World Cup 2022 preparations.

Alexandra Rickham PLY

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Having joined World Sailing last year as Head of Sustainability, double Paralympic medallist Alexandra Rickham has been working in sustainability in the sport sector as a consultant since retiring from full time competition in 2017. She combines her academic knowledge and insight with her practical experience in competitive sport and environmental operations to focus both on changing the sports industry and its practices, and on utilising sport’s platform to inspire change. Alexandra is very passionate about diversity and inclusion and ensuring the athlete’s voice is heard on sustainability and regularly participates on panels, podcasts and other speaking opportunities on these subjects.

Dr. Madeleine Orr

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Dr. Madeleine Orr (she/her) is researcher, educator, and advocate working at the intersection of sport and climate change. After earning her PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Minnesota in 2020 and a postdoc in strategy at University of British Columbia, Orr joined the Institute for Sport Business at Loughborough University London where she developed the world’s first MSc in Sustainable Sport Business. In the Fall of 2023, she is joining the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor.

Maddy is the founder and co-director of The Sport Ecology Group, an international consortium of academics who drive climate action in the sport sector through research and public education initiatives. Her research in sport ecology examines the impacts of climate change on the sport sector, with a focus on resilience and adaptation. She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and several industry-facing reports that have gained global attention. Her work has been covered by the BBC, Time Magazine, ESPN, Sky Sports, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and more. Her first book Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sports (for Bloomsbury) will publish in 2024.

For her contributions to the sport sector, Orr has been recognized by Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Corporate Knights’ 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders, and NAAEE’s 30 Under 30 Environmental Educators. She was the 2022 recipient of the Rising Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota and was named a Future of Canada Fellow in 2023.

Dr. Sheila Nguyen

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Dr Sheila Nguyen is a leading regenerative built environment design professional who has consulted with several sport organisations and professional clubs, globally, on strategic and operational environmental sustainability issues with the most recent work with the Australian Olympic Committee’s Climate Action Plan.

Sheila was given the Honorary Lifetime Member award from the British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS) and recognised as an Australian Financial Review Top 100 Women of Influence (2019) for her leadership in galvanising the sport industry to protect and respect the natural environment.

She has contributed to over 50 internationally peer-reviewed research outputs and media outlets, has been an invited speaker for TEDx and as a presenter at a number of natural environment and sport industry forums, most notably, at COP21 in Paris (2015), the first-time sport has been invited to the climate agreement discussions. Sheila was the invited Chairperson & MC for the Sustainable Innovations in Sport Forum in Amsterdam (2018) (Ajax Stadium) among other changemaking forums over the years.

Sheila is on a number of boards and advisory committees including as an Independent Director on the World Lacrosse Sustainability Committee.

Sheila is the Co-Founder and an NED of the Sports Environment Alliance, the coalition of sport & planet leaders in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand working to protect the places where we play so we can continue to do what we love- watch an

Seán McCabe

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Seán is the Climate Justice Officer with Bohemians – a first in the world of football. In this role, he is working with the club to design climate responses that can be both led by and empower the club’s fans and their communities. He also works as the secretariat member with responsibility for strategy with the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative – a global coalition of organisations working to secure children’s right to a safe and healthy environment.

Over the past year, he has supported the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in the development of authoritative guidance to States on the protection of children’s rights with respect to the environment and climate change. Previously he worked with the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, in seeking to advance climate justice within the UN system and subsequently authored The People’s Transition: Community-led Development for Climate Justice with the European Foundation for Progressive Studies and the Think Tank for Action on Social Change.

The People’s Transition is a participative decision-making model that views climate action as an enabler of local development and gives people and communities ownership of the transition to zero-carbon societies to tackle inequality and raise standards of living through the delivery of climate solutions. He has worked with the Environmental Protection Agency in Freetown, Sierra Leone and with communities facing extreme poverty in Kolkata, India.

Lindita Xhaferi Salihu

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Lindita Xhaferi Salihu leads work on sectors engagement in climate action as part of UN Climate Change wider Global Climate Action work. She led development of both Sports for Climate Action and Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action and works closely with a variety of stakeholders to mobilize key actors and catalyze ambitious action towards decarbonization. Before joining UN Climate Change, Lindita worked in public relations and coordinated projects promoting multi-stakeholder engagement in policy and sustainability. Lindita has an educational background in engineering, international relations and global energy & climate policy.

Melissa Wilson

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After retiring as a professional athlete in 2021, Melissa founded non-profit Athletes of the World with Double Olympic Champion Hannah Mills. Athletes of the World builds athlete-led campaigns for climate action, and works with elite sports teams and federations to deliver climate education and climate-focussed media training for athletes.

Since 2020, Melissa’s brought over 600 elite athletes together across various campaigns: a letter to the UK government with 320 GB Olympian and Paralympian signatories; a video to World Leaders ahead of COP26 involving Olympic flag bearers form 35 different countries, and a letter to World Rugby signed by over 200 professional players. Last year she also co-hosted the second series of Emergency on Planet Sport with Jonathan Overend, unpacking sport’s contribution to the global climate emergency and the solutions the sector can deliver to create and influence change.

 

 

Qasa Alom

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Qasa Alom is a presenter, investigative journalist & director with credits on documentaries, current affairs and radio. He has been with the BBC since 2010. In November 2020 Qasa was awarded with Best Radio Presenter at the Asian Media Awards.

Qasa freelance presents for BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio London and presents a weekend show for BBC WM. Qasa further presents shows for Radio 4 that include Costing The Earth and From Our Own Correspondent.

Qasa hosted an event for the UN at COP26 and is passionate about preventing climate change because of how he has seen it affect his family and ancestral home in Bangladesh.

This year Qasa has reported for BBC Sport at Wimbledon and The Commonwealth Games on sustainability in sport. Qasa has reported on the whole of the Commonwealth Games 2022 that included the athletes parade on the opening day.

Qasa loves sport, particularly cricket and tennis. 2021 Qasa launched @realtennispod with @dominglot. 2021 also saw Qasa host @thehundred @Edgbaston . He also presented the 2019 ATP World Tour Finals for BBC 5 Live Sports Xtra, the season ending tennis tournament between the top 8 men’s players in the world, from London’s 02 Arena.