011. Football As A Tool For Positive Change.
In this episode of Riserve (the newsletter), we spoke to Barcelona-based brand strategist Heloisa De Souza about harnessing the power of sport to enable long-lasting impact.
HOWDY Riserve!
Drama and discourse from a different kind of football has been keeping us “busy" for the past few days. By now, I am sure we have all seen Kendrick’s performance at the Super Bowl and the exquisite display of pettiness that it was. Even Serena Williams popped out to double down on Drake in true Compton style—crip walking across the stage with vigor.
As if that wasn’t enough lore, the sport space has been talking about the Nike commercial featuring A’ja Wilson, Sha’Carri Richardson, Caitlin Clark, Alexia Putellas and other fantastic female athletes. The campaign aimed at elevating and celebrating women, but it felt a bit reductive. The narrative of “doing it because they told you not to do it” and being a rebel in a “space that doesn’t belong to you” is trite and a bit confusing quite frankly.
Are we supposed to speak about sports in a way that encompasses both genders, or should we divide them and treat women as the underdogs?
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
I think it’s pretty clear and tested that female athletes—and women in general—are capable of some pretty sick ish and they deserve a portrayal that celebrates their badass-ness, the same way we’d prop up an emerging footballer.
Vini JR is obviously not a rookie, but so isn’t Putellas. Why is his campaign so much more visually impactful than hers? She’s won a lot and scored a lot and is pretty much a legend of the women’s game, but the messaging is still that “she has to overcome”.
Sure, women sports are under-funded and under-watched (this is a whole different topic to unpack) but that doesn’t mean they are underdogs and charity cases.
This is why it’s exciting to have someone who has been working to flip the narrative of sports as today’s player profile.
Player: Heloisa De Souza
Position: Brand Strategy
Homeground: Barcelona, Spain
Note: She is a brand & communications strategist passionate about using sport to drive positive change.
Hi Heloisa. I am so excited to have you on RISERVE and even more to have the opportunity to interview you. Your profile is very interesting because it looks at football through a positive lens, leveraging the sport’s unique positioning as a powerful driver of change. Before we get into it, let’s start with some housekeeping.
Where are you from and where do you live?
First of all, thank you for having me! I’m a big fan of RISERVE and your work to build this community and elevate creative professionals in football, so it’s truly an honor to be featured here.
I’m from Curitiba, the capital of one of Brazil’s southern states, and I’ve been living in Barcelona for a few years now.
How old are you?
I’m 33.
What’s your “job”? Explain it to me as if I am from Mars.
It can be hard for me to describe my job, but I feel like this is a safe space for that since the profiles I see here don’t fit neatly into one box either. And honestly, why would we want that?
My work is a mix of strategy and creativity. I love tackling the challenge of defining a brand, helping it find its place in the world, shaping its mission, and making sure its message lands with the right people.
Some brands already know their impact, and I help them refine and communicate it. Others are still figuring out how they can make a difference, and I guide them in discovering their unique way of doing so by connecting it to their story, mission, or essence. And this can be applied to both business and athletes’ personal brands. I also develop communication strategies, making sure brands express who they are across different platforms.
In addition to my freelance work, I work as Head of Brand and Creative Impact at Ready Sport Global, where we take this further by integrating innovation into brand strategy to develop “Future-READY Brands.
When did you realize this was the line of work you wanted to go down?
I had been working in communication and advertising since graduating and, while I was always trying to bring a social impact angle into my work, it still felt like a separate interest—just like my passion for football.
The closest I got to combining them was volunteering for a football-focused NGO in my city. When I came to Barcelona, I set a goal of attempting to put communication, social impact, and football together to figure out if that’s something I could, and actually wanted to, do. That led me to the Barça Foundation, and almost immediately, I decided that, yes, this was it.
You worked with the Barça Foundation, which I am sure is a dream of many. How did this opportunity come about? What are some of the challenges that come with working for such an institution? What did you learn from this experience?
It was an amazing experience and truly key to my decision to focus on this career path. A few months after moving to Barcelona, I decided to do a Master’s in Brand Strategy to shift my career more intentionally in that direction. The opportunity with the Barça Foundation came through a conversation with one of my professors—I had been exploring if and how to break into sport and football, so I asked for advice, and he connected me with the Foundation to continue the conversation. Honestly, so much in my life and career has happened because I asked questions, talked to people, and knocked on doors. Sometimes they happen to open.
“SO MUCH IN MY LIFE AND CAREER HAS HAPPENED BECAUSE I ASKED QUESTIONS”
Working in such a big organization comes with a paradox: endless possibilities and equally abundant limitations. I think that was the first challenge I met there. And within a giant football club, there’s the added challenge of not being the protagonist. There is so much more that happens in a club such as Barça than what we see on the pitch, including incredible and proven social impact, but at the end of the day, the club’s core mission is football. While that could be discouraging at times, I actually enjoyed the challenge of finding ways to amplify the value of the Foundation, both within the club and externally, and ensuring its work remained relevant to Barça’s overall mission.
I learned so much. My time there was a crash course in the football industry, the Spanish market, the Sport for Development sector, sponsorship, corporate fundraising, and so on. I even learned Catalan! But as a brand and creative professional, getting firsthand experience with one of the world’s most valuable brands was priceless.
If I had to highlight one lesson, it’s that building a football brand that is truly “more than a club” takes good business management, but also so much more. It requires ensuring that the values that shaped the club continue to inform its daily decisions, something that’s becoming increasingly difficult in today’s football. Which might explain why so many Barça fans are finding that original spark and sense of belonging through the Women’s team… but that’s a whole other conversation.
You often talk about football as a tool for positive impact. What do you mean when you say that?
I believe all of us who love football understand its power on a personal level. The passion, the experiences, the connections, and the emotions that are often impossible to put into words. And history shows us that this impact extends beyond the individual level. Whether in impacting pivotal moments in societies or transforming a single person’s life, there are many examples of when football played a role beyond the pitch.
It’s no coincidence that football is the most popular sport in the world and influences so many aspects of communities and cultures. The same force that makes grown women and men cry and hug strangers, and that unites a divided nation can also drive meaningful change for individuals, communities, and the planet.
I have no doubt that being Brazilian had a strong influence in helping me see the potential of the game to generate positive impact. Growing up, I saw football bringing people together, representing hope for kids dreaming of a different future, and gave people a sense of belonging and pride that few other things could.
Of course, such force inevitably shows in bad ways too, but there’s enough evidence to make the case that it is mostly good. Looking at the current state of the world, I believe that tapping into football as a tool for positive impact is a lifeline not just for the world but for football itself.
How can we, as a society, harness the opportunities that come from looking at the game through an anthropological lens?
This is an excellent question. The answer is quite complex, and we could discuss it from many different angles, such as examining football as a connector and the communities formed around it, or how it allows people to express different elements of their inner world—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We could also explore the phenomena of technology and social media and how they influence the way people consume the game. But I would like to focus on one key aspect: how football reflects society and offers opportunities for change.
Much of what happens on the pitch and within the structure of the clubs mirrors what is occurring in our society. Take the growth of women’s football as an example. It is only logical that, in today’s world, football would make room for the potential within the women’s game, and vice versa. As we see, hear, and discuss more about the rise of women’s football, our surroundings also reflect and respond to that. From now on, little girls will not know a world where they cannot be a footballer, a coach, or a club president. Being aware of these dynamics can help us identify our roles as fans and/or professionals in the industry in building a better football culture and extending its influence beyond the pitch.
Besides, this perspective can help us spot opportunities to spark meaningful change through football. Vinicius Jr. is an excellent example of this, despite (or because of) being a controversial character. He has used his platform to confront the racism in football, an issue that has long been overlooked, and recently exposed clearly towards him. His leadership, which extends beyond the field, challenges everyone with a question: here is what is happening, I know what I’m going to do about it, but what about you? Clubs, fans, teammates, presidents, leagues, sponsors—how do you feel about this, and what are you going to do to effect change?
It’s uncomfortable, and it’s understandable that we’d prefer to simply attend a game on a Sunday to unwind (if you can do that, let me know how) and then return to our own business. But, just like everything that comes with a cost, there is much value in seizing these opportunities to create a better football culture and, through that, a better world.
As someone working in social impact, can you explain to us mortals what these organizations actually do?
Social impact organizations exist to drive positive social (or environmental) change. There are many different approaches to achieving that, including tackling inequality, improving access to opportunities, promoting education, challenging broken systems, and more. When we think of social impact, nonprofit organizations typically come to mind, but other formats exist as well, such as social businesses, foundations, or initiatives within large corporations.
Some focus on policy change, others on direct community programs, some on financing existing projects, and others use sport as a tool for social impact. This means that, in general, in their hands, sport become a means to an end, which could involve increasing diversity in leadership, creating safer spaces for marginalized groups, educating through values, preventing violence, and much more. It is amazing to see how many opportunities for positive impact lie within sport. This ecosystem of organizations using sport for good is what we call the Sport for Development sector, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re not familiar with it. There are countless brilliant individuals out there working to make the world a little less terrible through sport, often with limited resources and a lot of passion.
With my work, I aim to build more bridges between this sector and the sport business world, connecting those who own the resources, platforms, and influence to those who are already doing great work that needs more investment to grow.
Was there a project you particularly loved working on?
There are several projects that hold a special place in my heart—even the ones where I’m my own client, haha, like putting together the first edition of The Good Football Trend Report last year. However, one project I cherish particularly is developing the brand strategy for Hayley Bennett’s DEI consultancy, HTVB.
Hayley is a highly respected DEI professional in football, and her impact is steadily expanding beyond the sport. We collaborated to shape a brand strategy to strengthen the brand in both arenas, ensuring her work received recognition within football and in the broader corporate landscape. It was a great example of how meaningful, high-impact initiatives in football never remain confined to the sport itself.
On a personal level, this project also resonated with me deeply because it centered on that intersection I had been interested in for years. It also marked the beginning of a new chapter for me, right after I took what felt like a bold (some might say borderline reckless) leap in a new direction. Having my first client be such a powerhouse, a knowledgeable and empathic woman in the football industry, was truly the cherry on top. It genuinely felt like a full-circle moment.
Tell me about your Newsletter “The Good Football”. When and why did you start it?
The Good Football was born in 2023 out of a desire to write about three topics I’m passionate about: football, branding, and positive impact.
Even though I had already been working in sport and social impact for four years, I hadn't had the chance to dive deeply into this specific intersection. I’ve always believed that generating positive impact is a golden opportunity for football brands to not only drive change but also build brand value. So, I created the newsletter as a space to explore and gather evidence around that.
The idea had been in my mind for a while, but what finally pushed me to take the leap was a period of reflection after the series of racist abuse directed at Vinícius Jr. in La Liga that year. Experiencing that here from up close was disheartening, and it seemed to completely contradict the ideals I was working toward. But in the end, that moment turned into a motivator for me to put the project into the world. I guess sometimes my innate stubbornness comes in handy.
And I’m so glad I went for it because The Good Football has grown into something far beyond what I originally imagined. It’s helped me connect with great people who share similar hopes and work toward shared goals. It’s helped me build my personal brand in the sector and, it’s become a passion project where I can create the content I wish existed in the world.
Since you are Brazilian, this question feels a bit silly. But when did your relationship with football first develop?
Well, there’s a photo of me at 3 years old, wrapped in a Brazilian flag and with green and yellow face paint on, apparently ready to cheer for Brazil in 1994. My earliest football memory is running around my aunt’s terrace in a Ronaldo shirt (the original, who we actually called Ronaldinho before the name was snatched by the “bruxo”) while the family gathered to watch the 1998 World Cup.
My early memories of the Seleção have a magical aura, similar to the feeling of Christmas as a child. And because neither of my parents imposed their passion for their teams on me (it was actually them who inherited the team I chose for myself), I trace it all back to the National Team, the World Cup, house parties, and the collective national excitement that I witnessed growing up. That eventually developed into a real love for watching and living the game, with my life either graced by or ruined by the works of eleven people on a green pitch.
Brazil will host the 2027 Women’s World Cup. How does that feel? What are your hopes and aspirations for the tournament?
I couldn’t be more excited about it. Personally, the timing works perfectly for me because women’s football is a passion I’ve only recently discovered. Although football has always been part of my life since I was a little girl, sadly, women’s football was mostly excluded from that. It’s crazy to think that, in a country where schools and banks would close during World Cup matches (I’m not sure if that still happens), we never embraced women’s football as another reason to gather over picanha and caipirinha or to brag about how the queen of football was born on our ground.
But the reality is, just like me, the investment and attention on women’s football are late bloomers in Brazil. So hosting a Women’s World Cup feels like the perfect opportunity to turn this around definitively, especially after Brazil’s unexpectedly strong performance at the Olympic Games.
I’m hoping the cup stays with us, but more than that, I hope the tournament becomes a turning point for women’s football in Brazil, shifting fan culture, investment, commercial deals, and so much more. I’m also hoping to be there in person and bring to life some projects I’ve been dreaming about and working on with some amazing friends in the sector.
What is your favorite football memory?
It’s really hard to choose just one. Throughout my life, there have been many football moments that felt like holy gifts specially delivered to me. But I think it’s safe to say that the 2014 World Cup was unforgettable (yes, for different reasons, including some I still can’t joke about).
I had the opportunity to attend two matches hosted at my team’s stadium, Arena da Baixada, with my parents. I can still remember the moment I walked in, saw it packed with people, fully transformed into a World Cup venue, and my eyes watered. Walking to the stadium felt like entering Disney World. It was the perfect coming together of my passion for my home team, the World Cup, and, ironically, my future life, because one of the matches I watched was Spain vs Australia.
[ If you are interested in working with Heloisa, you can find more of her great work HERE.]