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That “something” was the 2026 Vice-Chancellor’s Alumni Award for Alumni Achievement: recognition of Helen’s pioneering work in women’s sport, inclusion and entrepreneurship. As founder and CEO of , the world’s first women’s football retail site - and now the first physical women’s football retail shop, based in Manchester - and founder of , now the largest inclusive women’s and non-binary football club in Manchester, Helen has helped reshape who football is for - and who gets to feel at home in the game.

Finding her place at ������

Helen studied for a BA in Acting at Guildford School of Acting (GSA), graduating in 2012. For her, GSA had been “one of the best theatre schools in the world” since she was a teenager. She auditioned at 18, did not get in, and tried again the following year.

“I got in second time,” she says. “Drama school brings you a level of resilience… it tests you mentally and it tests you physically.”

The setting mattered too. Helen remembers visiting Guildford with her dad and feeling that ������ offered something different from her other options in London: a beautiful, safe-feeling campus and town, with historic buildings, the river and a sense of community, yet still close to the capital.

“He was like, ‘You’re so lucky. Look how beautiful this area is,’” she recalls. “It was the icing on the cake really.”

From stagecraft to leadership

Although Helen once imagined becoming a West End actor, her ������ experience equipped her for a different kind of stage. She believes the skills learned at GSA - confidence, communication, resilience and an understanding of human behaviour - became central to her later career.

“The art of being an actor is that you are part of a community,” she says. “When you’re performing and you’re in a production or in rehearsal, you’re relied on by multiple people.”

That same sense of shared responsibility now informs her leadership. Whether building a team, speaking to investors or creating a football club where people feel safe, Helen draws on the psychology, empathy and adaptability she developed through acting.

“I look back and all of those traits we were taught over those three years, I bring into my everyday life now,” she says. 

A journey of unexpected turns

After graduation, Helen moved to London and took a customer service job with a car wash company. She quickly progressed into sales and regional management, before joining Stagecoach Performing Arts in Manchester, where she worked with theatre schools and young performers.

Then the pandemic hit. Furlough and redundancy gave Helen the space to revisit an idea she had carried since the 2019 Women’s World Cup: “why was it so difficult to buy women’s football shirts, and kit with the right personalisation and fit?”

In December 2020, from her bedroom, she launched FOUDYS. Starting with a heat press machine and around £3,000 from her redundancy pay, Helen began putting women’s players’ names on the back of jerseys. It was a simple idea that met a huge unmet demand.

“I’ve always been a football fan since birth,” she says. “But there was no accessibility to women’s football products. You couldn’t get a women’s football jersey without hunting through the internet.”

FOUDYS has since grown into a recognised women’s sports retailer, named Retail Business of the Year in 2022, and continues to place women’s sport front and centre.

Creating Manchester Laces

In 2021, Helen also wanted to return to playing football. But traditional club environments had rarely felt right. She imagined something different: an 11-a-side team built on empowerment, kindness and compassion.

At the first Manchester Laces session, around 50 people turned up. Today, the club welcomes hundreds of players every week and has become a leading inclusive space for women, non-binary people and gender-diverse players. Its open-door approach was shaped by listening: when transgender participants arrived at the first session, Helen realised there were barriers she had not fully understood - and committed to learning.

“Inclusivity is not a destination, it’s a journey,” she says. “You’ve got to incrementally improve always.”

That ethos has led the club to consider everything from pitch access to privacy, faith and culture, player safety, community values and the different reasons people come to football.