Breaking Barriers on the Pitch
Details
Join us for a special evening with Karen Dobres, author of Pitch Invasion: My Story as a Feminist on a Football Club Board (Cassell, 2025). From having no interest in football to joining the board of English club Lewes FC, Karen has become a leading campaigner for gender equality and now shares her inspiring story of challenging inequality and helping to reshape the culture of the world’s most popular sport.
Karen will be joined in conversation by Lucy Mills, who founded Ready Sport Global after a 15-year career in football with leading organisations including FC Barcelona and FIFA.
More about the author:
Karen Dobres is the author of ‘Pitch Invasion: My Story as a Feminist on a Football Club Board’, published by Cassell in summer 2025. Having previously had no interest in football whatsoever, Karen joined the board of directors of English football club, Lewes FC, between 2017 and 2023, helping to create the groundbreaking “Equality FC” initiative – the first football team in the world to split resources equally between the men’s and women’s team. In her humorous and heartwarming book, Karen shares her journey to welcome ‘unwelcome women’ to football and campaign for gender equality in the male-dominated sport. A former counselling therapist and fashion model, Karen resides in Lewes, UK.