We Are PoWEr Podcast
The We Are PoWEr podcast spotlights voices and perspectives that need to be heard. Our weekly podcast, with listeners in over 60 countries, delivers PoWErful conversations that inspire, challenge, and empower... from personal life stories to business insights and leadership lessons.
We share diverse experiences, bold discussions, and real solutions. Whether you're looking for career advice, topical themes, or stories of resilience and success - this is where voices spark change.
We Are PoWEr Podcast
What It Really Takes to Get Into Sports Broadcasting
In this episode, we speak with Kate McKenna, a BBC Sport assistant producer who went from Liverpool FC tour guide to working on some of the world’s biggest sporting events, without industry connections. Kate shares how saying “yes” to unexpected opportunities helped her break into one of the most competitive industries, and why careers rarely unfold in a straight line.
She takes us behind the scenes of life at BBC Sport, where no two days look the same. From coordinating VTs in the intensity of live athletics broadcasts to travelling globally for major sporting events, Kate’s career is filled with “pinch me” moments she never imagined at the start.
But her story is also about navigating identity, confidence, and belonging. As a woman in sports broadcasting, Kate opens up about finding the balance between fitting in and staying true to herself, and how self-awareness has shaped both her storytelling and her leadership.
You’ll hear:
➡️ How to break into competitive industries
➡️ The reality of working behind the scenes in elite sports broadcasting
➡️ Why saying “yes” can open doors you didn’t know existed
➡️ Navigating authenticity, confidence, and visibility as a woman in sport
➡️ Why mentoring younger women is essential to industry change
➡️ What makes great sports storytelling and why concise, human stories matter
Find out more about We Are PoWEr here. 💫
Hello, hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast. If this is your first time here, the we Are Power podcast is the podcast for you, your career and your life. We release an episode every single Monday with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide, where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice and key leadership insight from amazing role models. As we Are Power is the umbrella brand to Northern Power Women Awards, which celebrates hundreds of female role models and advocates every year. This is where you can hear stories from all of our awards alumni and stay up to date with everything. Mpw Awards and we Are Power.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to this week's we Are Power podcast. Never imitated, never replicated. Singularly wonderful, everybody's wonder girl. Hello and welcome to this week's we Are Power podcast. I am delighted to be joined by Kate today. Kate, welcome to the podcast. Now you are future-less from 2016. You are OG. Yes, you are the OG. Now tell us what do you do. What's your name? Where do you come from? You can do that because we're in Liverpool and I feel like I'm Scylla. My name's.
Speaker 2:Kate, I'm originally from the Wirral but now in Manchester because I work for BBC Sport.
Speaker 1:And what do you do? Because I bet it's not the same every day.
Speaker 2:Well, my job title is an assistant assistant producer, but it really depends on what show or event I'm working on, because it there's like so many different types of producing, especially like with in sports and with the BBC. So, like some days, like when it's live sport, I'll just go through my year. Actually, this year, like so, the European um athletics championships we were in Salford, most of us and I was in the TV gallery doing a VT coordinator role. So I'm like behind the director and um editor making sure that all the VTs videotapes are there and when they're coming in. But because it's live sport, it kind of like it's those shouty jobs, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's like oh, where's that, where's that, where's that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, come in, come in, come in, come in. It's all that. But I love chaos, so I'm like down for that. And then during this summer I was on Queens and Wimbledon and that was a lot more, making sure that every single interview was happening and that we were getting all the right filming bits. It's a bit more logistical, but also writing questions when I need to for some reporters if they hadn't managed to catch everything or they needed to know more stuff. It's really a mixed bag.
Speaker 1:You've had quite the whirlwind, I think, of the career, haven't you so far at the BBC. What has been your?
Speaker 2:oh, my goodness, pinch me moment, oh that's difficult, because Every day, well, my big goal was always to work on Olympics at sight, and that happened last summer. And I had a mini moment of it then when I was like, oh my god, I'm at the olympic gymnastics, which is my dream. But it actually happened about a year or so before that. Um, it might have been when I first got to Wimbledon actually to work on Wimbledon, which was the in 2023, because I'd spent so many years begging every department to get there and then I was like, oh my gosh, I'm actually here. And then that summer I then went to Cape Town with the Netball World Cup and to Budapest for the World Athletics and at the end of that summer that was my oh wow. I can't believe I've just done that summer. And do you have a favourite sport? Yeah, gymnastics.
Speaker 1:Always. Was that your pathway, was that your?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. It was my sport when I was a child. I did it into my teens. I was training at county level. I then became a coach in my late teens. So if my qualifications still exist, I think I'm qualified to run my own gymnastics club still to this day and I did that at 18 like that qualification probably shouldn't have, because now thinking that's like a really young age to be able to do that, um, but then I didn't really go near gymnastics.
Speaker 2:Until my late 20s I started to get to adult gymnastics classes, um, but it was never really. British gymnastics were great. They used to give me opportunities to work on the British Championships, because they're always here in Liverpool and they have been since 2013. So that was like my early jobs, but it's so difficult when I, like I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.
Speaker 2:Gymnastics isn't a sport that everyone thinks about as a sport, so it's a small team at work on it for BBC, because we've got the rights and it only happens twice a year. So you kind of can't put all your hopes on that one sport. If anything, I'm going to say football's the bread and butter. Yeah, you've got to know your football, you've got to love football, and I did work in football, for I've worked in football since 2010, when I became a tour guide at Liverpool Football Club. Oh, wow. So I was there for six years as a tour guide and I'd say that was more my entry, because it was having that job that got me noticed by like women in football, and then they got me into getting football jobs and BBC jobs.
Speaker 1:So it's the power of that community. Yeah, yeah. Because I think, if you look back at you know you talk about the pinch me moment of one of them being the Olympics. But if you think of your younger self, uh, we're all running, you know, you know, and we're all running those gymnastic sessions when you were younger, with us coaching, to then being in the olympics. But it's, it's not easy, isn't it? You talked right at the start about, you know, begging and you know sort of it takes an element of resilience, isn't it?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, and I I think I'm now in my I don't know, I'm 36. I'm like, is that mid or late 30s? I want to keep saying mid and I'm like, is that?
Speaker 1:for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're young anyway, so it's all good but I feel like there's a part of me that's like exhausted now and I do think part of that is having so much resilience in my 20s that I'm now like oh I'm, I can't be bothered anymore with like having the resilience still. So it can catch up to you in that way. And it is a difficult industry. I had no contacts. I didn't, I don't know anyone in TV, in sports industry. I did have to make all the contacts myself and I had to yeah, as you said, beg.
Speaker 2:I had to like ask for every opportunity, even like one job that I remember, um Shelly Alexander, who was nominated she's one, one of the women who was on the women's football board and she helped me out so much and one of the jobs. She was like, okay, so this is more of an admin job, it's just for, like I think, six weeks or something like that, I can't remember. Um, we just need someone to do this like spreadsheet thing for like the business side of sport. And I was like, yeah, I'll do it. And it was just literally going through all the hours of sport and divvying up where it had been and what sport it was, and just making a spreadsheet so that they could use that. And it was all to make this one stat that then the director of sport talked to houses of parliament and I'm like, oh, I can see where it's gone. So that's pretty cool. But also, spending those weeks meant I got to meet people and I got people to remember me.
Speaker 1:And that's been a key then, hasn't it? You've mentioned Women in Football, who are a phenomenal organisation, and there's people that we know You've mentioned Shelley we talked about Ruth Shaw before but the power of that community and multiple communities, you can never underestimate the power of that network can you no?
Speaker 2:and multiple communities. You can never underestimate the power of that network, can you no? Um, I like I remember like we go right to the back to the beginning of my career women in football was my first job officially, but actually, no, no, it wasn't, but it was. I got the interview for women in football and it was a phone interview and it was joanne tongue who, um, who was doing the phone interview? And in the middle of it she went wait, you're a talker at liverpool. And I went, yeah, and she went okay, do you want? She was executive producer of 606 at the time. She went do you want to come and work on my show? Then, and it's just like the phone answer a job. And I was like, yeah. So that was my first actual job and that was end of 2012. I was still at uni, um, on my final year of uni and that. But I wouldn't have got that had I not been given the opportunity to apply for this women in football internship and I think there's a key.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we talk a lot about advocacy and allyship and mentorship and sponsorship and all those kind of words, but fundamentally I think the thing that's dawned on me recently it's great to be curious and listen and be a good ally and be understanding, but one of the biggest things that you can give as an advocate or ally is an opportunity, a job yeah.
Speaker 2:Hoping an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, and it doesn't matter whether it's a spreadsheet or it doesn't matter, but the fact that someone thinks that you can and opens that door, it's forever priceless, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's even, I think, just staying in contact with people. So at Wimbledon this summer there is at Wimbledon themselves. They have their own broadcasting network that we work with with BBC, and they hire a group of younger people, essentially like a runner runner job. But every time you go out filming on the premises you have to take one of these broadcast liaisons and I always just get chatting to them, find out what it is they want to do, and I've ended up connecting with a few of them on Instagram, because some young girls want to be producers or camera assistants and I'm thinking where is it? I could maybe help them out, whereas I can see a job and send it to them. Or if there's any like opportunities within work where we just need someone for like a month or something, I could say, oh well, there's this person who worked on Wimbledon and I'm probably thinking now, as you've just said, you need that opportunity. That's because that's what I had beginning of my career and I'd like to be able to help younger girls get that too, because it's difficult.
Speaker 1:It is, and what advice would you give to your younger Kate?
Speaker 2:Maybe don't take everything, so personally I mean, but I still do that. So that's why I'm laughing, because I'm like I think I'd give all the advice, you're not taking your own medicine, right?
Speaker 1:I still don't take.
Speaker 2:But, um, I yeah, I get very emotionally connected to too many things and then I overthink everything I've said and I'll overthink out this whole entire conversation, most likely as well, and I I think I wish I'd thought about it a lot younger. Whereas someone said to me once you're not the main character in everyone's story, and I'm like, oh yeah, and it that helps a little bit, like no one cares as much as I do about what I've said in a sense, unless it's like been hurtful, but like I mean just me talking. And maybe I'm like, oh, I talk too much, I talk too much, and it's like, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1:That's great advice, and that's great advice that's not just for at the start of your career, that's all the way through. I'm taking that right now because sometimes you do, you take it all in, don't you? And you're like, oh goodness, what's people gonna think, and whatever. And you're like, yeah, they don't care literally.
Speaker 2:But it's like it is still very difficult to remember it when you're really really in the, in that zone, and you're like, oh my god, everyone hates me, everyone hates me and I had that quite a bit coming through and I think part of it maybe being a girl in the very male world, yeah, another part of it a loud, loud girl, bit scouse, you know all of these things together. I did stand out and then you'd have people being like you just need to play the game, maybe not stand out as much, and I'd be like no, I'm gonna be a peacock, like I have this conflicting thing of I really want to fit in, but I also want to be an my own person how do you manage that?
Speaker 1:how do you manage the? Fit into the peacock not very well do you do days of each or hours of each, or do you have to stand back, or do you?
Speaker 2:I think, as I've got older, I've noticed a bit more when I'm peacocking too much that's not a verb, kate to peacock, but so maybe I might stand back a little bit if I'm like, oh no, you are being a bit too much. But I'm also like part of it is and I hate being one of these people does this. I found out I have ADHD this year and I'm like, oh yeah, makes sense. I'm like, so, actually that's always been who I am and I can't really change that. So maybe I'll just embrace it and just be more peacock and how.
Speaker 1:So now you've, you've, you have that diagnosis, yeah, how does that fit into your world? Because you're dealing with global pressure. You know, global sporting pressure, global sporting events. With that immense pressure, right, how do you prep? Is it about the preparation? Is it about how do you get yourself?
Speaker 2:how do you deal with that? The funny thing is and I was talking to some of the most senior women recently about this when everything's go, go, go, that's when.
Speaker 1:I'm best In the shouty world.
Speaker 2:It's not just in the shouty world At events, when you can't really sit down because you've got to go and do something else and something else and loads of little faffy jobs. That's when I thrive, it's the sitting down, it's taking time off, when I'm not going away or anything, I'm just at home, because I've worked, maybe with the tennis as a month straight. So it's like, okay, now you've got like two weeks off to balance out your hours and I was like I can't afford to go away, so I'm literally just sitting at home doing nothing. And that's when I hate it, when it's quiet and I've got nothing to do and it. Then I try and fill that time, but I'm actually physically exhausted. So that's a balance I'm still trying to figure out. What do you love?
Speaker 1:when you're not trying to fill time for the sake of it. What do you like? What do you like doing when you're not?
Speaker 2:oh, I like, I do like being active. I used to love going to adult gymnastics but I had a major knee injury. I did my ACL a few years back and I've now re-injured the knee and I have to have another surgery on this knee. So I'm now not allowed to run or jump until surgery, which god knows when that will be. So I'm doing a lot of walking at the minute. I love yoga and Pilates is great, but it's just trying to balance the, the knee and what I want to do and I love singing. So I'm in a choir.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely love it, and that is something that whenever I am feeling a little bit low, I'll always go back to. Just like I'll go in the kitchen and I'll put on a karaoke playlist on YouTube and I'll just sing a bunch of different songs. What's on that playlist, kate? Oh, do you know what? I actually just wanted to have a sing today. So I did have a. I did a few today and what was it? I like there's an artist called Leve. I absolutely love singing her songs, but some older ones, like the Cranberries, linger and Dreams. I love singing the Cranberries. Eva Cassidy did Autumn Leaves because it's autumn. I love anything like that A little bit of Doris Day. Ella Fitzgerald, I go all over the place.
Speaker 1:Does that take you into your sort of like happy place or safe space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially if you've got like a belty song and you can just like kind of like it's like a scream, isn't it letting it all out? But I also, I think part of that is like a Merseyside thing like music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in the blood, right when.
Speaker 2:I went to Manchester I found that really difficult, that not every bar and every place you go to eat has got live music on. I'm like, wait what?
Speaker 1:no, there's an option no, yeah, we are power. We are power. Oaky, that's that's now.
Speaker 2:That's got to be something we've got to look at but even like open mic nights back at home on the whirl, it was always accessible for everyone and it's not like that around the rest of the country. I've been to open mic nights. I'm like wait, you don't have just a resident guitarist okay, you've got to take your own.
Speaker 1:That's what you've got to do now. You have a fun fact that you do handstands everywhere. Uh, even with broken bones. What is the most random or iconic place that you've pulled one of those off?
Speaker 2:oh, it has to be under the olympic rings this last summer yeah, I did do that in paris I was like there's your pinch me moment.
Speaker 1:Right there, isn't it?
Speaker 2:took me back and stocks off and my friend was like, no, you're not doing a handstand. Yesterday, I'm doing a handstand. Um, that was, yeah, this has got to be my favorite one. But the most broken was, uh, just, I fractured my elbow and I had I was doing some kind of yoga challenge I can't remember why, but it was a handstand day and I was like, yeah, I'm going to do a handstand and my housemates went how and I just got into a plank against the wall and then jumped my hand back as I climbed my feet up and I got into a handstand.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you're the person that makes me look so bad when I'm in that yoga studio.
Speaker 2:You'll be all over it, won't you? And I'll be like I'm like the one going. Ah, I'm so broken now, though, so there's not many things I can do anymore.
Speaker 1:But that is because you have. You've got that performing arts side as well, hasn't it? That still sits with you. Clearly. You know that is part of who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely. I guess the two work hand in hand. When you're doing a gymnastics floor, you are always performing a floor, for sure, and equally your role.
Speaker 1:You're creating stories, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, telling stories, that's exactly what you're doing every day, All the time and I might have a different way of telling stories, like I am so much more driven by a personal story, anything that's kind of got a bit of a not romance but a romance within it and like, yeah, I'm the girl that'll watch rom-coms that one after each other and oh yeah, I'm not yeah, I like to try and bring that side of me into sport as well.
Speaker 2:favorite film oh well, I do know, but no one really. Mascazar, oh, I love my itzarro. It's got everything. It's got action, it's got romance, it's got very good actors.
Speaker 1:Explosions, and is there a story that you would love to tell or you would love to produce that if you had unlimited resources and access to dollars?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I keep pitching. Can I do something on college gymnastics? Okay, I wanted. I would love to make a documentary on college gymnastics, but it's in America and spending but is that the here you go?
Speaker 1:unlimited resources. That's what you do, why.
Speaker 2:I just think it's such a glitzy feminine camp world. If you watch any of the college gymnastics like I went into it as a skeptic because I'm like it's not real gymnastics, it's not as difficult and everyone's cheering oh, it's so anti-British. But then you watch it. You'll watch a meet and it means nothing this meet, because these two teams are just trying to beat each other, but they're mid table and you watch it and you're like I love everything about this. Yeah, it's just so girly, but it's real sport. Like they're doing difficult stuff, but it's so girly and I just feel like I'd love to show that to the world that sport can be so unbelievably girly. Because I think there is still a stigma, even like within women's sports as well, that to be a fan of sport you kind of got to be well, there's still that whole like if you're a footy fan, you know you're a lad or whatever, and it's kind of like sport can be girly as well it's frustrating, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because you think, look at the summer that we've just had yeah right, you know this amazing, like the success, but this isn't just for this year, women's sport has been rising at a phenomenal rate. Yeah, yeah, let's you know. Just look at the, the pay, the, the sponsorship it's. Is it going to change?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but there is a story I am in the midst of pitching and I don't want to say what it is, just in case it does go ahead, and I don't want anyone else to rob my story, but there is an element of pay around it, I think this.
Speaker 2:I mean, if we're talking unlimited funds to so many women's sports stories, I'd love to do a whole series of women's sports stories, like something like that and just like educating people. I think that's part of what I love being at BBC, for we educate as well as it's. It's not new, is it?
Speaker 1:This is not new. We had at the awards a few years ago a couple of years ago was it last year the Corinthians, you know the first. They were banned from playing football back in the 70s. And these women, we got them on stage. There was problem, there was some technical problem that happened. They got up, they started singing. They were obviously briefed by your choir.
Speaker 1:They were obviously briefed by your quiet, but they were just going up and started singing. We talked a lot about storytelling today. What would you say so, irrespective of our watchers, our listeners today, what do you say is the art of telling a good story?
Speaker 2:There are three good things For me when I'm putting together an edit and I'm sat there I don't know if this is the best advice to give or whatever, but I'm like when I start getting bored I cut, because if I'm bored and I'm actually invested already because this is my feature, then people other people are gonna be bored and people do say more than they need to say.
Speaker 2:People talk too much, a lot, I talk too much so. So I kind of like go, okay, that can come out, that come out and I can actually put it together there. Don't be scared about mixing together people's sentences if it's not affecting editorially what they were saying. Again sounds really bad when I say it like that, but I know what I mean. Like you might have answered the same question twice and they haven't done it each time how they wanted to say it. So you can take the first of that answer on the end of that answer, put it together and it's actually what they were trying to say so sometimes, whether it's in the world of business, whether you're in you're studying, sometimes you feel like more is more, when actually it's less it's more.
Speaker 1:Be more succinct, right yeah, americans are great.
Speaker 2:I can't do it, by the way, americans can. Literally, it's the soundbite.
Speaker 2:Americans can give you the soundbite, but we're not as good at it over here so thinking soundbites then yeah, in some ways preparing whether you go into a board meeting or an interview soundbitey, because we have got that kind of you know that stephen bartlett world coming up, haven't we? Where it's like everything's a soundbite and I'm like, yeah, but what are you actually saying? What does it mean? Yeah, come on, give me a little bit of soul with your soundbite, and do you have?
Speaker 1:a quote, a song, a mantra that you live by? Is there something that kind of drives your?
Speaker 2:I mean, it is like what I said at the very beginning. It's saying yes to every opportunity. Sometimes I didn't ever think I wanted to work in radio. I always wanted to work in TV, but I spent years in radio. They were the first jobs that were offered to me, and I actually learned so much about storytelling and producing on radio that I never would have thought I would have learned because I was a bit closed-minded, shall I say and so by saying yes to opportunity, that that's what started my career really that is 100% my.
Speaker 1:I always say say yes and work it out later. Yeah, because you never know what that opportunity will bring now, okay, we're going to go into the power jar. What could go wrong? Okay? So this power jar is a jar full of questions that our previous guests are putting, and we will ask you, um, after the show to put in your question for our next guest. So are you ready to delve into the power jar?
Speaker 2:yeah, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:It's like christmas okay, so kate has delved. I've knocked a bit of my microphone off, but it's okay, nothing to see here. I was trying to be all surreptitious, which will mean nothing if you're listening, and you were saying that you might have done this with wine as well. That would have been even oh, it'd be a nightmare, kate. What have we got at the jar?
Speaker 2:I already already know what I'm going to say for this. If you could instantly master any skill in the world, what would you pick To speak? Languages, other languages, oh, I wish, I wish I was fluent in Spanish. I wish I was fluent in French, every language in the world. I just think it'd be amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? We tested this out in the office the other day and I was asked that question and I said I want to speak fluent Catalan.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, you went more niche there I did go niche.
Speaker 1:I did go niche because you know I just did. But yeah, that was my thing, I had that superpower.
Speaker 2:I loved Spanish in school but I didn't really get on my Spanish teacher. So, you know, awkward. But I found learning a language here. I can't get into it, you've got to be in there. I spend time in spain and I'm like, oh, I can speak spanish, not badly, and then I come back and I forget it all. So, yeah, I'd love to be able to speak there. We go.
Speaker 1:Who knows? You see, you never know what will happen. Kate, thank you so much for joining us, thank you for delving into the power jar and we will thank you for your question in advance for our next guest. Um, you know, make it fun, make it quirky, we don't care, but it's fascinating. It's fascinating. We always talk on the podcast that there is no one straight path, there is no one straight world. No one has it easy. Just because you've got this fantastic job in the bbc, doing amazing things and having pinch me moments, it's, it's, it's. It's never just that miraculous moment, is it? No?
Speaker 2:and I think that's one of the difficult things is I can compare myself to my compatriots a lot. Maybe some of them have got more opportunities than I have or have done things I wish I'd done, and I'll get bogged down and then I'll speak to people that have nothing to do with my industry and they're like oh my god, you went to the Olympics. Oh, this summer, wow, you were at Wimbledon. I'm like, oh yeah, what, what?
Speaker 1:you've got to remember every moment. Remember every moment and share every story. Thank you so much for joining us. It's so lovely to see you after all this time. Oh, thank you. And thank you so much for joining us. It's so lovely to see you after all this time, I know, oh, thank you. And thank you so much for joining us. Please leave us any reviews. We'd love to hear from you and we will see you on next week's podcast. Thank you for joining us. Subscribe on YouTube, apple, amazon, music, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a review or we are Power underscore net on Insta, tiktok and Twitter. We are Power on LinkedIn, facebook and we are underscore Power on YouTube.
