Chris Paouros - Honorary Doctorate of the University (DUniv)
Chris Paouros has dedicated her life to making football, workplaces, and society more inclusive.
Chris has long broken barriers and used her voice to advocate for social change. In the 1990s, she ran a women’s football team when women’s leadership in the game was rare, and today she sits at the highest levels of governance: Vice-Chair and Trustee of Kick It Out, Vice-Chair of the Football Supporters’ Association, Supporter Representative on the FA Council, Independent Member of the FA’s Inclusion Advisory Board, and serves as the Chair of Tottenham Hotspur’s Fan Advisory Board. It is a great personal honour to serve alongside her as a panel member for the Premier League’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Standard. In this capacity she supports the club’s executive leadership teams of the most watched sports league in the world becomes a truly inclusive, global institution.
In 2014, Chris co-founded Proud Lilywhites, Tottenham Hotspur’s LGBTQI+ supporters’ association, at a time when only three other such groups existed nationwide. She went on to co-found Pride in Football, now a network of more than 50 LGBTQI+ fan groups. Under her leadership, football has shifted from exclusion to belonging: LGBTQI+ fans are now a visible and integral part of English football culture. She has also played a key role in ensuring clubs and governing bodies take responsibility for tackling discrimination, advising the Premier League, the FA, individual clubs as well as overseas organisations on embedding meaningful equity, diversity, and inclusion practices.
Beyond football, Chris’s commitment to inclusion runs through every part of her professional life. She is a leadership consultant and coach who helps organisations build healthy, values-driven cultures where everyone can thrive. For 10 years she served as Trustee of Just Like Us—the LGBTQ+ education charity—and remains a Non-Executive Director of Leaders Unlocked, she works to amplify the voices of young people and underrepresented communities, ensuring that inclusion becomes a lived reality, not just a policy.
I have personally witnessed the high regard Chris is held with across the football family as well as in her native North London where it is virtually impossible to walk 100 feet without someone calling out to her to extend a greeting that conveys the respect and love she is held with at White Hart Lane. Indeed this weekend’s match day programme for Tottenham Hotspur’s fixture with Manchester United will acknowledge and celebrate the award Chris is receiving from LSBU today.
Her influence reaches from boardrooms to terraces, from classrooms to community organisations. Her work has changed lives, reshaped institutions, and changed the game itself, making her one of the UK’s most influential voices for equity, inclusion, and social justice.