Hayley Hamp has become an integral part of the club's marketing team since joining Collingwood 3 years ago.

At 28 years old, Hayley was originally hired specifically for Netball, but now covers the entire club's marketing communications. This extends across all 8 teams, membership, ticketing, hospitality and commercial partnerships. 

As marketing communications coordinator, what are some of the key aspects to your role?

Because membership is the biggest component of the club, driving membership is a big part of my role.

In more recent years, audience development has become a big part of my role, discovering new audiences that we can bring into the club such as multicultural groups that might never have been to an AFL or Netball game.

Finding new people and bringing them into Collingwood.

It's important that we create different customer journeys depending on our audiences. Creating really personalised customer experiences depending on your interests and why you follow Collingwood etc.

What does it mean to you as a female to work in a largely male dominated industry?

It’s obviously pretty cool to be given the opportunity to make an impact in a male dominated industry; I’d love to leave a trailblazer kind of legacy. It’s more about the work with the women’s sport in a male dominated club - that’s more what I take pride in.

It goes back to being hired purely as a netball marketing person as I got to challenge ways of working that were initially only focused on AFL to include netball. That’s what I really take pride in, yes we are a football club but we’re not just a football club anymore.

I feel lucky as a female to be growing female sports in a previously male dominated industry.

Working for Collingwood is good because of the opportunities it provides me to make an impact both inside and outside of sports.

As a member of the Do Better working group, I’ve been able to educate myself and my team around racism and how the club can continue to improve.

Travelling for work has been one of my favourite parts of the job, experiencing different parts of the world. I got to travel to New Zealand in 2019 with the Netball team where they won the Super Club tournament.

Being supported by other female leaders at the club is really important to me.

The support from the likes of Erin Dooley (Head of Partnerships) and Karina Whiteford (Head of Marketing), has only encouraged me to pursue development opportunities like the Leadership grant.

For aspiring females wanting to work in the sports industry, what is a piece of advice you can give them?

I like to say, “don’t focus so much on getting a job in the sports industry”. It’s more about what value you can add to an organisation in general and then apply that to the sports industry.

For me, it was actually my marketing knowledge from a different industry that gave me more knowledge and more value to then bring into a sports organisation.

I encourage people to focus on what they’re actually passionate about, because that’s what people look for.

A recent recipient of Sport Australia’s 2022 Women Leaders in Sport program grants, can you speak to some of the work you’ve done in the leadership space?

Sport Australia do grants for Women Leaders in Sport every year where you can apply for a certain amount based on how long you’ve worked in the sports industry. You pick a course based on your area of expertise, I’m doing a Leadership Development course through Melbourne Business School.

I also host the Leadership in Sport podcast, a podcast where we showcase different leaders in the sports industry across the globe; how they got to where they are and general advice they would give to aspiring leaders.

Hayley has recently accepted a role at Netball Australia. Congratulations Hampy, you will be missed!