Women athletes find purpose—for themselves and the greater good

How EY’s Women Athletes Business Network is supporting three of tomorrow’s leaders to hone their purpose and become winning entrepreneurs.

In brief

• Wrestler Aline Silva provides financing to low-income families
• Water skier Saaya Hirosawa helps people find balance through yoga
• Table tennis player Sarah Hanffou runs a law firm and a social impact business

Women athletes find purpose—for themselves and the greater good

This article, the fourth in our series on women athletes and business, explores how sport inspires women athletes to find purpose in creating long-term value. 

At EY, our purpose—to build a better working world— Is our North Star, so EY’s Women Athletes Business Network (WABN) aims to support tomorrow’s business leaders in honing their purpose.

Our interviewees are in vastly different sporting and business fields, but they share a drive to impact others through entrepreneurship. Brazilian wrestler Aline Silva aims to provide financing to low-income families through her startup, Japanese water skier Saaya Hirosawa is designing her business to help people reach their potential through yoga, and French-Cameroonian table tennis player Sarah Hanffou runs her own law firm as well as a social impact company to support young people in sport.

So, what does finding your purpose mean to them, and how has WABN helped them become winning entrepreneurs?

Changing the next generation

For Silva, realizing her dream of representing Brazil at the Rio 2016 Olympics moved her to reflect on what her life could have been. At age 11, she was hanging out on the streets, trying cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol until her mother found out and moved her to a different school, where her life changed when she picked up judo.

“I realized I could be good at judo, so I started using my best Aline in sports. If it wasn’t for sports, I wouldn’t be here,” she says.

After two years of training, she switched to wrestling, becoming the first Brazilian to win a medal in the World Wrestling Championships.

With the hope of “giving meaning” to her story, she set up Mempodera, a non-profit in Sao Paulo, to give girls and young women sporting role models, facilities, and a positive environment.

“When I started judo, friends and family told me not to as it’s a masculine sport. When I became a good athlete, I heard ‘you’re pretty for a wrestler,’” she says, adding she wants to remove the gender norms that act as barriers to girls taking up sports like wrestling.

She hopes the organization can teach respect, trust, and teamwork while providing a sense of belonging.

In the lead-up to Tokyo 2020, with training hampered due to COVID-19 restrictions, Silva again reflected on her sporting journey. Growing up, she lived in a low-income community and, even after becoming an adult, she had problems managing financial matters.

“For me, money was always about struggle. Sometimes I knew I could have been doing better [with it],” she says.

With a desire for change, she drafted a social impact business model based on providing loans and financial education for budding entrepreneurs on low incomes. That plan is now becoming a reality thanks to the experience, insight, and contacts gained from her WABN mentor and mentees.

Learning from experience

Hirosawa found purpose during competition, driving her to set up a yoga-centric business empowering people to gain balance and fulfillment in their lives.

The Asia and Oceania water ski champion is part of the first cohort of the WABN Japan Academy, the inaugural country chapter of global WABN. The Academy aims to support women athletes to become leaders in society through entrepreneurship. Since January 2022, Hirosawa has been learning practical skills for business from EY Japan professionals and exploring how she can leverage her lessons from her sport.

When training for the Water Ski World Championships in 2011 and 2012, her focus was on jumping more than 50 meters, but it became all-consuming.

“I thought there was no point if I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t have any compassion for myself. My performance dropped, but when I let go of the goal, I rallied, so I learned the relationship between the mental and physical,” she says.

Through the experience, she saw her early days in the sport in a new light. When she began water skiing at university, she aspired to be top on three levels: individual, team, and national. Despite achieving all three goals and going on to win at the Asia level, she “couldn’t gain confidence” and was “in an endless struggle.”

“I realized that even if I got a medal as a world athlete, it would not be enough,” she says. Now she hopes her yoga business can show people that simply doing their best enables them to feel good about themselves and contribute to society.

“I’ve always been interested in business but didn’t know where to start. When I heard about WABN, I knew I wanted to join,” she says.

Looking back on the program, she says she has gained not only skills and ideas but also renewed “mental focus” to help with her entrepreneurial journey.

Growth through sport

Hanffou, too, is grateful to WABN for getting her to where she is today: founder of a law firm, a business, and a non-profit organization called Ping sans Frontières, which provides table tennis equipment and education in 16 countries.

“The program opened my mind. I took note of what I was capable of. I realized there were no limits—only the ones I had. We’re so confident in sport, but once we get out of that comfort zone, we’re not,” she says, adding that her WABN mentor helped her realize she could establish a law firm, a step that enabled her to work while training for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Hanffou attributes her development as a business owner and social impact entrepreneur to values she learned through sport, such as self-discipline, leadership, and thinking outside the box.

“Sport has really made me,” she says, adding that it has enabled her to grow as an athlete and person. “I got to travel and open my mind.”

Indeed, it was a 2006 trip to Niger, where she saw the national team playing table tennis with a hole-strewn net, that inspired her to set up Ping sans Frontières.

With the support of WABN, Hanffou has expanded her goal of using table tennis as an educational tool in Africa. Rather than rely on importing table tennis tables, her new Ghana-based business utilizes local wood and carpenters to produce them, thereby supporting the local economy and lowering the environmental footprint. The funds generated are reinvested in tutoring and training in Ghanaian schools.

With so much she wants to do, Hanffou says “taking charge” of her schedule and having a key group of advisors has been key to finding and honing her purpose. The WABN ecosystem also acts as a sounding board for shared issues and opportunities.

Commonalities through sport

Though these athletes’ entrepreneurial and social impact goals are different, they all want to solve problems faced by society. Each has seen different challenges and experiences, but sport has given them a common vision, helping them find and hone their purpose.

With the support of WABN, Silva, Hirosawa and Hanffou hope to realize their goals, adding long-term value to the communities they have met on their sporting journeys.