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"Her appointment is well deserved on the back of 15 years' incredible service to the club. I would like to offer my congratulations. It is a brilliant example of what can be achieved through hard work, passion, commitment and loyalty, all of which Rose has demonstrated in abundance throughout her time with the club.”

On 13 May, Brighton & Hove Albion chair Tony Bloom and deputy chair and Chief Executive Paul Barber (the latter also a Women in Football board member) confirmed the appointment of Rose Read to the club’s main board, as of 1 June. 

The annals of football are full of ‘rags to riches’ stories when it comes to players. Rose’s career started at the age of 21, when she was offered a role as a trainee receptionist by an entrepreneur who had hatched an idea for a business from his garden office. What started as a fledgling IT operation quickly became a niche software company, turning over in excess of £50million. As the company grew, Rose’s responsibilities transitioned from receptionist to PA to training manager to overseeing employee issues. It was Rose’s former boss Jacqui who proposed that she get qualified as an HR specialist.

“I was a young mum juggling a full-time job, so the thought of going to university was quite overwhelming. I also didn't think I was clever enough,” Rose remembers.

“But Jacqui really backed me. She said: ‘Come on, you can do this!’ I went to university for four years in the evenings and got my CIPD [Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development] qualification. From there I worked for a college for about seven years but started to fall out of love with the work. I'd always been interested in physiotherapy or sports-related roles, so I thought about retraining to be a physio.”

It was at this time that another ‘sliding doors’ moment happened – a story Rose recalls with a wide smile on her face.

“A colleague of mine was a huge cricket fan, and I always caught him surfing Sussex’s website when he should have been getting on with his work! One day he just asked me: ‘If you weren’t working here, Rose, what would you like to do?’

“I explained my interest in sport, and he said to me: ‘Guess where there is currently an open role? At Sussex County Cricket Club.’”

A cursory glance was enough for Rose to know that this was the job for her. Her enthusiasm more than made up for her lack of sporting background, and thanks to the then Sussex CEO Gus Mackay – “he took a punt on me, and I’ll always be grateful to him” – her sports journey was under way.

In her new role, Rose had to field multiple offers from recruitment companies looking to help fill vacant positions. It was one of them, Doug Woodward, who floated an intriguing new idea to Rose. 

“One day, Doug called and asked if I would be interested in an informal meeting with Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club.  I remember him saying ‘there is a perfect new role for you’. BHAFC were building a new stadium and were looking for a new HR Manager. I’d never been happier in my life than working in cricket, but when I saw the plans for the Amex, I was hooked.

“I was offered the job, and cried buckets when leaving the cricket club, but I was joining Brighton at a pivotal moment in their history. I would be recruiting for new roles as the club prepared to move from an athletics stadium – built in 1930, that had been voted the fourth worst stadium in the country by a national newspaper – to a new purpose-built one, the American Express Stadium.” Rose was also the driving force in the development of the club’s Team Brighton values, which is the golden thread that runs through the club’s culture. 

 

Huge growth

Rose’s ‘transfer’ coincided with an upturn in the club’s fortunes on the field, as promotion from League One to the Championship was secured in time for moving into the Amex. From unremarkable beginnings, Rose has now been at the club for 15 years, during which promotion to, and consolidation in the Premier League has been achieved. In 2022-23, the men’s first team finished sixth, qualifying for Europe for the first time in their 122-year history. During her tenure, she has also witnessed huge growth in the women’s game and significant investment from the club’s chair and owner, Tony Bloom. The women attained their highest ever WSL finish this season (fifth place) and have ambitions to be a top 4 WSL club.

When asked to describe what an average day in her role as Head of People and Culture looks like, Rose describes herself as “a bit of a collector”. Having started off in the people function, over time she has also gathered responsibility for areas as diverse as safeguarding, payroll, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and management and leadership training. As well as her new role on the club’s main board, Rose also sits on the board of trustees for the club’s foundation, as well as on the women’s board. 

“Looking back, I saw something that needed to be done and just did it,” says Rose phlegmatically. “Anything connected with people, I gravitated towards it. That's how my role has grown.”

After clocking 15 years of service last month, Rose was called into a meeting by Bloom and Barber. Thinking one of her team had tipped them off about her milestone, the chair then asked her to join the board.

“It’s not often in your life as an adult that you have a genuine surprise, but this was one of those moments. I was hugely honoured. I cried, obviously! I was probably in shock for about five days, and I could only tell my boyfriend and my son. Since it went public, I've just been overwhelmed by all the nice messages of support I've had.”

Over the course of more than an hour, Rose covered many other subjects. One of the most evocative descriptions was when she recalled first moving to the Amex.

“I'm a real ‘feel’ person and I was worried that when we moved, the stadium would feel a bit clinical and new. It sounds strange, but I thought: if Martin Perry [former CEO, now honorary vice president] and the guys are building the body, it’s my job to get the blood pumping through the body. If we were building a human, that would be my job. How do we do that through the power of people? To bring this building to life and make it feel like such a special place. 

“The values were a key part of that journey. I was delighted when the stadium was described soon after opening in one comment along the lines of ‘I’ve never been to a new stadium that has so much soul’.

“I'm the sort of person who wants to make a difference. One of the key things I'd like to bring to the board in future is to ensure there's a clear connection between the board and the staff. Does everyone know what the board needs from them? What do people want from the board? How can I make that connection between the two?”

 

“In elite sports, an extra 1 per cent can often be the margin between winning or losing, so as a people and culture team, we are looking for people with high standards... who do the right thing, not the easiest thing"

 

At WIF’s Be Inspired Conference at Wembley Stadium in March, Brighton & Hove Albion’s CEO led a session titled 25 steps for a high-performance environment, starting out with creating a vision: your ‘why’. We ask Rose how this vision helps guide her in her own role. After a brief pause, she emphasises one word: standards.

“When Paul spoke at Wembley, I know a lot of people were writing down what he said. Having a list alone doesn’t make your business successful,” Rose explained. “It took us 12 years as a club to get to where we wanted. Paul set the standards, and he relentlessly upholds them.”

Football as an industry is ever-changing, yet the institutional fabric of clubs themselves contains years of history and tradition. How do the Seagulls navigate this potential conflict?  

“Paul never lets people not live our values,” Rose continues. “I think of it like a rug on the floor that is hiding a problem. Lots of people would step over it, or around it. But Paul lifts it up. What could be under there might be a problem that could take three months to unravel. Or something that has been lying there for 20 years. Sometimes it can be painful, but Paul is never frightened to face up to an issue and challenge it.”

With the club’s reputation constantly soaring on and off the pitch, Rose acknowledged that they were becoming increasingly seen as an ‘employer of interest’. So what values is she looking for, when the club is recruiting for a new role?

“In elite sports, an extra 1 per cent can often be the margin between winning or losing,” says Rose, “so as a people and culture team, we are looking for people with evidence of having high standards. 

“There are some people who look for the quickest route to get something off their desk. Here, we are looking for people who are curious, who see the bigger picture and care about doing things well, people who get up from their desk and speak to other people in different functions, people who find solutions to ensure the problem doesn’t boomerang straight back again, who do the right thing, not the easiest thing. 

“It’s also about emotional intelligence. Being able to read the room dependent on who you are talking to. However," she adds (unfortunately for you the reader!), "there’s no kind of magic textbook, is there?”

 

Role model

As well as the support of her chair and Chief Executive, Rose highlighted the influence of fellow female Brighton board members Michelle Walder and Anna Jones as role models.

“As women, we often talk about supporting each other. It’s vital that those of us in leadership roles make clear that there is space for everybody; that we raise each other up and support each other, rather than see each other as a competitor.

“Michelle runs a highly successful company; her energy and knowledge are phenomenal. Anna runs the Telegraph. I mean, wow. She is just the most incredible woman. She’s also a mum and has a family. Hopefully that gives our people another kind of a role model to aspire to.”

Having been in post now for a decade and a half, Rose recognises that one thing her team cannot alter is the unique football calendar and its requisite commitments. Reflecting on her early twenties when she was also the mother to a young child, she acknowledged that if she had wanted an operational role with the first team, the regular travel to games would have led to anxious questions about how she would juggle childcare.

“Everyone needs to be focused, ready for the new season, just at the point where the summer school holidays are in full swing. Then at Christmas, when people in what I call normal jobs ask if we ‘shut down over for the festive period’, I answer: ‘absolutely not!’ We've got a batch of fixtures in a short space of time. If we’ve got a Boxing Day game, if you have a role that supports the first team, you're in on Christmas Day. You're training, providing physiotherapy for players, or preparing the pitch, organising travel logistics, preparing kit, and catering. There’s a whole team behind the team working hard whilst their friends and family are at home carving the turkey! 

“That is the nature of football. I think about that a lot, but that isn't going to change. The football calendar will get in the way for many women, but not all women. There's not always a solution to that, but I think the trick is to have as much diversity in the team as possible, so that maybe you can accommodate different people, some of whom may be part time.” 

As well as the policies in place for working mums, as families increasingly share childcare duties, Rose revealed that a new project her EDI team will be reviewing is the impact of the calendar on male employees, particularly those with young families. “I've labelled it the paternity project. We will do some deep diving and speak to men in the club who have had a baby in the last year. It’s important that we continually challenge our structures, systems and understand how we can best support colleagues.”

In February 2021, Brighton & Hove Albion FC became the first English football club to join Women in Football as a corporate member, gaining access to a unique range of services, all designed to support organisations towards becoming fully gender-inclusive. What does Rose see the partnership as having provided, and why would she advocate that other clubs follow in Brighton’s footsteps?

“With WIF, I feel like it’s the whole team who is in your corner, wrapping themselves around you, to whatever extent you want,” she explains, painting another analogous picture. 

“You have the collective, but you've also got the individual. It’s like having a community around you, who are part of our team in some ways. Ebru [Köksal, WIF Chair] left me a wonderful voice note when I got promoted to the board, saying how proud she was. That summed it up really.”

At WIF’s Be Inspired Conference, Rose was in the audience, sitting alongside some of her club’s younger female employees. One reaction left a lasting impression on her.

“You go to a lot of conferences in your life, but everything about it was fantastic. I was looking around the room thinking how inspired I would feel if I was sat there at the start of my career. I later heard that one of our young female colleagues had felt so inspired, she had become quite emotional. One of the panels felt like it had spoken directly to her and given her a massive confidence boost.” 

As female participation on the pitch has rocketed in recent years, one slogan to explain the importance of visible role models has been ‘if she can see it, she can be it’. In spring this year, Brighton & Hove Albion hosted the first WIF networking event on the south coast of England. Heading home that night, Rose reflected again on her own journey, and the power of WIF’s network to support the next generation of women coming into the industry.

“It was so simple, but so good,” she smiles. “People walked into our building, met my colleagues like Cassie and Emily, who manage our women’s equality network, and you could see exactly what they were thinking: 'Oh, they look quite normal. They look like me!' We showed that working together with WIF is fact, not fiction, and hopefully demonstrated the incredible value from being part of it.”

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