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“I feel so lucky. I'm still first and foremost a football fan. To be able to immerse yourself further in this world, then to play a role in hopefully shaping it, is something ​I​ still pinch ​myself​ about. It’s very, very cool.”

Alex Greenwood is the drummer in the ​band​ Sports Team and a co-founder of INMOTION COLLECTIVE, running creative campaigns for global sports bands and governing bodies. Throughout 2025, Alex was also a participant on Women in Football’s Small Business Programme with Xero.

We talked to Alex about her journey into sport, her experience on the programme and ​her​ relationship with young music fans.

During Alex’s childhood, she would often visit Old Trafford alongside her dad, who grew up in Stockport in a family of big United fans. Nothing unremarkable about that, you might think. However, Alex grew up in Leeds, the city of one of United’s biggest rivals. “Football for me has always been rooted in family. People would often refer to me as a glory fan, but I can tell you, there was absolutely zero glory kicking around in Leeds wearing a United shirt,” Alex remembers ruefully.

Alex’s engagement with football was not only as a fan. Her grandma would often encourage her to play, including one occasion when Alex was learning how to be a goalkeeper in the front room. “I ended up cracking my head on the fireplace and having to get it stitched up in hospital,” she recalls. “My grandma sadly passed away when I was young, but all my memories of her revolve around football. When she was in hospital, she had a signed picture of Beckham by her bed. At that time, he was a United icon, and I remember thinking that having that level of proximity to him was unbelievable.”

Alex describes her mum as a powerful role model. “My mum was the first person in her family to go to university and became this incredible woman who now has an MBE and a statue with her name on it in Leeds. She was a geriatrician, trying to integrate health and social care, and influencing government to change the way that policy works for older people in this country. She instilled a belief that you can achieve things through innovative thinking in even the least likely of settings (the 21st century NHS).”

 

 

Post-university, just as Alex’s musical career was flourishing, COVID intervened. “We'd been recording in a studio in Devon when lockdown got announced. We thought we could sit it out and record an album until it all blew over. Of course, it quickly got serious. The guy that ran the studio told us, ‘You need to leave now.’ At the time, the band were living together in Camberwell, so we had to make a decision: stay in London or try and go somewhere else. For me, that meant going back to my mum's house. I was there without a drum kit and no real sense of purpose. Then I got into running.”

A​round this​ time, Alex felt a pull to do something new. Was there a lightbulb moment? “It would be a lie to say I had a clear epiphany,” she says. “It was an amalgam of factors from playing football and being in the music industry.”

As Alex’s runs became more frequent, so too did her understanding of, and relationship with her body. “I’d played football my whole life, but for some reason, running just unlocked ​a new relationship to my body​. It's hard to say without sounding clichéd, but ​it shifted not only how I perceived myself physically but also how I interacted with people and lived in the world. T​​hat​ power felt meaningful and tangible. It got me to reflecting: if I've only just got to this place​, with my level of privilege​, how many more women​ are being left behind​?​"

 

Kindred spirit

At university, one of Alex’s teammates was Ceylon Andi Hickman, now Deputy Chief Executive at Football Beyond Borders. Post-Cambridge, they had remained close friends. The third part of what would become the INMOTION COLLECTIVE was Lucy Monkman, known in the music industry as DJ Monki. Alex quickly identified a kindred spirit.

“Luce and I were in very comparable boats during COVID. I was meant to be on a world tour and still receiving daily notifications on my phone. On my birthday that year, I received a ​pop-up​​ that I should​ have been playing a show in​ Mexico City. Instead, I was having a socially distanced BBQ ​in Leeds​!

“I'm a bit of a geek at heart, and Ceylon and I really enjoyed diving deep into theoretical studies​ in the early days of INMOTION​. One of the foundational pieces was by Iris Marion Young, called Throwing like a Girl.

“She analyses the way that girls will complete a physical task in comparison to boys and then maps this ​​on to the​​ way that we socialise girls​; how they​ inhabit and use their bodies,​ and how that​ extends​ to society. You can map th​is​ socialisation of girls across a lifespan and there's some ​bleak​ statistics on the levels of teenagers dropping out of sport.”

 

 

Alex slowly began to knit the theories she was reading about together with her own world, namely the live music scene. As the only ​woman​ in her band, ​observations and first-hand ​experiences of ​​participating​ in ​branded sport campaigns had created a deep sense of frustration.

“I frequently encountered what I felt were lazy depictions. ‘Oh, you're the drummer. Oh, you're a woman.’ Lucy, who had played football for Dulwich Hamlet, felt there was a depiction of women's sport and culture that was equally reductive... very tick-boxy, and often patronising. When the initial This Girl Can campaign came out, I was really struck by how different it felt.”

The friends asked themselves another question: how do we get more women to the place Alex had reached through running? How do you enable women to experience the joy of movement?

“While it’s true to say that women are underrepresented at the top level in both industries, if you look at fandom, women access music and connect with music in a way that you don't always see with sport​, or didn​’t nearly as much at that time [2021],​​” continues Alex. “We therefore also asked ourselves: how do we use music as a potential entry point to enable more women to access sport?”

 

Meaningful

Using their respective contacts – including​, handily,​ Lucy’s black book from hosting a show on BBC Radio 1 – they pitched the idea of a podcast to Adidas, talking to women and artists about why they’d stopped participating in sport. Although declining the podcast concept, they instead asked Alex, Lucy, and Ceylon if they’d be interested in collaborating on some product launches.

“That was how it started,” laughed Alex. “We did a lot of learning and had this amazing ride, working with some big organisations on campaigns that were really meaningful to us.”

Around this time, Alex also entered the orbit of Women in Football. With INMOTION COLLECTIVE ​growing, Alex was keen to seek out community in the business side of women’s sports. ​​​​​Ceylon​ shared​ an invitation to a WIF networking event, and after attending, Alex joined WIF as a member. Shortly afterwards, Helen Hardy, founder of ​​Foudys – who ​Alex knew from attending matches in Manchester​ – mentioned that she was part of the first cohort of WIF and Xero’s Small Business Programme.

“I connected with Sarah [Collins, WIF’s Client Services Manager] and asked about the programme, only to discover it had just finished. I replied and said, do another one! I was so happy to be accepted onto the second edition. When you're a founder, it can be quite isolating. You don't have the ability to always sense-check things; it can be difficult to find a north star.”

 

 

What did Alex take away from her experience?

“Being part of a group of women in the same boat was so powerful. I was also keen to develop my skills and know-how around business planning and finance. Coming from an untraditional background of being a drummer in a rock band, it's easy to question yourself at times. Having a network of people you can turn to for support was invaluable, as well as having a mentor to lean on, to ask big or small questions. The group chat is still very active and I love that connection.”

Although the worlds of Sports Team and INMOTION don’t often overlap, did her experience help the band in any way?

“You don’t often read musicians saying this in their NME interviews,​ be​cause it’s not super sexy,​​ but being in a band is ​​essentially ​​running a small business. You start it off with your best mates to make music, not to be an entrepreneur. But in the current climate, you really need to be savvy to make it work financially.”

Reflecting on WIF’s annual industry workforce survey, and spurred by an interview Alex gave to Elle magazine, we moved onto the topic of allyship and mentorship. In the interview, Alex said: “I’m in a band with five men who are amazing, who have done everything to ensure that I feel secure and championed. I know they uphold the same values as me.”

So how important was this to her? Who else had been an influential guide on her life and career?

“This is like my Oscar speech and I'm going to leave someone out, then feel awful!” says Alex. “The first person that comes to mind is a teacher at high school: Miss Dommet. She completely transformed my experience of education and​ shifted the expectations I put on myself in and beyond academia.

“My partner also owns her own business and is probably the best mentor​ I could ask for.​ With the boys in the band, they are all such allies. It's always been a complete given that they would support anything I'm doing outside of it. Men often get written out of this kind of story but there's so many wonderful men who push women's sport forward​, so a moment for them!​”

 

 

In 2021, a music industry study found that only 22% of music industry executives were women, only 2% were women of colour, and only 33.3% of festival headliners were female solo artists or all-female acts. If Alex had a magic wand, what would she change?

​​​“Statistics are important because they help us reflect reality and can reveal powerful truths. But there’s also a risk that important nuances get lost within them. Take quotas, for example. They often operate from a top-down perspective, and in my view, that alone doesn’t bring about the kind of paradigm shift we need. Personally, I think what’s required is a systemic approach that changes cultures and transforms how people are perceived and hence treated. The music industry, for instance, is still largely dominated by straight white men, many of whom talk about women in ways that are unacceptable. In many ways, it feels like one of the last bastions where that mindset persists, and it’s a cultural shift that will unlock change in the other spaces.​​​​

“​S​adly this isn’t confined to music. ​​I also know of women at football clubs who had to leave because of the level of disrespect they felt in their role. This also demonstrates a culture where people feel empowered or able to behave in ways that are also fundamentally unacceptable.

“I know it sounds ​​cliche​​ to say that​​ sport can change the worl​​​d​ but ​​it​​ genuinely is one of the only sectors in which I feel a sense of optimism, as a vehicle for change. Last year I became co-chair of Girls United, a charity working in Mexico and London who use football to support girls. What can football offer, beyond kicking a ball?”

 

Driving change

In November, the Women’s Sport Trust published research which stated: "Female athletes are redefining what leadership looks like, standing up for equality, inclusion, and mental health; challenging stereotypes; and using their platforms to drive change far beyond their sport. They are what inspire fans, shape culture, and turn participation into passion."

As our conversation draws towards its conclusion, we have one final question for Alex. As a public figure in a rock band, has she encountered a similar expectation, or sense of duty?

“I’ve often been asked if I have an inspirational mantra, and I’d say whether sport, or music, that message would be never stop playing. When I took paths that didn’t feel right, or didn’t produce the best outcomes, it was when I’d lost a sense of love and joy of what I was doing.

“We’ve always tried to curate a community around the band, and there have been a few special moments. In my personal life, I have been on quite a journey and came out as queer in my twenties. To share that and see the impact on young fans, I know has been very powerful for some of them. It’s something I'm most proud of. Visibility in every sense can be incredibly powerful. That can help effect change and enable people to feel happier and more comfortable in themselves. A lot of people have written to me and shared their stories, which feels like one of the best and least expected privileges of being in a band.

“We also have fans who are talented artists. They draw and paint things for us and share on social media. In those moments you stop and think: ****, this is mad, I get to do this as a job.

​​​​“Football started off as a family thing and evolved to become an important part of my life, identity, and community. Along the way, it’s also become a platform for me to engage in activism and use the sport to push for positive change. ​​I am still finding new ways in which my love of the sport grows, which to me, is really beautiful.”​​​

You can follow Alex and the INMOTION COLLECTIVE on Instagram and hear more from Alex on our YouTube channel.

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