Alex Shipp, Mel Stickland & Jourdan Kiwomya

Trio will attend FA Leadership Academy

THREE representatives from Suffolk will be involved in The FA Leadership Academy 2018.

THREE representatives from Suffolk will be involved in The FA Leadership Academy 2018.

Alex Shipp, who lives just outside Ipswich, has been selected to attend the annual event at St George’s Park, starting on August 6th.

The 18-year-old, who is Marketing Officer on the Suffolk FA Youth Council sponsored by Richard Bugg Trading Ltd, will be joined at the four-day event by two mentors from Suffolk.

Mel Stickland is Suffolk FA Referee Appointment Officer and Football Services Officer and former Suffolk FA employee Jourdan Kiwomya is now The FA’s League & Club Services Apprentice. Pictured above (left to right) are Alex Shipp, Mel Stickland and Jourdan Kiwomya.

James Morley, who co-ordinates the Suffolk FA Youth Council, said: “The Leadership Academy is a collection of the best young leaders from around the country and allows for the development of a support network for Youth Councils and forums to discuss best practice and learn from one another.

“This will be a great opportunity for Alex to build on the past experiences that Suffolk Young Leaders have experienced. Previous attendees have been Chay Hathway, Eva Hubbard, Isabel Chaplin and Jourdan Kiwomya.”

Alex said: “I’m thrilled to be accepted to attend the Leadership Academy 2018. I was shocked when I got the letter! I’m looking to coming away from it with more ideas that can help develop young leaders on a local level in Suffolk and personally I want to develop myself further as a leader. I’m also looking forward to meeting new people from different counties.”

Melissa said: “I am very excited to have been selected as a mentor for the Leadership Academy and looking forward to the experience. It will be a chance to develop my own personal skills as I hope to create a positive journey for all the Young Leaders involved and working alongside other mentors of the academy. 

“I believe this will be a very valuable experience and it will be great to network with other mentors and leaders and learn new ideas that I can roll out to the football community in Suffolk.

“Working with other mentors throughout the country will create opportunities for our Young Leaders and will help to achieve their personal goals with being on this journey together.”

Jourdan said: “Going to the Leadership Academy last July really set me up for this year as it gave me the opportunity to build relationships with like-minded people who I now use as an informal support network to share ideas with.

“The learning environment that the Youth Council created for the Young Leaders was one of the best that I’ve been in and I’m looking forward to going back as a mentor to support and develop the new leaders coming through the programme.

“Attending last year’s Leadership Academy was personally very beneficial as I was able to meet several national members of staff whose team I would join when I moved to the National League & Club Services team and also National Youth Council members who I would work on several projects with across the season.

“It’s also great that as a county we have another strong contingent going from Suffolk, we had four people attend last year and will have three people attending this year and both myself and Isabel (Chaplin) graduating.”