Mike Geddes
Mike Geddes
Founding Partner, Senior Vice President of Impact and Social Enterprise
Oakland Roots, which is founded upon the principal of soccer as a force for social good has additionally added, Mike Geddes, Managing Director of Streetfootballworld USA. Mike is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of ‘soccer for social change’.
A former soccer reporter with the BBC, he began his career in the game covering major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games and producing documentaries on topics such as hooliganism, racism and corruption. Whilst working in Africa he was struck by the incredible power of soccer as a tool for social change in disadvantaged communities and went on to produce documentaries on the subject in South Africa, Kenya, Bosnia, India, Mozambique, China and many other places. He joined the global non-profit organization streetfootballworld in 2008, spending three years in South Africa working on the social legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and relocating to the USA in 2012 to lead the organizations US entity.
A serial entrepreneur, Mike has designed and launched several ventures at the intersection of soccer and youth empowerment including a citizen journalism program for youth in underserved communities in Africa, a program using soccer and music to reach out to inner-city youth in the UK and a line of jerseys inspired by real stories of social impact. In 2016 he relocated to Oakland with his wife and son to launch the third half, an adventure soccer travel company with a social purpose. Mike has written on the topic of sport and social change for the BBC, Huffington Post, Sports Business Journal and Forbes and spoken on the topic at many top institutions including Harvard, Brown, NYU, abc Forum, SOCAP, the Center for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, the FIFA CIES Masters course and many more. In his spare time he works with an organization using soccer to help keep kids safe from landmines in conflict zones like Colombia and Iraq and volunteers for a number of urban soccer programs across the United States.
As SVP of Impact and Social Enterprise, Geddes will work with Club President Benno Nagel to devise mechanisms through which to integrate social enterprise into the Oakland Roots business model. Furthermore, Geddes will work to identify and collaborate with local and global nonprofit service providers in the soccer for social good space, with specific events to be hosted by Oakland Roots throughout the year to specifically benefit these organizational impact partners.
