An In Good Company podcast with Isabella Echeverri, former Olympic and World Cup football player
Can sport be used as a force for good?
Imagine a world in which every child had a role model in sport that they could look up to... someone like them that they could identify with. A world in which sport was used as a force for good, not just for big sponsorship deals.
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Isabella Echeverri is a former Olympic and World Cup football player. She's captained every single team she's been part of and is convinced that football/soccer has the power to drive huge change. We first met Isabella at Common Goal's Football for Sustainability Summit during the 2024 European Championships in Berlin. She joins our podcast to talk about diversity, change and empowerment.
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Watch our interview here:
How can we improve diversity?
There are a lot of barriers in the sports industry. There’s a lack of representation in leadership positions. There's a lack of diversity. There's a lack of women sitting at the big tables. The sports world is full (with all due respect) of old, white, heterosexual men who have been leading sports for decades. And they don't understand the power that diversity has on performance. We need more underrepresented community leaders or more people from their countries. I'm not only speaking about women here. We need more diversity as a whole, through mentorship programs, maybe establishing diversity quotas in the sports industry, or helping underrepresented groups.
The second barrier, in my opinion, is the lack of visibility and role models. It is really hard to be what you cannot see. My generation grew up not seeing any women play football. Still only 4% of traditional media talks about women's sport. And that percentage hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Now we're seeing it increasing because of social media, but we need to share more stories, because girls need to realise there's much more than being a player. There’re so many different things you can do in the sport industry, and we need to be able to create a safe space for them to come into the industry as a whole.
What is needed for systemic change?
Let me start with a personal story… in 2019, I got together with one of my best friends, Melissa Ortiz. We’d played in the Colombian national team for many years in World Cups, Olympics, South American championships, Pan American Games etc. And we realised we needed to do something to change the inequality we faced. We released a video talking about this and suddenly everybody was talking about it. We did a press conference; more players joined us. And we realised how much power we had. It was a turning point in Colombian football. Now the team has better conditions, more preparation, more prize money.
But that is when I realised the power athletes have – as individuals but also as a collective. I don't think players realise how much power they have. I call it a superpower because people want to listen to what you have to say when you are a football player. We're lacking collective action, but I believe that is the only way to change things. The power is in the collective.
Listen again
Head to our YouTube / Spotify channels to catch up on previous episodes, including…
037: Leading with AI: transforming organisational culture with Michael Molinaro
Coming up
039: William Lankston, Managing Director of Timpson Direct
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