Dame Sue Campbell is the Director of Women’s Football at the Football Association. The women’s game has become increasingly popular and the England team - the Lionesses - made it to the World Cup semi-finals in 2019.

In the mid-1980s, Sue became deputy chief executive (and a year later chief executive) of the National Coaching Foundation, which provided education for coaches at both ends of the spectrum, from parent volunteers to elite coaches.

In 1995, she co-founded the Youth Sport Trust to set up a sports activity programme for every primary school in the country. It was hugely successful: in 2003 only 23% of school children were getting two hours of PE a week. By 2008, this figure had risen to 95%. In 2010, the coalition government cut their funding.

By this time, back at the elite end of the sporting spectrum, Sue was also in charge of UK Sport, where she presided over Team GB's biggest Olympic medal haul in living memory, at the London 2012 games. In 2016, she became as head of Women’s Football at the FA. She has also been a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords since 2008.

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Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Producer: Cathy Drysdale

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2020. Show less