The Longest Day Podcast

This week’s episode’s guest is Zoiey Smale, senior inclusion, diversity, sport consultant and internationally acclaimed activist. Sport was Zoiey’s first love. She believes in what it can bring to the world. But her dilemma as a young woman in medical school at University of Oxford was whether to drop out and work in sport as a coach or carry on living a lie and not become her authentic self. The turning point was when she experienced at the training hospital the loss of a very sick patient under her and her team’s care. She tremblingly told her mother on the phone that she could not carry on becoming the doctor their family dreamed of and that she was going to work in sport instead. Coaching, for Zoiey, means getting the best from others and helping them become their best selves. She learnt this from coaching herself, channelling her inner fire, and stepping out of her comfort zone. This is critical at a time when there is an unacceptably low representation of Black women working in sports leadership making important decisions. Zoiey’s mindset is “if I can’t see it, I want to be it"!