Our Co-Design Group is made up of sector leaders who are actively engaged in making a difference, creating change and opening-up opportunities for everyone to live active lives.
They’re instrumental in shaping the programme’s ongoing development. They do this by:
- Bringing their knowledge, experience and expertise to ensure the voice and needs of a diverse range of sector leaders remain at the heart of the programme.
- Collaborating and co-designing with Sport England and the Leading the Movement team through curious questioning, constructive check and challenge, sharing good practice, exploring ideas and creating solutions that support leaders to tackle inequalities through long-term systemic change.
- Influencing decision making about the programme’s service delivery by drawing on their own experience, insight and the programme’s evaluation findings.
Our Co-Design Group members are also proud to act as advocates of Leading the Movement, working to promote the programme’s benefits, and encourage other leaders and stakeholders to engage with it.
Our Co-Design Group will continue to evolve over time. The initial term for group members is 12 months.
Our recruitment window is closed. Our Co-Design Group is currently full and operational. There may be more opportunities to join the group later in 2026, we'll keep you posted!
Our Co-Design Group
We're delighted to have a Co-Design Group who work hard to support Leading the Movement. Find out more about our current group members below.
Tahir Akram
Tahir is the Yorkshire Sport Foundation’s Development Manager for Bradford. His role includes supporting collaborative whole systems working across the city, linked to managing the Place Partnership, Active Bradford. He also leads the design and implementation of ‘Lead the Change’, an initiative designed to increase the number of leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds within the sector. Tahir passionately believes that everyone deserves an equal opportunity to get involved in sport and physical activity. He’s dedicated his career so far to advancing the mission to tackle inequalities and achieve lasting change. He brings his leadership, programme development and partnership building skills alongside his lived experience and determination to help ensure that Leading the Movement is robust and impactful for existing and aspiring sector leaders.
Daniel Ampaw
Dan has over 10 years of experience working in operational and strategic roles within local authorities and voluntary roles within community sport. He's currently the Strategic Lead for Community Sport at London Sport. His work focuses on developing solutions to address workforce and facility access challenges facing the community sports sector. Dan also chairs London Sport's EDI Core Group who play a lead role in designing and delivering their Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan. Outside of this, Dan is the Operations Director for a legal collective that supports grassroots community organisations. Dan is passionate about inclusion. He will bring his lived and leadership experience to the Co-Design Group to ensure that Leading the Movement provides practical, actionable support for leaders working to tackle inequalities.
Dr Kay Brennan
Kay is a practising GP for the Ministry of Defence, working with the Royal Marines as a Clinical Lead and Senior Medical Officer with specialist interests in Exercise, Musculoskeletal and Occupational Medicine. She's a Strategic Clinical Advisor for NHS Devon's Integrated Care Board, council member for the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine (FSEM) and board member for Active Devon. She also chairs a northern Devon place-based partnership group called THIPA (Tackling Health Inequalities through Physical Activity) and a Devon wide Healthy Ageing development group. Kay's a strong advocate for the benefits of sport, physical activity and everyday movement in all of her roles. She brings extensive cross-sector leadership experience and in-depth understanding of behaviour change, collaborative leadership and systems change to the Co-Design Group. Kay's committed to sharing learning and ideas, working collaboratively and co-designing solutions to help sector leaders tackle deep-rooted and culturally challenging system-based inequalities.
Lauren Flaxen
Lauren's career has been driven by her passion for sport and deep-rooted commitment to ensuring everyone can access and benefit from it. Her leadership journey spans multiple roles within education, family intervention and sport and physical activity settings. Lauren has extensive experience of co-designing and leading community-based sport and physical activity initiatives which have an intentional focus on tackling inequalities and driving systemic change. She's currently the Project Lead for the Active Through Football Project for Sunderland City Council's Public Health and Wellbeing Directorate. Lauren's notable expertise of community engagement, building multi-agency teams, supporting workforce development, co-design, innovation and place-based working adds value to the group. She'll share her insight and experience and connect conversations and learning from the local through to the national level to benefit the programme and other leaders.
Gavin James (Gav)
Gav is an enthusiastic leader with experience in the education, sport, leisure and community sectors. His skill set includes sports development, project management, leadership, networking and relationship building, facilitation, mentoring, systems thinking, systems leadership and co-design. As United Action Manager at the Youth Sport Trust, Gav convenes the School Sport and Activity Sector Partnership, an alliance of 100+ organisations united in using the power of their collective voice to shape the future of PE and school sport. His passion for tackling inequalities is fuelled by his love of sport, his understanding of social inequalities and first-hand experience of the inequalities many young people, underserved communities and marginalised groups face. Gav brings his skills, leadership and lived experience to ensure Leading the Movement advocates for diverse leadership and supports leaders to ensure everyone can access the benefits sport and physical activity.
Shamime Jan
Shamime is the Founder and Director of Bollyfit Active CIC and leads The Circle, a grassroots initiative focused on connection, wellbeing, and empowerment. With over 30 years of community leadership, she is deeply committed to tackling health inequalities and systemic inactivity, particularly for minoritised women. Her work is shaped by lived experience, having faced barriers to culturally appropriate wellbeing spaces during a critical time in her life. She transformed that challenge into a mission to create inclusive, safe, and empowering environments for women. Shamime has held advisory roles with CHEM, We Lead for Legacy, and Sport England’s TRARIIS group. She brings to the Co-Design Group a unique blend of strategic insight, grassroots activism, and personal resilience, ensuring Leading the Movement centres community-led, inclusive change that amplifies diverse voices.
Lydia Shale
Lydia is a passionate advocate for inclusion and equity focussed approaches to participation, leadership and systems design within sport and physical activity. Her work centres around advancing opportunities for women and girls, trans and non-binary people, young and emerging leaders and positioning sport a a vehicle for social justice and structural change. Lydia currently works at Leeds University Union and Leeds Hyde Park FC. Her experience also spans serving on the FA's National Youth Council (representing 16-25-year-olds in football leadership) and regular contributions to national conversations around inclusion, youth voice and sports governance. Lydia brings the benefit of her lived and professional experience to the Co-Design Group with particular emphasis on ensuring young and emerging leaders are meaningfully engaged in the programme.
Claire Tomkinson
Claire is the Strategic Lead for People and Leadership at GM Moving. Her career and leadership experience spans working extensively with the voluntary and community sector, with a responsibility for relationship building, collaboration, culture change, leadership development, systems leadership, health and wellbeing. At GM Moving, Claire’s role is to support the paid workforce, volunteers and communities to contribute towards a shared vision of ‘more people being able to move more, everyday’. This involves exploring and developing their leadership skills, knowledge, values, mindsets and behaviours to ensure everyone can play a part in tackling inactivity and inequalities. At the national level, Claire helps facilitate place-based leadership courses and is on the People Working Group for Place Expansion. Claire will bring her experience and commitment to Leading the Movement and will help to connect local and national conversations and learning.
Jules Twells
Jules is the National Inclusion and Wellbeing Manager for leisure operator Everyone Active - SLM Community Leisure Charitable Trust. Her leadership experience spans multiple roles across the leisure industry and the third sector including working for the Activity Alliance, and at Mind and Samaritans. Jules leads on Everyone Active’s priorities and ambitions on diversity and inclusion alongside their Aquatics, Activity and Health and Wellbeing Strategy to increase participation amongst under-served and inactive communities. She also sits on equality, diversity and inclusion panels for the Samaritans and Wales Golf. Jules is passionate about creating environments where everyone feels welcome, can access sport and physical activity and move more. She will bring her sector insight, ideas, commitment, leadership and lived experience to benefit Leading the Movement and the leaders it looks to support.
Andrew Whittaker
Andrew is the Strategic Lead for Partnerships at Activity Alliance where he guides organisation to embed disability inclusion at their core. His career spans two decades of working within national disability charities, National Governing Bodies, the NHS, adult social care and Local Authority sports development. Andrew's passionate about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to experience sport and physical activity and believes that leaders have a central role to play in this. His commitment to tackling inequality and inactivity stems from his lived experience as a wheelchair user and a neurodivergent individual. Andrew will use his unique personal and professional experience to support the ongoing development of Leading the Movement.
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