Mambo rafiki! (Hi my friend) I am Alejandra, but you can call me “Alex”.  

 

Since I was a kid I have been practising sports. I played football until I reached the age of 12 since due to my gender I could no longer continue playing.

 

So, at the age of 12 years old, I learnt to understand that  'When one door closes, another one opens”. So, I started to play tennis and some years later, padel. Believe me when I say that those years were the best of my “short sports career”. I learnt to lose, to win and to keep training no matter what. And for those reasons I was able to study in Madrid and trained in the Sports Reebok La Finca with Jorge Martinez. 

 

At the age of 22 years I was not sure what I wanted to do after finishing University. As a padel player, I was not earning any money. I was studying, training and teaching tennis as well as padel during weekends. Also, I was doing an internship at the Reebok Sports La Finca’s  in Management. One day, when I was watching an Atletico Madrid’s match, I realized that I really liked “management”. So, I started to look for master related to it and I discovered one named as  “Sports Management” in Murcia. I had no doubts. I moved back to Almería, my hometown, I quitted my “professional career” as a padel player and I started a marathon that I am still running.

 

In Almería, I got a job as the “Head of Padel”. I had an academy with only 3 people in September and by June I achieved 150 players (between adults and kids). It was the second biggest padel academy in Almería. In addition, I was studying the Master in Sports Management during weekends in Murcia. At the time, I didn’t speak much English, but I knew that I had to learn it. So, I left my comfort zone and I quitted again my job.

 

In 2014, I went to Dublin to learnt English, but at the same time I was studying a Master in Education in Spain. I spent 8 beautiful months in Dublin and then everything started to make sense.

 

In 2015, I moved to Tanzania, where I lived during 7 months and if you want to know more about this experience, you can click below the link and watch the movie or you can read any of my posts. We were 10 volunteers from different part of the world to Tanzania, we started to build a NGO from the scratch using the power of sport as the main tool to support the local community of Mwanza (Tanzania). I am still involved in the NGO. In Tanzania, I realized about what I wanted to do with my life: to work in “Sports Development”.

 

 

 

In 2016, I moved to London to keep improving my English. The second day that I arrived to London, I got a job as “Sales” in Direct Marketing. It was probably the most embarrassing situation of my life, but it was also one of the best. I learnt one-word “attitude” and I have never forgotten it. I was promoted in my second week. However, one day I woke up with a weird feeling. Was that what I really wanted to do with my life? It was definitely not. I wanted to work in “sports development”. I quitted again.

 

The summer of 2016 I was “lost”, I knew the goal, but I didn’t know the path to it. I went back to Almería, thinking of teaching padel again. Miguel (my ex-boss) offered me the chance to move to Madrid in September and start to teach padel again. Before September, I had a coffee with the son of one of my mother’s friend. I had never met him before. He had finished a PhD and he was planning to move to Chile, he explained me the opportunities and chances of doing a PhD. He said, “choose a topic that you love and write about it”.

 

So, I decided to email one of my teachers in Madrid, I said to him that I would like to do a PhD in “Sports Development”, he thought that “Corporate Social Responsibility in Football” was better. So, in September 2016 I was teaching padel again (20 hours a week) and doing a PhD at the same time. I have studied what the Bundesliga, the Premier League, La Liga and all of their clubs have been doing with their foundations over the past years. I fell in love with the Premier League and every club overthere. They are an example. 

 

In November 2016, I attended to the World Football Summit in Madrid, two of my teachers of the Master in Murcia were there and they introduced me to Jurgen Griesbeck (Founder and CEO of Street Football World) and German Argüelles (CEO of the third half). Do you remember that word that I learn in London? “Attitude”. It was the right time to sell myself and I did. Next week after the WFS, I had an interview with German, he offered me the chance to start doing an internship with them. I said yes, and in January 2017 I stopped working as a padel teacher and I put the focus for the first time only in “sports development”.

 

I am still doing, running my marathon in the right way.