VANESSA ÅSELL TSURUGA
“Talk to many people at all levels and learn from their experiences. Everyone and everything around you is your teacher.”
Meet Vanessa ÅSELL TSURUGA 🇸🇪, a Swede who spent her childhood in Stockholm, her teenage years in Barcelona, her university years in London, and completed her Master’s in Olympia before settling in Tokyo. Vanessa is the founder of COLLECTIVE VISIBILITY, an initiative diversifying speakers and thought leadership in sport. In partnership with the Center for Sports and Business at the Stockholm School of Economics, they are proud to have more than 300 women in their speaker directory and are targeting 1,000 in 2024. Before founding COLLECTIVE VISIBILITY, Vanessa spent 12 years with ASICS and worked on the FC Barcelona partnership at Rakuten.
A GAME CHANGER
“I founded COLLECTIVE VISIBILITY in November 2022 by starting a list of 9 women speakers from my immediate network. A year later, we were 1300 peer and self nominated women in 100 countries. We've now moved into Phase 2 with a speaker directory and we've reached 300 in 3 months, targeting 1000 women in 2024.
What I've learned from founding COLLECTIVE VISIBILITY is that we need to get more women into the speaker committees. There needs to be active effort to change the decision dynamics.”
DIVERSIFYING STORIES
“Active choices, such as asking for more stories from the Global South, is one way to diversify stories. A wider set of stories will widen the viewership and readership while also changing the engagement dynamics.”
A PIVOTAL ROLE MODEL
“Mr Chris Wirszyla, my middle and high school PE teacher, taught me the values of sport through volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee in Barcelona.
Mr Chris gave me a Frisbee in 1992 and it put a spin on life that is still making things turn positive today. As a young teen new to Barcelona, I made many new friends playing sport. Mr Chris and I are in touch today, 30 years on.”
NUTURE YOUR NETWORK
“It's not who you know, it's who knows you. Make many friends and nurture your network with authentic care and passion. Be kind. Live your life with a sense of sportsmanship. Keep in touch with people and thank them when they've helped you, however big or small their effort!”
