Sport England

Jennie Price, Chief Executive
Jennie Price, a barrister by training, has extensive senior management experience in the private and public sectors and a track record of working with Government.

Prior to joining Sport England Jennie was Chief Executive of WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme). This was established by Government in 2000 to improve the UK’s recycling performance and reduce waste. Jennie Price developed the strategic plan for the organisation and has grown it from an annual budget of £10 million to £80 million with a staff of over 200. As part of WRAP’s work, she has overseen the delivery of one of the most successful consumer communication campaigns in the environmental field – Recycle Now.  This campaign has increased the number of committed recyclers in England by five million people over the last two years.

Before heading WRAP Jennie Price spent almost 20 years in the construction industry, first as a lawyer and then as Chief Executive of the Major Contractors Group and the Construction Confederation, two of the leading representative bodies for the UK construction industry.

Her extensive senior management experience has been recognised in her appointment as a Visiting Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Mike Diaper OBE, Director for Children, Young People and Parliamentary Business
Mike joined Sport England on secondment from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in November 2006 as Chief of Staff.

In April 2008 his job evolved into an executive role leading work on Children and Young People.  

Prior to joining the organisation, Mike was the Project Director of the PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy, working across the Departments for Education and Skills and for Culture, Media and Sport.  

His leadership of the national strategy saw the percentage of five to 16 year olds doing a minimum of two hours of high quality physical education and sport rise from 25% in 2002 to 80% in 2006. The results surpassed the school sport public service agreement target for 2006 by five percentage points. The figure has carried on rising.

Subsequently, Mike was awarded an OBE in the 2007 Queen’s Birthday Honours for service to school sport.

Mike worked at the Department for Education and Skills for 19 years. His roles have included leading on the inclusion of children with special needs and supporting schools in challenging circumstances. He has also been Private Secretary to two Education Ministers.

Thomas Godfrey, Commercial Director
Thomas is Sport England’s first ever Commercial Director and is responsible for securing partnership funding from the private sector for community sport.

Thomas was formerly a partner at sports marketing company Spring Worldwide. He has also been Chief Executive at Planet Sport, which provides outsourced sports education to primary and nursery schools and founded Activate UK, which pioneered the concept of corporate involvement in grass roots sport in the UK.

Thomas brings to the role a wealth of experience in the sports sponsorship environment from both the UK and abroad. He has worked closely with a number of national governing bodies of sport including the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), where he was instrumental in setting up the ‘Street Cricket’ initiative with Channel 4.

Charles Johnston, Director of Property
Charles is a qualified engineer who also has a Masters in Business Administration. He started his career at Jaguar as a student apprentice before setting up his own garage business.

He then joined Sainsbury’s where he helped to develop Homebase stores and the Savacentre Hypermarkets as Project Manager. Charles was one of the founders of the Reading Construction Forum and led the team that developed the system of partnering in conjunction with Reading University.

In 2000, Charles formed his own development management company, working on a number of high profile developments in the UK and abroad, before being approached to lead the buy out of ailing MDA Consulting.

He acted as chairman and chief executive to buy, reorganise and return the company to profit before selling his share to the future management.

Joanna Robinson, Director of Regions (currently on maternity leave)
Before joining Sport England, Joanna was Operations Director at Premium TV (PTV) – the UK’s leading provider of official professional football club websites which boasts partnerships with 76 football clubs.

Joanna has always had a passion for sport, playing hockey to county level and competing in a range of other sports from athletics to rowing. At Oxford University she was awarded two Blues for women’s rugby, captaining the Varsity side. Joanna is married to a New Zealand international hockey player.

Phil Smith, Director of Sport
Phil was appointed in September 2008 to manage the sport team alongside Lisa O’Keefe.  The team is responsible for the funding of sports national governing bodies and other national partners as they work together with Sport England towards ‘Grow, Sustain and Excel’.

Phil joined Sport England from The Football Association, where his professional career started in 1996 as the General Secretary of the County FA in Manchester. In recent years he was The FA’s Head of Public Affairs, responsible for policy and public affairs, including working with the Government on the various issues affecting both professional and amateur football.

Mihir Warty, Director of Policy and Performance
Before joining Sport England, Mihir was formerly Head of Strategy for BBC Sport. He oversees a Directorate that consists of four key strand and will be responsible for formulating policy development through communication with relevant government departments and stakeholders.

Mihir also leads Sport England’s work on research, investment strategies and performance management, providing support at a national and regional level to improve the performance of the sports sector.