SHORT 'Finding Purpose in Unlikely Places' Ned Wills CEO Laureus Sport for Good Foundation
About this episode
Ned Wills discusses his unexpected journey into community engagement and the ethical complexities he encountered in the oil industry and sports philanthropy.
In this SHORT episode of Purposely, we’re back with NedWills, on an unexpected place his community engagement journey began, and what it taught him about ethics, incentives, and connecting elite sport to grassroots impact. Ned’s eyes were first opened to community work through anunlikely route: working in the oil industry in the early 2000s. Large infrastructure projects in unstable parts of the world meant companies had to invest heavily before seeing any return, which made getting community relationsright a genuine commercial priority, not just good PR. That put Ned at an unusual intersection of sponsorship and community engagement early in his career. What struck him most was the people. Despite working for anindustry that’s easy to criticise from the outside, he found many of his colleagues to be genuinely community-minded, regularly navigating real ethical dilemmas with care. There was a constant tension between commercial pressure todeliver shareholder returns and a genuine desire to make sure the impact on local communities was a positive one. That early exposure to ethical complexity has stayed withNed throughout his career, and it shows up clearly in his work today at…
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