WEEK #19: CAROLINE W.

 

Please tell us a little bit about yourself. 

 

My experiences in sport has been a lifelong journey.  Sport has played both a professional and personal role in my life and provides me so much of what makes me…me.  I have played multiple sports recreationally over the years and still love to learn new ones. I also love the sense of community that sport provides.  I have lived in multiple cities throughout North America over the years, and it was often through sport and physical activity that I would meet my ‘peeps’ with each new move and how I would cultivate a sense of belonging to the community around me.

 

Educationally, my passion for sport inspired me to obtain a Master’s Degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies and much of my graduate research examined the unique ways in which women and men are motivated to participate in sports and how such research can inform the ways in which we are able to best serve women as consumers of sport.

 

Professionally over the years, I’ve had the chance to work in multiple aspects of the sport industry. They have included event management, sales and marketing, management consulting, provincial sport leadership, sport instruction and teaching sport marketing at the college level.

 

I also absolutely love photography and have been a self-taught professional action/sports photographer for a number of years.  SeeWhatSheCanDo gives me the chance to help women see themselves in strong, fierce and active ways. It’s inspirational to have the privilege to help women see what’s possible for them in the world of sport and I’m always grateful each time women trust me to capture them in authentic and awe-inspiring ways.

 

What is an issue or topic you are passionate about or would like to see changed?

 

One of the most important roles I’ve had for the last 20 years is being the mother of two amazing daughters.  My girls inspire me to be my best and work hard to be the change I want to see in the world.  For me, that meant creating and launching SeeWhatSheCanDo in 2018, a media and marketing company serving active and sport-loving women that includes the creation of the first-of-its-kind digital platform to celebrate, elevate, inform and connect women to each other, their allies and to the organizations that provide the products and services that will help them to be their best active selves.

 

So much of SeeWhatSheCanDo is about creating new storytelling and community creation capacities that have real and measurable impacts on the growth of women’s sports media coverage at all levels of play. It’s about women investing in women and helping to make women’s sport advocacy and academic research have a chance to come to life in a female-centric way.

 

It’s also about empowering, inspiring and encouraging women to be able to advocate for themselves and provide them with powerful tools that enable them to tell their own personal sport/recreation stories and leverage the power of sport/recreation to create a greater sense of community and belonging for themselves in the world around them and beyond.

 

What specific strategies would you like to see parents, coaches, or sport administrators do to improve diversity in sport or progress your cause?

 

Regardless of what role you play in sport (coach/parent/participant/official/volunteer/business owner/etc), I would love to see more collaboration and strategic cooperation in the world of women’s sport and recreation (and in the sport industry as a whole for that matter). In essence, to leverage the power of many.

 

Historically, the world of sport and recreation has tended to be a somewhat fragmented industry.  While there is lots of great work happening to support women in sport, the potential to accomplish even more is possible if we are open to working together in new and innovative ways. Whether it means not-for-profits working with for-profit businesses or taking a multi-sport approach, our collective efforts need to be bold, strategic, transformative and foundational if we are to have a real impact on turning around the declining rates of sports participation girls and boys continue to experience. We must be open to and willing to invest in innovation and leverage our collective strengths and imaginations as to what’s possible for women in sport and the sport industry in general.

 

What is your favourite leadership quote?  

 

I have two favourite quotes:

 

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

 

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 

Both quotes have been guiding principles for me throughout my life.

RESOURCE RECOMMENDATION

 

I would humbly recommend our SeeWhatSheCanDo platform as an important resource for others to know about and be a part of.  Whether you are looking to try something new, improve what you are doing, feel inspired to reach elite levels of sport, or want to inspire others by sharing your own successful sport story, our platform is designed to enable and empower women and their supporters to actively be the change they want to see both in their own lives/communities and throughout the world of sport as a whole. 

 

https://www.seewhatshecando.com