Joy Johnston

Joy is Head of Governance (Support) at Sport England and is responsible for managing the delivery of the Sports Governance Academy initiative by working in partnership with The Chartered Governance Institute.

Joy is passionate about establishing good governance practices in sports organisations because she believes without good governance organisations can never truly be successful in delivering their aims and objectives.
In her current role at Sport England, she supports Sport England funded organisations work through appropriate governance action plans to comply with the Code for Sports Governance. She developed and is responsible for leading on the implementation of the Sport England governance support strategy ‘From compliance to culture’. The support strategy includes a range of initiatives to help organisations with on-going governance improvement (the Sports Governance Academy is one of these). The initiatives are also designed to enable organisations to move beyond pure compliance with the sports governance code, to a place where they fully own and decide the governance choices that are right for their organisation.

Joy has been working on and in governance within sports organisations for the last ten years. Her former roles include Governance and Compliance Officer at the Sport and Recreation Alliance; Governance Manager at UK Sport; and Head of Governance and Quality at the English Football League Trust. She previously held a number of non-executive Board roles including Independent Director for Parkour UK, Governance Committee Member for Baseball Softball UK, Independent Trustee for the London Youth Games, Independent Governor for Havering Sixth Form College and Board Director for the English Ice Hockey Association. She also works currently as an Officiating Instructor and Coach for the International Ice Hockey Federation.

She holds a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and a Postgraduate Certificate in Sports Law and Practice from De Montfort University.