No one can ever say again that no one is watching, that no one is paying or that women's sport isn't commercial.
Sarah Walsh is a former Australian international athlete with 70 caps and 35 international goals for the Matildas. She has a decorated career including appearances in the 2004 Olympics and 2007 FIFA World Cup. She clinched victory at the 2010 Women’s Asian Cup.
Since then, Sarah has evolved into an accomplished sports executive, Logie-nominated commentator, and compelling public speaker. Her firsthand experience in high-performance sports has translated into advocating for pay equity and inclusion, spearheading innovation in governance and policy driving social change at all levels of football.
Notably, as Head of Women’s Football for Football Australia, she influenced the strategy that generated a staggering $357M for football's World Cup leveraging strategy through government and commercial investment, with an additional $200M earmarked to improve community infrastructure for women and girls across all sports. As hosts of the most commercial FIFA Women’s World Cup, the Matildas shattered attendance and viewership records, drawing over 11 million viewers during the semi-final against England, making it the single highest rating TV program of all time.
In 2026 as CEO of the Women’s Asian Cup she delivered a record breaking tournament on home soil, total attendace to matches of 355,000 and the grand final viewed by 3.2M Australians. The most watched event on Channel 10 since 2023.
Ranked 14th on News Corps' list of 100 most influential women, she continues to challenge Australian society on the double standards that exist for women, how to create change that has lasting impact and how to deliver high performance and an environment of global uncertainty.
Talking Points
Raising the Standard: How the Matildas Built a World-Class Performance Culture
Performance culture is not a set of values on a wall. It is the sum of daily decisions, recruitment choices, leadership behaviours, and systems that determine how people show up under pressure.Raising the Standard: How the Matildas Built a World-Class Performance Culture
Sarah Walsh spent eight years as a Matilda and a further decade helping architect the operational and commercial infrastructure behind the team's transformation. The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and 2026 Women's Asian Cup did not happen by accident. They happened because the right culture was built deliberately, tested under genuine crisis, and sustained when conditions made it harder, not easier. This Keynote translates the high performance principles behind one of Australia's most recognised sporting organisations into practical tools for business leaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• What separates a team that performs from a culture that compounds: the habits, systems, and leadership behaviours behind the Matildas' rise
• Values-based recruitment and why cultural alignment matters more than credentials in high-pressure environments
• The 23rd player mindset: why indexing on your strongest performers builds depth, and why building from the bottom of your team is how you win
• How to create peer-to-peer accountability that does not rely on top-down leadership to sustain it
• Why a safe-to-fail environment is not soft culture management; it is the precondition for innovation
Leading Through Disruption
Most organisations can execute when conditions are stable. The real test is what happens when they are not. As CEO of the Women's Asian Cup Local Organising Committee, Sarah Walsh delivered a global tournament on a fraction of FIFA's budget, in a compressed timeframe, while managing a geopolitical crisis that had no precedent and no playbook. When a participating nation became the subject of an international incident days before competition began, every leadership principle her team had built was put to the test simultaneously. This Keynote is for leaders in volatile, high-pressure environments who need to know what holding the line actually looks like when the pressure is real.Leading Through Disruption
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Why the decisions that sustain transformation rarely get attention, and how to keep people committed to them when momentum is hardest to maintain
• Stakeholder management under pressure: how to communicate early without waiting for certainty, make trade-offs visible, and continuously realign expectations
• How to build a workforce that is ready for disruption before it arrives, not after
• The practical difference between slowing down and losing ground: when to pause, recalibrate, and move with clarity
• Leading with empathy in a crisis without losing decisiveness: what people-first leadership looks like when the stakes are highest
The Multiplier Effect: What Happens When You Actually Invest in Women
In 2019, Football Australia brokered an equal pay deal for the Matildas. The immediate effect was that a long-running debate went quiet. The real effect was commercial innovation, a 5x increase in brand value, and the most-watched sporting event in Australian television history. Equity was not the destination. It was the starting condition. Add a parental policy that kept star players on the pitch, $200 million in government commitment to women's sport infrastructure, and a deliberate strategy to grow markets that men's sport was not speaking to, and you have a blueprint that belongs in every boardroom, not just sport. This Keynote makes the business case for inclusion with the receipts to back it up.The Multiplier Effect: What Happens When You Actually Invest in Women
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Why resolving the pay equity conversation was the precondition for commercial innovation, not a distraction from it
• How progressive policy, including parental leave and flexible work, directly improved retention, performance, and public value
• Investment must precede performance in emerging markets: what that principle looks like applied to your own organisation
• How the Matildas grew an audience that was nearly 50-50 men and women, why families spend four times more, and what that means for organisations trying to diversify their customer base
• A practical framework for identifying where structural barriers are silently capping your organisation's growth
People First: Purpose-Led Leadership
Across industries and leadership levels, one question comes up more than any other: how do you lead people through conditions nobody planned for? Sarah Walsh has answered that question twice at scale. As CEO of the Women's Asian Cup Local Organising Committee, she built a workforce of 160 people in 12 months, designed a culture around people-first principles before a crisis arrived, and then relied on exactly those principles when a geopolitical incident broke out days before competition began. The North Star held. The tournament broke records. This Keynote is for leaders who know the strategy but need to know how to keep people with them when conditions make it harder, not easier.People First: Purpose-Led Leadership
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Why purpose and values only work as leadership tools when they are embedded before the pressure arrives, not reached for during it
• How to build a workforce that trusts you enough to surface problems early, and why that early signal is the difference between a managed crisis and a compounding one
• Leading across generations: what motivates different people, why a single approach fails, and how to find what works without losing pace
• The practical discipline of slowing down to speed up: when to pause, recalibrate, and move with clarity rather than speed
• How flexible, output-based work cultures build competitive advantage and loyalty, not just compliance
Workshop: Change That Sticks
Drawing on her experience leading two major international sporting events, architecting a globally recognised gender equity model, and building high-performing teams inside complex, politically charged environments, Sarah works with leadership groups to translate the Matildas model into their specific context. This is for organisations that are in the middle of transformation, preparing for it, or trying to understand why the change they launched has not yet stuck.Workshop: Change That Sticks
OUTCOMES
• A clear diagnostic of where structural or cultural barriers are slowing performance in the room
• Practical frameworks for sustaining change: stakeholder alignment, people-first decision making, and accountability systems that do not rely on top-down pressure
• Tools for building trust, creating safe spaces for early escalation, and separating productive experimentation from costly mistakes
• Immediate actions each leader can take back to their team, not general principles
Format: Half-day or full-day. Sarah also works with organisations on an ongoing advisory basis for extended transformation programs.
Video
In conversation with Sarah Walsh | Missing Perspectives
Women’s football in Australia didn’t just grow. It was built. Fought for. Pushed forward by players who believed the game deserved more. And few understand that better than Sarah Walsh. A former Matilda who helped drive the standards on the pitch, Sarah is now shaping the future of the game off it as COO of the AFC Women's Asian Cup. The very tournament she once won as a player. Her story is more than a career pivot. It’s a full-circle legacy. From the early days of limited resources and relentless travel schedules, to now leading one of the biggest competitions in Asian women’s football, Sarah has seen every era of the game, and helped change it. In this episode of Momentum, we unpack what it really took to build the foundations of today’s women’s game, the responsibility of leadership in sport, and why the fight for progress doesn’t end when you hang up the boots. This is about evolution. Ownership. And leaving the game better than you found it.Audio
Sarah was amazing! Everyone loved the session and left so inspired. ... keep reading Microsoft
I think I'm finally coming down from the euphoria of yesterday. From the joy of getting to know you to the epic line out the door. I can’t thank you enough for trusting us to share your story with us and being part of this experience.
Sarah was unreal. Had the whole audience in awe for 60 minutes. I can see why she’s been so successful.
Sarah Walsh was a pleasure to work with. She was highly engaged in understanding our business objectives and ensuring her content provided the inspiration that was needed within our conference program. I can't recommend her highly enough!
We absolutely loved having Sarah Walsh at our Reward Gateway Live event, her keynote was incredibly inspiring and insightful. The feedback we've received has been exceptional, thank you so much Sarah!
Sarah is such a warm and engaging speaker. The audience responded positively to hersincerity, authenticity and passion. She adapted her presentation to suit her audience.
