The Co.Lab: If the System Won’t Create the Space, Build It

Over the past year, I’ve found myself in more and more conversations with people shaping the business of sport. Founders building something from the ground up, leaders carrying real responsibility inside organisations, people working across partnerships, programmes and systems trying to move things forward in environments that don’t always make that easy.

On the surface, it feels like progress. There are more women in these spaces than ever before, more visibility, more conversation, more recognition of the role they’re playing. But the more time I’ve spent in those conversations, the clearer it’s become that visibility and infrastructure are not the same thing.

Because while more women are building, leading and influencing, the environments around them haven’t fully caught up. Not in the way decisions get shaped, not in the way pressure gets shared, and not in the way people are able to properly think things through before they have to act on them.

What that creates is a kind of quiet tension. People are doing important work, often at pace, often with real stakes attached, but without always having the right space to step back, test their thinking or be honest about what they’re navigating while they’re in it.

And when that space isn’t there, it shows up in familiar ways.Second-guessing decisions that shouldn’t need second-guessing.Carrying things on your own that would move faster if shared.Sitting with questions longer than you should because there isn’t the right room to take them into.

We talk a lot in sport about access and opportunity, but far less about access to the kind of space that actually helps people think clearly and make better decisions. From where I sit, that’s one of the things that quietly holds the system back.

The Co.Lab comes from that.

The Co.Lab sits alongside the consultancy and the Collective as part of how Affleck & Co. is evolving, but it plays a different role.

If the consultancy is where the work happens, and the Collective is how we deliver it, the Co.Lab is what sits around that. The space where thinking develops, where conversations can happen properly, and where people can show up without needing to have everything fully formed.

At the centre of it is FounderSpace, which is deliberately small and curated. It brings together women who are building businesses in and around sport, not because exclusivity is the aim, but because the quality of the room matters.

What it’s really solving is simple.

There aren’t many places where you can say: “This is what I’m dealing with, and I’m not sure what the right call is.” Without feeling like you need to already have the answer.

FounderSpace creates that.

It gives people:

• A space to think out loud before decisions are locked in

• Perspective from others who understand the weight of what they’re carrying

• Challenge that sharpens thinking, not just reinforces it

• A sense of not being the only one navigating the grey areas of building something

  
  

It might look like bringing a live decision into the room and walking away with clarity you didn’t have before.Or realising that something you thought was just your challenge is actually shared by others operating at the same level.Or simply having one conversation that cuts through weeks of overthinking.

As one conversation I had recently put it:“It’s not that I don’t have people around me, it’s that I don’t always have the right people to take certain decisions to.”

That’s the gap this is trying to close.

FounderSpace isn’t a programme or a content series. It’s a room. And the value comes from who is in it, how honest people are willing to be, and what happens in those conversations.

To begin with, there will be two chapters, one in the UK and one in the US. They won’t be identical, and that’s intentional. This only works if it reflects the people in the room and the context they’re operating in, rather than following a fixed format.

Alongside that sits The Exchange, which is more open, and comes from a slightly different observation.

More and more of the women I’ve been speaking to aren’t following traditional career paths. Some are stepping out of full-time roles to build portfolio careers. Others are combining consultancy with fractional roles, or exploring more flexible ways of working that give them greater control over what they do and how they do it.

It’s not just one stage either. It’s women in the middle of their careers rethinking what comes next, and younger professionals already clear that they want to build something differently from the start. But while that shift is happening quickly, the structures around it haven’t quite caught up.

There aren’t many spaces to properly understand what that looks like in practice. How people are making it work.Where the risks are.What to charge, how to position yourself, how to build something sustainable without defaulting back to the same models.

The Exchange is designed to hold that.

It’s a more open, lighter-touch space that brings together people navigating those decisions, whether they’re already doing it or starting to think about it.

It will:

• Create visibility of what portfolio careers in this space actually look like in practice

• Share honest experiences, not just the polished version of “going out on your own”

• Open up conversations around pricing, positioning, and sustainability

• Connect people who are building in similar ways but wouldn’t naturally cross paths

It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about making that shift feel less opaque and less individual.

Because the reality is, more women are choosing to build careers on their own terms. The Exchange is about making sure they’re not doing that in isolation.

The Co.Lab is a step towards doing something with that.

Not in a way that tries to fix everything, but in a way that puts something practical into the system where there is currently a gap.

Because if the system hasn’t quite caught up with the people shaping it, then part of the job is to stop waiting for it to, and start building what’s missing.