About

Janie has been an active football referee for 25 years, and became the second women to have operated within men’s professional football.

 Janie worked at the FA for 12 years as National Referee Manager for Education and Training. She has a vast experience in referee development both domestically and internationally having delivered education to grassroots through to elite referees on every continent and within every confederation on behalf of The FA and FIFA. As one of only a handful of female FIFA Instructors in the world, Janie has been privileged to be involved in many tournaments and workshops.

 Janie believes passionately about the development of people, to this end, for 10 years she has been involved in an organisation called Sports Officials UK Ltd a development partner of Sport England, for the last 8 years she has been an elected director and honorary CEO of the organisation. Janie was an Independent director for the English Cricket Board ACO for 4 years, also a former member of the Advisory group for Sport Wales. Her current role is very exciting; as Director of her own Sports Officials Consultancy for sports officials.

Heather is a businesswoman whose career has spanned law, government, sport and media, including high profile positions at Millwall Football Club and Channel 4.

Having started out as a barrister, Heather became a government advisor and then worked in local government; first as Deputy Chief Executive of Hammersmith and Fulham before becoming CEO of the London Borough of Lambeth, regarded as the toughest job in local government.

She was widely credited for establishing a fundamental, and positive, change in the organisation before joining Channel 4 as Head of Education, commissioning programmes and projects and introducing a range of talent development initiatives. Heather also served as a Governor of the BBC prior to working her magic in the Football League, taking on the challenging role of Executive Chair at Millwall FC, and enjoying promotion back to the Championship during her tenure at The Den.

She has since served on Crossrail’s board and become the first female Director at the FA, continuing to tackle resistance to change, push boundaries and increase the number of women leaders.

Anna was appointed Women's Sport Editor at The Telegraph in March 2019.

She had previously written about sport for The Observer and The Guardian. Her work has taken her around the world covering Olympic Games in Athens, Beijing and London 2012, as well as World Cups and World Championships. She has interviewed some of the biggest names in sport.

In 2007 Anna co-founded the Women in Football network with Shelley Alexander. Mother to her two own mini-WiFs, Anna hopes to help make football a more welcoming environment for future generations of women wanting to work in the beautiful game.

She was awarded an MBE for services to journalism and women’s sport in the 2016 Queen’s birthday honours list.

Anna stepped down from the board on 25 May 2020 and has taken up a new role as an Ambassador with Women in Football.

Jacqui is best known for being the first female commentator on Match of the Day. She presents football shows for ITV Sport and BBC Sport and reports on live Premier League matches. She has previously commentated on the Premier League, World Cups, European Championships and Olympic Games. She also presents ITV’s PDC darts coverage. Jacqui was awarded an MBE in the 2016 New Year’s honours list for championing the role of women in the game.

Reshmin is a multilingual journalist and sports presenter, broadcasting for BT Sport, BBC Sport and TalkSPORT.

She is the lead presenter for TalkSPORT’s “GameDay”, hosting their Premier League coverage every Saturday morning. She also works across the UEFA Champions League and Europa League for BT, the FA Cup and the BBC Women’s Football Show.

Reshmin has been broadcasting across the BBC since 2010. Among her credits are the London 2012 Olympics with BBC World, Wimbledon, hosting during the 2018 FIFA World Cup and presenting the U17 World Cup Final. She has also stepped into the Match of the Day 2 chair on occasion.

At Real Madrid TV, Reshmin conducted the world-exclusive interview with Cristiano Ronaldo, following his then record-breaking move to the club.

Reshmin’s early career took her all over the world and includes stints with Reuters TV, ITN, Bloomberg TV and BBC London.

In 2020, she co-hosted the UEFA Champions League Group Stage Draw for the fourth year running. Other clients include The Best FIFA Football Awards green carpet, the FA, Aspire Sport, One Family Global and the BT Sport Industry Awards.

Reshmin spent much of her youth as a vocalist and performed alongside the award-winning musician composer, Nitin Sawhney.

She is a mother to a young daughter and son, juggling a busy globe-trotting career alongside motherhood and passions for fitness, cooking, socialising and watching sport! She is a proud Bengali, which she speaks fluently, along with conversational Spanish and French.

Michelle has spent most of her career working in sports marketing, starting in sponsorship account management with UK Athletics.

She then worked for Oaks Consultancy before her love of football was first met career-wise when she joined the LMA as their Marketing Manager, overseeing development of the LMA Business Club and Community Fund, working with commercial and charity partners comprising the likes of Barclays, prozone and The Prince’s Trust.

Michelle also event managed the inaugural LMA Annual Management Conference at the Emirates Stadium with speakers including Arsène Wenger OBE, David Moyes and Martin Broughton (then Chairman of British Airways).

Intersport UK, part of the global sports retail chain, then introduced Michelle to the world of sports retail marketing and in 2018, she began lecturing in sports business and marketing with AMOS Sport Business School and more recently, with Coventry University, which she continues to do today .

Alejandro is a Business Administration graduate from Santiago, Chile, currently taking the Football Industries MBA at the University of Liverpool. Having been working in sales and the banking industry since 2015, he took a big turn in 2017 when he decided to be the Commercial Manager for a sports NGO in Santiago. There, he was in charge of looking for sponsors and partners that would fund programmes implemented throughout the country.

A real sports fanatic, Ale loves football, skiing and tennis, having played these sports since he was four years old. He currently resides in Liverpool, where he is the team captain for the MBA football team and also represents his local tennis club. Ale loves living in the UK but has had to drastically lower his expectations when it comes to weather.

Pete joined Women in Football in July 2021 after working in communications for the University of Sheffield, where their role focused largely on student recruitment through web and print content, social media campaigns and email marketing.

Previously they worked as a freelance copy editor and writer for creative agencies and a wide range of publishers and other organisations including Scholastic and the British Film Institute.

Pete has written about football for publications which include When Saturday Comes, the Grimsby Telegraph, and the Grimsby Town fanzine Cod Almighty, which they helped to set up back in 2002 and co-edited for more than 15 years.

MIriam joined Women in Football in June 2021 after working with a variety of high-profile clients within sport and the private sector, where her role was to build partnerships and develop customer experience as well as looking after marketing and business development.

Previously Miriam has worked with a range of sporting governing bodies, as sport is her passion professionally as well as in her private life. Miriam loves team sports as well as triathlons and spending lots of time walking with her dog.

Sarah is the Events Officer for Women in Football.  Sarah joins WiF from IMG Media where she was Head of Production.  During the 12 years at IMG/Premier League Productions, she was instrumental in the growth of PLP. They went from producing and broadcasting 10 live matches and one magazine show to the current 24 hour channel with daily live studio of up to nine hours per day, seven magazine shows and a staff of over 100 with up to 250 freelancers per week.

Sarah played a significant role in all stages of the planning, finance, commercial elements and launch of the PLTV channel that broadcasts to over 200 territories worldwide and was key to the growth of the multi-million pound budget.  Sarah's previous clients include the Premier League, NBC, Channel 4, HBS, UEFA and The European Tour.  Sarah's background is live outside broadcast of major sporting events, including the Premier League, World Cups, European Championships, Wimbledon and The Grand National.

Sarah has been in the television sports industry for over 20 years and previous employers include ISL, IAAF, HBS, Octagon CSI, Charter Broadcast and Fountain Studios

Louise joined Women in Football as administrative assistant in July 2020. She has a wealth of experience gathered over the past 20 years working in administration, PA, sales, purchasing and procurement, mainly within the healthcare and mobility sector industries.

An Aston Villa supporter, Louise is also a British Cycling volunteer cycling coach.