Helen Hardy: building a more inclusive game
When Helen Hardy received a letter from the University of Surrey, she assumed it was an alumni newsletter. Her dad opened it for her at home in Newcastle while Helen was in Manchester. “He was like, ‘I don’t know whether you’re being messed around with, but you’ve won something,’” she laughs
Alumni Award Winner - Helen Hardy
That “something” was the 2026 Vice-Chancellor’s Alumni Award for Alumni Achievement: recognition of Helen’s pioneering work in women’s sport, inclusion and entrepreneurship. As founder and CEO of FOUDYS, the world’s first women’s football retail site - and now the first physical women’s football retail shop, based in Manchester - and founder of Manchester Laces, now the largest inclusive women’s and non-binary football club in Manchester, Helen has helped reshape who football is for - and who gets to feel at home in the game.
Finding her place at Surrey
Helen studied for a BA in Acting at Guildford School of Acting (GSA), graduating in 2012. For her, GSA had been “one of the best theatre schools in the world” since she was a teenager. She auditioned at 18, did not get in, and tried again the following year.
“I got in second time,” she says. “Drama school brings you a level of resilience… it tests you mentally and it tests you physically.”
The setting mattered too. Helen remembers visiting Guildford with her dad and feeling that Surrey offered something different from her other options in London: a beautiful, safe-feeling campus and town, with historic buildings, the river and a sense of community, yet still close to the capital.
“He was like, ‘You’re so lucky. Look how beautiful this area is,’” she recalls. “It was the icing on the cake really.”
From stagecraft to leadership
Although Helen once imagined becoming a West End actor, her Surrey experience equipped her for a different kind of stage. She believes the skills learned at GSA - confidence, communication, resilience and an understanding of human behaviour - became central to her later career.
“The art of being an actor is that you are part of a community,” she says. “When you’re performing and you’re in a production or in rehearsal, you’re relied on by multiple people.”
That same sense of shared responsibility now informs her leadership. Whether building a team, speaking to investors or creating a football club where people feel safe, Helen draws on the psychology, empathy and adaptability she developed through acting.
“I look back and all of those traits we were taught over those three years, I bring into my everyday life now,” she says.
A journey of unexpected turns
After graduation, Helen moved to London and took a customer service job with a car wash company. She quickly progressed into sales and regional management, before joining Stagecoach Performing Arts in Manchester, where she worked with theatre schools and young performers.
Then the pandemic hit. Furlough and redundancy gave Helen the space to revisit an idea she had carried since the 2019 Women’s World Cup: “why was it so difficult to buy women’s football shirts, and kit with the right personalisation and fit?”
In December 2020, from her bedroom, she launched FOUDYS. Starting with a heat press machine and around £3,000 from her redundancy pay, Helen began putting women’s players’ names on the back of jerseys. It was a simple idea that met a huge unmet demand.
“I’ve always been a football fan since birth,” she says. “But there was no accessibility to women’s football products. You couldn’t get a women’s football jersey without hunting through the internet.”
FOUDYS has since grown into a recognised women’s sports retailer, named Retail Business of the Year in 2022, and continues to place women’s sport front and centre.
Creating Manchester Laces
In 2021, Helen also wanted to return to playing football. But traditional club environments had rarely felt right. She imagined something different: an 11-a-side team built on empowerment, kindness and compassion.
At the first Manchester Laces session, around 50 people turned up. Today, the club welcomes hundreds of players every week and has become a leading inclusive space for women, non-binary people and gender-diverse players. Its open-door approach was shaped by listening: when transgender participants arrived at the first session, Helen realised there were barriers she had not fully understood - and committed to learning.
“Inclusivity is not a destination, it’s a journey,” she says. “You’ve got to incrementally improve always.”
That ethos has led the club to consider everything from pitch access to privacy, faith and culture, player safety, community values and the different reasons people come to football.
Changing access to the game
Growth has not been without challenges. Pitch space remains a major issue in women’s football, shaped by decades of historic exclusion. Helen describes the legacy of the women’s game being banned for more than 50 years as something still felt in access, infrastructure and attitudes.
But Manchester Laces has helped prove what is possible. After England’s Euro 2022 win, demand surged. The club secured more pitch space and continued growing. It has inspired similar communities, including Leeds Laces, and created friendships, support networks and even marriages.
For Helen, the impact is deeply personal. “I’ve never felt safer in a football environment to be myself,” she says. “It’s like a sisterhood.”
Recognition, reflection and what comes next
Winning the Vice-Chancellor’s Alumni Award has given Helen a rare moment to pause. She describes feeling surprised, proud and slightly disbelieving that Surrey would recognise her alongside alumni achieving extraordinary things across many fields.
A previous moment of recognition came when her portrait was displayed on the steps of Wembley Stadium for International Women’s Day 2022. Standing there alone at night, looking at her face at Wembley, she finally began to understand the scale of what she had built.
“It was a really beautiful moment of reflection,” she says.
Awards are not what motivate Helen. The work does. Her focus remains on growing FOUDYS, supporting women’s sport, and ensuring football spaces are safer, kinder and more inclusive.
Her advice to students and graduates is simple: do not pressure yourself to have everything mapped out. “You don’t have to have a big career change,” she says. “You can just take a little step forward and feel your way through.”
For Helen Hardy, those steps have helped thousands of people find their place in football - and shown what can happen when creativity, courage and community come together.